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Public mistrust for banks may be at an all-time high, but federal prosecution for certain financial crimes is down to a 20-year low.
The federal government is on track to file just 1,365 prosecutions for financial institution fraud in fiscal year 2011, according to a new report from a watchdog group. That would be the lowest number of such prosecutions in at least two decades.
The report, from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, comes at a time when the protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street has gained nationwide visibility -- and no small degree of public support -- by criticizing what its members see as a close relationship between big banks and the federal government.
David Burnham, a co-director of TRAC, told The Huffington Post that the fall-off in financial fraud prosecutions most likely does not reflect a fall-off in financial fraud itself.
"The fact that prosecutions go up or down is almost never an indication of whether that particular crime is going up or down," Burnham said.
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