Eric Holder - Doj has filed suit against s&p for - Scheme to defraud - February 5, 2013

yesterday the justice department filed a civil lawsuit against standard and poor's financial services as well as its parent company mcgraw-hill alleging that the credit for ages credit rating agency s_ and p_ engaged in a scheme to defraud investors in financial products known as residential mortgage-backed securities or are in the *** and collateralized debt obligations or cdls we allege that by knowingly issuing inflated credit reported ratings for c_e_o_'s which misrepresented the creditworthiness and understated their risks s_n_p_ misled investors including many federally insured financial institutions causing them to lose billions of dollars but simply this alleged conduct is breaches and it goes to the very heart of the recent financial crisis our investigation into this matter began in november two thousand nine connection with the president's financial fraud enforcement task force and it showed that as early as two thousand three analysts within s_ and p_ raise concerns about the accuracy of the company's rating system as well as the underlying methodology s_n_p_ executives allegedly ignored these warnings and between two thousand four and two thousand seven conceal fax made false representations to investors and two nd financial institutions and took other steps to manipulate criteria and credit models to increase revenue and market share