'Sadistic Sadie'
Alisa Finelli, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said certain prosecutions surged in 2010 from 2008. Those of securities fraud increased 37 percent, and those of corporate fraud increased 77 percent, she said in a statement.
The department won't say which cases it included in its statistics, citing privacy concerns.
Using government data compiled by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research center, Bloomberg News identified cases coded as corporate fraud by the Justice Department last year. Most involve people accused of stealing from companies, not wrongdoing by firms themselves.
They included the president of a roller derby team in Ohio, who skates under the name "Sadistic Sadie" and was accused of manipulating the ticketing system of her employer, United Airlines, to slash the cost of travel for her friends, family and teammates. A Maryland case involved a man who embezzled from his company. In New Jersey, a spa owner was prosecuted for a scheme to avoid paying taxes.
'Significant Fraud Schemes'
Finelli said there may be "significant fraud schemes" involving executives that weren't coded as corporate fraud.
Department officials point to prosecutions such as that of Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge-fund tycoon and Galleon Group LLC co- founder, who was found guilty on May 11 by a New York jury in the largest illegal insider-trading case in a generation.
John Hueston, an attorney with Irell & Manella LLP in Los Angeles, said Wall Street's crunch may not even have been spurred by criminal activity, citing instead government pressure to loosen mortgage lending and a lack of regulatory oversight.
"In Enron, it took years to develop criminal cases," said Hueston, who represented Mozilo and earlier was a lead Justice Department prosecutor in the Enron case. "It may be that it's still too early to make the call on the Department of Justice's initiative."