A former executive at the Bank of America Corporation has been indicted in connection with what prosecutors called a "far-reaching conspiracy" to defraud municipal bond investments through bid-rigging, Bloomberg News reported on Saturday. Phillip D. Murphy, former head of Bank of America’s municipal derivatives desk, was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, wire fraud and conspiracy to make false entries in bank records, according to the indictment filed on Thursday in federal court in Charlotte, N.C. Murphy "allegedly participated in a complex fraud scheme and conspiracies to manipulate what was supposed to be a competitive process," said Scott D. Hammond, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s antitrust division. To date, 13 individuals from banks including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and UBS have pleaded guilty in the Justice Department’s investigation. Bank of America, JPMorgan, UBS, Wells Fargo and General Electric have paid more than $700 million in restitution and penalties.
