Barry Ritholtz provides a useful summary of the crimes committed by the financial sector, complete with links and sources:
Laundering money for drug cartels. See this, this, this and this (indeed, drug dealers kept the banking system afloat during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis)
Laundering money for terrorists
Engaging in mafia-style big-rigging fraud against local governments.
Shaving money off of virtually every pension transaction they handled over the course of decades, stealing collectively billions of dollars from pensions worldwide.
Charging “storage fees” to store gold bullion … without even buying or storing any gold . And raiding allocated gold accounts
Committing massive and pervasive fraud both when they initiated mortgage loans and when they foreclosed on them.
If it is not eminently clear that there is no rule of law whatsoever in the USA, this should suffice to prove it. It should come as no surprise that financial crime and corruption are on the upswing, as it has become increasingly obvious, even to those who don’t pay any attention to the financial sector, that the entire system is a criminal enterprise run by short-sighted financial gangsters. However, since they’re fast running out of other people’s cows to milk, as exhibited by the fact that less than one-third of the people who owe $1 trillion in school loans are repaying anything, the whole structure appears to be rapidly approaching collapse.
Some say it will end in fire (inflation), others in ice (deflation). But either way, it will end.
In the meantime, be sure to start a corporation and hire yourself before committing any crimes. Then fire yourself, and tell the police that you are no longer with the company when they come to investigate. They will then turn the matter over to the appropriate regulatory agency, which will fine the corporation about five percent of the profit you made from your illegal acts. This is what passes for criminal justice in America circa 2012.