Acting on a new policy that increases the focus on prosecuting individuals for corporate wrong-doing, the Department of Justice is reportedly planning to file criminal charges against executives at JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland for the alleged pre-crisis sale of non-agency MBS to unsuspecting investors, the Wall Street Journal has reported. According to the report, the DOJ investigations were based on documents that allegedly suggested that shortly before the mortgage meltdown, executives at the two financial institutions securitized mortgages and sold them to investors knowing that the underlying loans were defective. The JPMorgan probe began after prosecutors uncovered crucial evidence from a related civil investigation in 2007: a memo from a bank employee cautioning senior executives about ...