Apparently non-violent demonstration against corrupt banking is subject to more criminal scrutiny than actual corrupt banking.

Documents released by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund Saturday show that the FBI identified Occupy Wall Street as a "potential criminal and terrorist" threat as early as a month before the OWS movement burst on the international scene with its initial occupation of Zuccotti Park in September 2011.

"These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity," Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of PCJF, said in a release . "These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America."

The release of the documents comes a few weeks after federal and state authorities, including the Department of Justice and the New York East District Attorney's Office, announced a $1.9 billion settlement agreements with British-based bank, HSBC, for allowing major drug cartels and entities with economic sanctions and terrorist ties to launder money through the bank.

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In more long-awaited fallout from the mortgage crisis, Federal prosecutors today sued the Bank of America and Countrywide Financial for a scheme to defraud the government via a program called "The Hustle."

Yes, they called it "The Hustle." Its purpose: allegedly to process home loans at high speed with quality control. Its effect: the creation of thousands of fraudulent or bad home loans, which led to more than $1 billion in losses and countless foreclosures, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's office.

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The indefatigable Norman Oder -- at least, we've never seen him defatigued -- reported yesterday on his Atlantic Yards Report that Brooklyn's new Nets arena is about to get a "honking big" Barclays logo on its roof. This is normal and expected for roofed sports facilities these days (check out the lid on Newark's Prudential Center, for example), except that "honking big roof logo" apparently was never mentioned in the design guidelines that arena builder Bruce Ratner presented to the state in 2006. At the time, the roof was going to be a Frank Gehry-designed green space; now that it's instead a big expanse of white metal, apparently the state Empire State Development Corporation, which owns the arena site and oversees the project, gave the okay for logorifficness.

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Protesters march on Obama's fundraiser yesterday to demand he conduct real investigations into financial fraud.

Barack Obama was in town last night for a series of fundraising events, including one at the New Amsterdam Theater in Times Square.

A coalition of activists demanding accountability for the financial fraud that set off the economic crash used the scene of the president raising millions of dollars to return himself to office to call attention to a project that's sorely underfunded: the taskforce charged with investigating mortgage fraud by the nation's biggest banks.

"Before you can campaign, you have to do the people's business," said Nish Suvarnakar, an organizer with the Campaign for a Fair Settlement, who helped organize the evening's demonstration. "The campaigning and fundraising is going to go on, but we're not going to go away either."

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A top honcho at Morgan Stanley, William Bryan Jennings, has been charged with stabbing a Middle Eastern cabbie with a pen knife and using racial intimidation, cops say.

The banking behemoth says that the Americas co-head of fixed income and capital markets has since been put on leave, according to the New York Times.

Here's what supposedly went down: On Dec. 22., Jennings took a cab from a New York charity gala to his $3.6 million Darien, Conn. home. When he got there, he refused to pay the $200 fare, the cabbie claims. He's also said to have become abusive and started using racial slurs.

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While the general message from the Bloomberg administration has been that crime is down, that people are healthier, that everything is groovy, the New York Times City Room blog reports on a crime increase in one area: Bank robberies in New York City nearly doubled from 2010, when there were 26, to 2011, when there were 44 armed incidents. Of course, this is still nothing like the gritty days of yesteryear (in 1979 there were 319 armed bank robberies). But still! To what do we attribute this increase, which, along with more man-on-bank crime, has brought us cinema-ready villains like the "Bouquet Bandit" (above, caught) and the "Dapper Bandit," a/k/a Dana Connor, pictured after the jump, who is still on the loose?

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This internal memo from Bank of America to third-party contractors has been circulating around the Internet:

It's regarding yesterday's Occupy Our Homes action, in which protesters reclaimed foreclosed properties. The memo, which actually does appear to be real, includes tips like "Your safety is our primary concern, so do not engage with the protesters" and "While in neighborhoods, please take notice of vacant BAC Field Services managed homes and ensure they are secured."

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Not a Chase ATM, though we'd probably avoid this one.

Two men have been arrested and face charges "including burglary, criminal possession of forgery devices, and larceny," reports the New York Times, for installing devices in card slots of 11 ATMs at four different Chase locations around Union Square. The men, Nikolai Ivanov, 31, and Dimitar Stamatov, 28, live in Quebec (they are from Bulgaria) and tried their skimming trick twice -- in January for five days, and then again in May, when Iordan Ivanov, Nikolai's brother, helped. Nikolai and Stamatov, who also face charges of identity theft, were arrested in May while trying to remove the skimming device they'd installed, which just goes to yet again prove that returning to the scene of the crime never pays (for criminals, that is).

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Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point among other books, has a new gig: doing speaking engagements for Bank of America. Somehow nobody seems to have known about this, and Bank of America only released the press release today. Gladwell likes money almost as much as he likes pop pseudo-science!

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