preet bharara
REUTERS/ Lucas Jackson
Is Preet Bharara of the office of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York taunting Wall Street?
On Monday, the office's official Twitter account posted the following message, claiming a "significant financial institution" is about to be in serious legal trouble:
The quote in the tweet came from a speech Bharara gave at SIFMA’s Compliance And Legal Society Annual Seminar in Florida Monday. In that speech, Bharara spoke of the possibility of a firm getting hit with felony charges in a far more hypothetical sense, after reminding the audience of the 2002 felony conviction obtained against Arthur Andersen for shredding documents associated with its audit of Enron. That conviction was later reversed.
"In my view, after Arthur Andersen, the pendulum has swung too far and needs to swing back a bit. And so you can expect that before too long a significant financial institution will be charged with a felony or be made to plead guilty to a felony, where the conduct warrants it," Bharara said.
However, in the tweet from his office, the full context was not entirely clear and the tweet was not presented as a quote.
The office followed that tweet up with a pair of updates about a fraud case against a "broker & distributor of dairy products." There was no further information about any impending felony charges. Bharara's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider Monday evening.  
Updated 8:41 PM with details from Bharara's speech.