Ex-Credit Suisse banker guilty of $1bn sub-prime fraud

A former Credit Suisse banker has been found guilty of fraud after deceiving investors into buying risky investments that led to $1bn (£610m) of losses.

Eric Butler, along with this co-defendant Julian Tzolov, sold high-risk US sub-prime investments to people on the premise they were safer products.

According to prosecutors in New York, the duo did this to receive much higher commissions.

Suspicions about the fraud first surfaced in 2007 when the US housing market began to stall, and bad debts in the sub-prime mortgage market started to be revealed.

Butler faces a prison sentence of up to 45 years. Tzolov may get a lesser sentence because he agreed to help prosecutors, and testified against his former Credit Suisse colleague.

"The defendants' fraudulent misrepresentations saddled investors with unknown risks they did not bargain for," the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Benton Campbell says.