Two ex-Bear Stearns fund managers have been hit with both civil and criminal charges, by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Justice Department. Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin have allegedly defrauded and deceived their customers, which led to losses of over $1 billion for the clients.

They were in charge of Bear Stearns' hedge funds which stumbled last year. It appears that, realizing the funds were about to implode, they concealed the real financial status of the investments in an attempt to pull their own money out first. Their handling of the situation has further damaged the hedge funds.

Both the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are basing their case on confiscated email messages. There is also a potential witness, a third hedge fund manager which has not yet been named.

Ralph Cioffi apparently tried to conceal the disastrous prognosis of the hedge funds by launching even riskier investments which, quite expectedly, led to the collapse of the investment system. This led to the stunning revelation that one of the Bear Stearns funds which went down was said to have borrowed $20 for every $1 it invested.

Cioffi and Tannin's e-mail woes are just the last of a series of such cases which should remind executives that emails are just not the way of communicating when doing questionable deeds. Of course, ideally, such deeds should never occur, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.

The now-dead financial giant was founded in 1923 by Joseph Bear, Robert Stearns, and Harold Mayer and had more than 10,000 employees. Its Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. was one of the largest global investment banks and securities trading and brokerage firms in the world.