The libor scandal is particularly bad, even though not a lot of actual $ gains/losses involved, in that it happened after the financial crisis when there was at least some hope that the surviving major banks had, in general, cleaned up their act. And also at least some hope that the crisis was a wake up call to bank regulators and supervisors.

It’s not that hard to spot. For example, relatively wide libor basis swaps indicate markets are discounting libor settings being away from actual deposit rates by more than typical bid/offered spreads.

Banks Face $6 Billion of Libor Litigation, Morgan Stanley estimates

July 12 (Bloomberg) — Banks being probed for attempting to rig benchmark interest rates could face $6 billion of related litigation costs, analysts at Morgan Stanley estimated. The 16 banks may also lose 4 percent to 13 percent in 2012 earnings per share from regulatory fines on a base case scenario, Morgan Stanley analysts led by Betsy Graseck wrote in a note to investors today. They may also suffer from tighter scrutiny from regulators in response to the Libor investigations, the analysts said.