The Criminal Complaint filed today by federal prosecutors against three former executives of Comverse Technology (the former CEO, CFO and General Counsel) for options backdating is available here, courtesy of the WSJ Law Blog.

Before your eyes glaze over and you hit the "Back" key to go read about something less arcane than strike dates, compensation accounting rules, etc., just know that the stuff in the Criminal Complaint is pretty fascinating. The FBI agent providing the statement in the Criminal Complaint gets deep into the details of the alleged scheme at Comverse, including the creation of a secret slush fund account called Phantom in which options to fictitious employees were stashed and later awarded to favored employees for recruitment and retention.

The Criminal Complaint also details the alleged cover-up of the scheme when the WSJ started asking questions about options grants in March 2006, which according to the complaint included evidence tampering and numerous misstatements and half-truths to company lawyers, the company's auditors, the WSJ, and the Special Committee hired to investigate the matter.

One of the more interesting statements in the Criminal Complaint is that according to the defendants, the backdating practice was shut down in April 2002 because of "the advent of Sarbanes-Oxley and a more stringent enforcement 'environment.'"