Talking about message cases, federal prosecutors indicted 3 Credit Suisse AG private bankers, while toughening their stance against the bank for allegedly helping wealthy Americans to evade taxes. Criminal charges were filed in Alexandria, VA, against the former head of CS's North America Offshore Banking and senior bank executive, Markus Walder.  Charges also were filed against former CS manager Susanne Rüegg Meier, and former CS banker Andreas Bachmann.  Josef Dorig, founder of a Swiss trust company that worked with the bank, also was charged.   The charges didn't specifically name Credit Suisse. A CS spokesperson said the bank is committed to a fully compliant cross-border business and continues to cooperate with U.S. authorities. The fresh indictment said that, as of autumn 2008, the bank "maintained thousands of secret accounts for U.S. customers with as much as $3 billion."  One of the 35 clients cited in this indictment took $250,000 to Switzerland by concealing it in panty hose she wrapped around her body underneath her clothes. Earlier Indictments.   The four are charged with conspiring to defraud the United States, the Justice Department and IRS by helping wealthy Americans to evade taxes.  Walder, a managing director, was accused of, among other things, lying to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 2005 and 2007 and to the IRS about the bank's activities with U.S. customers and on U.S. soil. The charges were filed as a superseding indictment that adds to similar charges filed in February against 4 other Credit Suisse bankers.  The original four - Marco Parenti Adami, Emanuel Agustoni, Michele Bergantino and Roger Schaerer - allegedly used a representative office in New York to provide unlicensed and unregistered banking services to U.S. clients. In addition, the charges said, Markus Walder, Roger Schaerer and others "allegedly made false statements and provided misleading information to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and to the IRS in order to conceal the international bank's U.S. cross-border banking business and the role of the New York representative office in that business." Josef Dorig's Role. Dorig, who ran a trust company called Dorig AG, is accused of being a "preferred provider" for Credit Suisse and helping American bank clients open sham entities in other offshore tax havens to conceal their Credit Suisse accounts. Increasingly Tougher Line with Credit Suisse. The indictment signals that federal prosecutors are becoming increasingly tougher with Credit Suisse, which has been under scrutiny for possible tax evasion services for over a year.  Last week, U.S. authorities sent a target letter to Credit Suisse formally notifying it that it was under criminal investigation. With the new charges, Credit Suisse now has 7 indicted bankers - far more than Swiss rival UBS AG which averted indictment in 2009 by agreeing to pay $780 million, admitting to criminal wrongdoing and later on agreeing to turn over 4,450 client names.  The bank spokesperson declined to say whether any of the indicted bankers were still employed by the bank. The pressure on Credit Suisse comes amid a collapse of talks between Bern and Washington aimed at resolving the wide-ranging investigation of a number of Swiss and other foreign banks - including HSBC, Europe's largest bank;  Julius Baer, Zurich-based private bank;  and Basler Kantonalbank, a Swiss cantonal bank.    [Reuters, 7/21/11]