CREDO, the online progressive organizing group, alleges in a new email to supporters that the Justice Department has not delivered the promised (and paltry) number of 55 staff members to the RMBS working group, the task force co-chaired by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to investigate the mortgage securitization practices of the leading banks.

We have heard very little from that task force since it was inaugurated in January, and CREDO has become the first progressive group to come forward with their concerns. But more is coming. This is the kickoff of a pressure campaign among several groups, querying the Administration in public about what was described to me last week as “the case of the missing task force.”

CREDO starts by asserting that 55 staffers from the Justice Department are not nearly enough to tackle a multi-trillion dollar fraud. Comparable investigations of much smaller financial crises, like the savings and loan scandal or the Enron collapse, have featured investigation staffs that were several orders of magnitude larger.

But the really damning charge is here:

And now we’re hearing from insiders in Washington DC, that the full complement of 55 promised investigators — which is already not nearly enough — haven’t even been deployed to the task force […] The 55 investigators promised to the financial crimes task force is not nearly enough. And to find out that President Obama hasn’t delivered on those investigators, let alone resourced the effort at the levels appropriate to the biggest financial fraud in U.S. history, is shocking.

In addition, CREDO alleges that none of the other co-chairs of the task force, including three Administration officials who were already on previous financial fraud task forces that amounted to little, “has done literally anything that achieves our goal of holding banks accountable or prosecuting bankers for criminal activity.”

This matters not just because of broken promises, but because the foot-dragging has serious consequences. Many of the various types of fraud that this task force is supposed to be investigating have statutes of limitations, some of which will run out on the very last securitization deals completed before the housing bubble collapsed. There are several 10-year statutes of limitations, particularly through the federal law FIRREA. But other statutes have a 5-year limit, and the last deals were made in 2007. So this looks suspiciously like running out the clock.

The Administration obviously must answer these charges, and I’ll try to get some clarity on that today. But Eric Schneiderman’s office needs to also speak up. Schneiderman and his staff said specifically that they would walk from the task force if they felt it wasn’t living up to the promises made to him in terms of resources and will. We’re only three months in, but that looks exactly like what’s happening. If there are bad actors blocking investigations, Schneiderman needs to say it, as he vowed to do.

When the coalition seeking accountability from the banks acquiesced to a settlement on foreclosure fraud with the hope that this task force would bring the investigations, prosecutions and relief needed, they said that election-year pressures would force something real to come about. That has proven so far to be a chimera. We shall see if they can elevate the issue again, with less leverage thanks to the settlement’s completion.

The entire letter from CREDO is below.