Ken Lewis, who drew much of our ire but never merited his own category tag, might have finally left Bank of America, but that’s not enough to get him out of Andrew Cuomo’s crosshairs:

Former Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis was sued by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for defrauding investors and the government when buying Merrill Lynch & Co. The bank agreed to pay $150 million to settle a related lawsuit by U.S. regulators.

Cuomo also sued the bank’s former chief financial officer Joe Price and the bank itself for not disclosing about $16 billion in losses Merrill had incurred before it was bought by Bank of America in an effort to get the merger approved. Afterwards, Lewis demanded government bailout funds, Cuomo said.

“We believe the bank management understated the Merrill Lynch losses to shareholders, then they overstated their ability to terminate their agreement to secure $20 billion of TARP money, and that is just a fraud,” Cuomo said today at a telephone press conference. “Bank of America and its officials defrauded the government and the taxpayers at a very difficult time.”

What the SEC won’t do, leave to New York securities law, I suppose. This is not new territory for Merrill, who paid out, what was it, $100 mil in 2002 over conflicts of interest, but it has to be all very surprising and unpleasant for Kennay personally. The Martin Act allows for both civil and criminal penalties, and, best for financial bloggers, it usually yields a treasure trove of embarrassing emails during the discovery process.

Current $BAC CEO Brian Moynihan, who was at the time putzing around with consumer debt, is not implicated, which means I still have really no reason to take Ken Lewis out of the LOLFed header graphic and replace him with Moynihan, but I’m sure the day will come.