CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Former Merrill Lynch executives now working for Charlotte-based Bank of America may be asked to return the huge bonuses they received days before the bank and the brokerage firm merged, N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper said Tuesday evening.

Cooper is investigating $3.6 billion in bonuses that Merrill Lynch paid more than 200 workers just before the merger became final in January 1st. The attorney general has asked Bank of America for information about those bonuses.

Bank of America has said it could not prevent Merrill Lynch from paying the bonuses because the bank did not yet own the brokerage firm.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has also been investigating executive bonuses at Bank of America and other companies. Cuomo managed to get executives at financially troubled insurance giant AIG to return some of the $165 million in bonuses that were handed out after the company accepted a federal bailout.

Cooper was asked Tuesday if he would also seek to have Merrill Lynch bonuses returned and said, "well, that's certainly a potential. The American people, particularly with taxpayers' money invested, are not going to tolerate people getting windfalls."

Cooper did not say whether he will simply ask for the money to be returned or try some kind of legal action.