Blog posts with "banking"

Shahin Kashanchi was arrested a couple of days ago on charges of scheming with his brother-in-law Hassan Nemazee to defraud Citibank and HSBC of $290 million. Nemazee was arrested on August 25, 2009 and indicted for using fraudulent documents to secure loans from the victim banks, and executing a ponzi scheme against them by paying partial proceeds of the loans from one bank to the debts owed to the other and likewise.   Many of the fraudulent documents used in Nemazee's scheme were allegedl...

A new class of hackers has emerged: the Ponzi Hacker. Well maybe hackers perpetrating frauds isn't new, but assisting a billionaire to fool the Securities and Exchange Commission through clever coding as part of a much larger ponzi scheme is, well, novel. Yes, you guessed it, we're talking about good old Bernie Madoff. Here is a quote from the Register: "A federal grand jury has indicted two computer programmers on fraud and conspiracy charges for developing programs used by Bernard Madoff ...

  Lehman Brothers chapter 11 examiner's report has become available. Anton R. Valukas, chairman of the law firm Jenner & Block, performed the examination, and points the finger squarely at Lehman for culpability in the fall of the financial giant. Here are some quotes from the L.A. Times regarding the recent report:  "The uncompromising report should put to rest the self-serving claims by Lehman’s ex-Chairman Richard S. Fuld that the firm was destroyed by rumors, short selling, stoc...

  Just ran across this story about criminals replacing the credit card key pads at the cash registers at some Hancock Fabrics stores with fraudulent ones that stole pin numbers and other personal details of users. Here are some quotes from the Register:  "Crooks planted bogus payment card processing terminals at multiple locations operated by the Hancock Fabrics chain store that allowed for the theft of sensitive financial data from customers, the company warned. The personal identificatio...

  Arthur Nadel, the man described as "Mini-Madoff," will likely plead guilty to at least some of the charges leveled against him, securities, wire, and mail fraud, sometime later today in a Manhattan Federal court. Operating out of Sarasota, FL, Nadel conned investors out of $360 million in a ponzi scheme similar to Madoff's. Nadel potentially faces decades in prison.    

Albert Gonzalez has pled guilty to stealing the credit cards he was charged with (see my prior post here). At sentencing, he faces up to 25 years in prison.

  Three were indicted on Monday in what authorities believe to be the largest identity theft case prosecuted in history. Five corporate entities were victims in the case: 7-Eleven Inc., Hannaford Brothers Co., and Heartland Payment Systems along with two unidentified victims.   The indictment, available below, names Albert Gonzalez, a Miami man (who also went by the names "soupnazi," "segvec," and "j4guar17"), and two unnamed Russian hackers (cleverly named "Hacker 1" and "Hacker 2"). The i...

  Former Credit Suisse broker Eric Butler was found guilty yesterday of conspiracy and securities fraud. The evidence established that Butler and another broker, Julian Tzolov, defrauded clients to obtain higher sales commissions. Butler and Tzolov sold auction rate securities (ARS) backed by mortgages to clients who had placed orders to buy ARS that were backed by government backed student loans. Butler and Tzolov convinced clients that the student loan backed securities were secure and hig...