Blog posts with "criminal law"

  In an Orlando Sentinel article by Susan Jacobson entitled Elderly who trusted high- living couple now face nightmares, former clients spoke out about Ross and Linda Littlefield, who were “charged with 10 counts of fraudulently using the Lentzes' credit cards, one count of fraudulently using their personal-identification information and one count of engaging in a scheme to defraud for at least $20,000 but less than $50,000.” Following are excerpts from the article: When her husband's Al...

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...

Not that this should be a total shock, but our banking system has played a large role in the livelihood of the violent drug cartels that are wreaking havoc along our border. Several banks, including Wachovia, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo have been implicated. Wachovia alone has admitted to mishandling $378.7 billion in illicit funds from 2004-2007, that's one third of Mexico's current GDP! For a good write up on the subject, check out Bloomberg. And as a footnote, the lead investigator of...

In an interesting use of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), a state run refinery group, claims that Daimler AG paid bribes to one of its staff. An interesting move for a company that could be potentially liable for soliciting bribes if charges were filed in the US.   As the article below notes, this was part of a wider investigation of bribery charges against Daimler by the United States Department of Justice. Potentially, US prose...

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...

  According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center's (iC3) 2009 Internet Crime Report, Washington D.C. is the Cybercrime capital of the U.S. with 116 cyber-criminals per 100,000. Here is an excerpt from a news story from WTOP summarizing the findings: "IC3, a joint effort of the National White Collar Crime Center and FBI, says Nevada and Washington hold the No. 2 and No. 3 spots.  Cyber-crimes are so common victims often neglect to report them. But the number of complaints to IC3 jumped mo...

  Spanish authorities, with the help of private cyber security companies, have identified and arrested three individuals, whose online names are "jonyloleante," aged 30, "netkairo," 31, and "ostiator," 25. The three were identified as the ring-leaders of a massive botnet know as "mariposa." The network was started in 2008 and infected nearly 13 million computers. Over half the Fortune 1000 companies were infiltrated by the botnet, including over 40 major banks. The botnet was present in near...

  In a story that broke a few days ago, Bernard Kerik, the former police commissioner of New York City, was sentenced to four years in prison for tax evasion and lying to federal officials. Kerik was a close associate of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and was even nominated in 2004 by George W. Bush for the position of Secretary of Homeland Security. The background checks for the position were the start of Kerik's troubles. Kerik eventually admitted to tax evasion and receiving renovations f...

  Stewart Nozette (pictured left, from nasa.gov), a former NASA, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), and U.S. Naval Research scientist, was arrested Monday for allegedly trying to sell national secrets to FBI agents posing as Israeli government agents for $11,000. This is not the first time Nozette has been under investigation. He was investigated in 2006 for allegedly submitting false expense forms to NASA.     Nozette was arrested on Monday, and indicted Wednesday afternoo...