Blog posts with "fraud"

Thomas James Frederick Smith, 21, and David Anthony Edwards, 20, have been indicted for conspiring to intentionally cause damage to a protected computer and commit computer fraud. The indictment alleges that the two infected susceptible computers with an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) bot that would allow the two to direct the infected computer to repeatedly access an IP address of their choosing as part of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. The two infected numerous computers assembl...

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.

The Department of Justice has reached a $2.3 billion settlement with Pfizer for illegally marketing its anti-inflammatory drug Bextra. A common practice in the pharmaceutical industry, Pfizer representatives would advocate Bextra to doctors for untested or non-approved off-label uses. The settlement will return nearly a billion dollars to Medicare, Medicaid, and other government insurance programs.   Source: Department of Health and Human Services

Reinaldo Guerra, of Miami, Florida, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit Medicare fraud and Medicare fraud. The scheme involved in home medical equipment. Guerra operated 11 corporations that purported to supply this equipment. Through these companies, Guerra submitted about $123 million in fraudulent claims where no equipment had been prescribed or ordered by a physician. Medicare paid a total of $35 million to the companies before Guerra was caught.   Guerra is set to be sentenced November...

This past Friday, August 21, Apple, Google, and AT&T all responded to the FCC's interrogatories that I wrote about here.   Apparently, according to Apple, the Google Voice application was never actually rejected, but was still under consideration. Apple claims that Google Voice replaces Apple's visual voice mail system, its ability to text, and its address book and was initially not added for this reason. Here, in Apple's own words, "It appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user e...

  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...

  The Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud and other charges against General Electric today for misleading investors through their preparation of financial statements (See the SEC official release). Apparently GE used deceptive accounting methods to artificially increase its earnings reports. GE has neither admitted nor denied culpability, but have agreed to pay a $50 million dollar penalty to settle the charges. The fairness of this settlement is difficult to grasp consideri...

"Concerted rings" located in Eastern Europe and Asia have been identified as the perpetrators of complex market manipulating fraud schemes. The schemes involve criminals gaining access to individual brokerage accounts, or opening accounts with stolen identities. One permutation involved using compromised accounts to buy up shares of infrequently traded stocks to inflate their value, and then selling shares of the stock the criminals owned in their personal accounts that had been purchased at ...