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There’s a fascinating story in the paper this morning about a lawsuit against current and former SEC commissioners stemming from the fraud involving CMKM Diamonds. The plaintiffs are seeking $3.87 trillion – plus unspecified punitive damages – and it alleges a vast government conspiracy involving the SEC, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. .jpg)
A lot is being written, including here, about the report released yesterday by the examiner for Lehman Brothers, but we’ve found five articles online that we believe do an excellent job in summarizing the key findings and conclusions of the report. They are: .jpg)
The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has started publishing a list of the individuals and businesses who owe the most taxes to the state; it will update the lists monthly. One of the Top 250 on the individual list – owing $984,280.86 - is Bernard Madoff. By the way, he is number 68. .jpg)
A California man, Anthony Digati, has been arrested on charges of attempting to extort approximately $200,000 from a New York-based life insurance company by threatening to make false public statements and transmit computer spam in an effort to damage the reputation of the company and cost it millions of dollars in revenue.
A federal grand jury has indicted Rolando Alonzo Cousins of Bowie, Maryland, for conspiracy to commit mail fraud, mail fraud, and money laundering, in connection with a “massive” mortgage fraud scheme that promised to help homeowners facing foreclosure keep their homes and repair their damaged credit, but left them homeless and with no equity. 
The report issued yesterday by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy examiner, Anton R. Valukas, brings to many people a concept that is not often in the public view: the bankruptcy examiner. Under Bankruptcy Code Section 1106(a)(3), an examiner who is appointed in a chapter 11 bankruptcy case
The Securities and Exchange Commission has obtained an emergency court order to shut down an alleged Ponzi scheme targeting retirees in California and Illinois who are invited to estate planning seminars and later coaxed to buy promissory notes for purported Turkish investments. 
The Special Counsel for Development for the Village of Calumet Park, Illinois, has been charged in connection with an alleged fraudulent over-billing scheme that authorities say has cost the community over $1 million.
The story of the former mayor of Birmingham, AL, Larry Langford, just got stranger. Sure, Langford had been charged with bribery. Sure, a federal jury decided Langford actually had taken bribes in exchange for getting bond business to an investment banker. And sure, on this past Friday, a judge sent Langford to prison for 15 years and fined him $360,000. But it also turns out that Langford has a friend who owns a bingo casino, at which.jpg)
In anticipation of a hearing scheduled for 2:00 tomorrow afternoon, Lehman Brothers, and its law firm, Weil Gotshal & Manges, have urged the bankruptcy court to make public the investigative report into the events that precipitated Lehman’s downfall that has been prepared by the court-appointed Examiner, Anton R. Valukas. .jpg)
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There’s an interesting article in the current issue of The National Law Journal, by Karen Sloan, to which law firms should pay particular attention. The gist is that hackers are seeking to penetrate law firm computer networks to obtain, among other things, client secrets and details of pending transactions..png)
The words of the day are: “Payment Recapture Audits.” In remarks today on health care reform in St. Charles, MO, President Obama is discussing the use of such audits as a way to recoup taxpayer dollars lost to fraud and waste. .jpg)
Individuals need to be cautious when posting rental properties and real estate online. The Internet Crime Complaint Center (“IC3”), a partnership between the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center, and the Bureau of Justice Assistance, continues to receive numerous complaints from individuals who have fallen victim to scams involving rentals of apartments and houses, as well as postings of real estate online. .jpg)
Robert Moore, former executive managing director for the Bank of Montreal’s (BMO) Commodity Derivatives Group, has entered into a consent order with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission relating to allegations of mis-marking and mis-valuing BMO’s natural gas options book by the trader he supervised. 
The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (“SIPC”) says there is a "look-alike" Web site for a fictitious organization that is mimicking the SIPC Web site in an apparent attempt to target Madoff victims. .jpg)
In an action to foreclose a mortgage on a commercial property, a New York state court judge has rejected defense contentions grounded more in public policy arguments than in law.
LifeLock, Inc. has agreed to pay $11 million to the Federal Trade Commission and $1 million to a group of 35 state attorneys general to settle charges that the company used false claims to promote its identity theft protection services, which it widely advertised by displaying its CEO’s Social Security number on the side of a truck. .jpg)
The Swiss banking giant HSBC revealed today that a data theft that it said had occurred a few years ago, which it previously said had affected fewer than 10 clients, actually impacted 24,000 accounts – including 15,000 active accounts..jpg)
Online crime complaints increased substantially once again last year, according to the 2009 annual report from the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C). The IC3 received a total of 336,655 complaints, a 22.3 percent increase from 2008. The total loss linked to online fraud was $559.7 million, up from $265 million in 2008.
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