Bankrupt Banker

Air India Express, SpiceJet, Go Air, IndiGo, Etihad Airways, and Kingfisher airlines defrauded

Two Nepalese and a Nigerian were arrested here for allegedly duping various airlines to the tune of millions of rupees through an e-ticket fraud, the police said Tuesday. The Delhi Police Crime Branch sleuths nabbed a Nepalese Kedar Nath, 28, from near Rachna cinema on Pusa Road in west Delhi May 12. Two mobile phones and three SIM cards were recovered from him. On his instance, another Nepalese Kailash Shrestha, 32, and Mikhail Akolade, a Nigerian, were arrested from their residences in Malviya Nagar and Tilak Nagar area, respectively.Shrestha was arrested May 14 while Akolade was caught May 18. The police claimed that two laptops and three mobile phones were recovered from them. “Their interrogation revealed that this racket has its roots in countries like Thailand and Singapore. They used to get stolen credit card details from their conduits in these countries,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Anil Shukla. After getting the credit card details, the accused used to buy e-tickets of various airlines in the name of different people. The airlines duped by the accused include Air India Express, SpiceJet, Go Air, IndiGo, Etihad Airways, and Kingfisher airlines.“They used to lure travellers by offering them cheap air tickets on condition of cash payment. After travellers paid them money, they used to buy a ticket from the stolen credit card details,” said Shukla. “The airlines had to refund the money once the person, whose credit card details were stolen, objected to the airline company by saying that he/she had not used the credit card for any travel purpose,” he added. The police said over 250 e-tickets and details stolen from at least 500 credit cards have been recovered from them.

Air India Express, SpiceJet, Go Air, IndiGo, Etihad Airways, and Kingfisher airlines defrauded

Two Nepalese and a Nigerian were arrested here for allegedly duping various airlines to the tune of millions of rupees through an e-ticket f...

David Colburn, former head of AOL's business unit, will pay $2m and be barred for seven years; while two business affairs executives Eric Keller

Eight former executives of the unhappy dotcom merger between AOL and Time Warner have been charged with fraud for inflating the firm's online advertising revenues by more than $1bn (£509m).US financial regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil lawsuits alleging that between 2000 and 2002 the eight men had produced or contributed to financial statements that inflated advertising results. At the time, Time Warner had just been bought by AOL for $164.7bn and the newly merged firm was under pressure to prove its financial viability. The SEC, which began investigating the firm in 2002, also claims that AOL Time Warner used various "elaborate accounting schemes" to boost online ad revenue figures.These included so-called "round trip" transactions, where the firm bought extra adverts for clients including Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard to try to boost figures further.The lawsuits claim that the AOL Time Warner executives "knowingly or recklessly engineered, oversaw and executed a scheme to artificially and materially inflate the company's reported online advertising revenue". Former AOL controller James MacGuiwin is one of four defendants to have settled the charges without admitting any wrongdoing. He will pay $4m and be banned from serving as a company director for 10 years. David Colburn, former head of AOL's business unit, will pay $2m and be barred for seven years; while two business affairs executives Eric Keller and Jay Rappaport will pay up to $1m each.The charges are contested by the remaining four defendants: former chief financial officer John Micheal Kelly, AOL's ex-chief financial officer Joseph Ripp, ex-head of accounting policy Mark Wovsaniker and senior executive Steven Rindner.They are facing SEC charges that the regulator claims are supported by emails and evidence including a note from Kelly to Wovsaniker in which he asks what "other round trips do you have coming down the line?".A lawyer for Kelly said he "flatly denies the SEC's claims and will vigorously defend himself in the courts".AOL Time Warner has already paid a $300m fine as a result of the SEC's civil fraud charges and $210m from a criminal securities fraud investigation by the US Justice Department, but did not admit any fault.

David Colburn, former head of AOL's business unit, will pay $2m and be barred for seven years; while two business affairs executives Eric Keller

Eight former executives of the unhappy dotcom merger between AOL and Time Warner have been charged with fraud for inflating the firm's o...

Billionaire investor George Soros says a chain reaction of failures in the swaps market could trigger the next global financial crisis.

Billionaire investor George Soros says a chain reaction of failures in the swaps market could trigger the next global financial crisis. CDSs, which were devised by J.P. Morgan & Co. bankers in the early 1990s to hedge their loan risks, now constitute a sprawling, rapidly growing market that includes contracts protecting $62 trillion in debt. The market is unregulated, and there are no public records showing whether sellers have the assets to pay out if a bond defaults. This so-called counterparty risk is a ticking time bomb. ``It is a Damocles sword waiting to fall,'' says Soros, 77, whose new book is called ``The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means'' (PublicAffairs). ``To allow a market of that size to develop without regulatory supervision is really unacceptable,'' Soros says. The Fed bailout of Bear Stearns on March 17 was motivated, in part, by a desire to keep that sword from falling, says Joseph Mason, a former U.S. Treasury Department economist who's now chair of the banking department at Louisiana State University's E.J. Ourso College of Business. The Fed was concerned that banks might not have the money to pay CDS counterparties if there were large debt defaults, Mason says. ``The Fed's fear was that they didn't adequately monitor counterparty risk in credit-default swaps -- so they had no idea of where to lend nor where significant lumpy exposures may lie,'' he says. Those counterparties include none other than JPMorgan itself, the largest seller and buyer of CDSs known to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC. The Fed negotiated the deal to bail out Bear Stearns by allowing JPMorgan to buy it for $10 a share. The Fed pledged $29 billion to JPMorgan to cover any Bear debts. ``The sudden failure of Bear Stearns likely would have led to a chaotic unwinding of positions in those markets,'' Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told Congress on April 2. ``It could also have cast doubt on the financial positions of some of Bear Stearns's thousands of counterparties.'' The Fed was worried about the biggest players in the CDS market, Mason says. ``It was a JPMorgan bailout, not a bailout of Bear,'' he says. JPMorgan spokesman Brian Marchiony declined to comment for this article. Credit-default swaps are derivatives, meaning they're financial contracts that don't contain any actual assets. Their value is based on the worth of underlying loans and bonds. Swaps are similar to insurance policies -- with two key differences. Unlike with traditional insurance, no agency monitors the seller of a swap contract to be certain it has the money to cover debt defaults. In addition, swap buyers don't need to actually own the asset they want to protect. It's as if many investors could buy insurance on the same multimillion-dollar home they didn't own and then collect on its full value if the house burned down. When traders buy swap protection, they're speculating a loan or bond will fail; when they sell swaps, they're betting that a borrower's ability to pay will improve. The market, which has doubled in size every year since 2000 and is larger in dollar value than the New York Stock Exchange, is controlled by banks like JPMorgan, which act as dealers for buyers and sellers. Swap prices and trade volume aren't publicly posted, so investors have to rely on bids and offers by banks. Most of the traders are banks; hedge funds, which are mostly private pools of capital whose managers participate substantially in the profits from their speculation on whether the price of assets will rise or fall; and insurance companies. Mutual and pension funds also buy and sell the swaps. Proponents of CDSs say the devices have been successful because they allow banks to spread the risk of default and enable hedge funds to efficiently speculate on the creditworthiness of companies. The market has grown so large so fast because swaps are often based on an index that includes the debt of scores of companies, says Robert Pickel, chief executive officer of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. ``Whether you're a hedge fund, bank or some other user, you're increasingly seeing the logic of using these instruments,'' Pickel says, adding he doesn't worry about counterparty risk because banks carefully monitor the strength of investors. ``There have been a very limited number of disputes. The parties understand these products and know how to use them.'' Banks are the largest buyers and sellers of CDSs. New York- based JPMorgan trade the most, with swaps betting on future credit quality of $7.9 trillion in debt, according to the OCC. Citigroup Inc., also in New York, is second, with $3.2 trillion in CDSs. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, two New York- based firms whose swap trading isn't tracked by the OCC because they're not commercial banks, are the largest swap counterparties, according to New York-based Fitch Ratings, which doesn't provide dollar amounts. The credit-default-swap market has been untested until now because there's been a steady decline in global default rates in high-yield debt since 2002. The default rate in January 2002, when the swap market was valued at $1.5 trillion, was 10.7 percent, according to Moody's Investors Service. Since then, defaults globally have dropped to 1.5 percent, as of March. The rating companies say the tide is turning on defaults. Fitch Ratings reported in July 2007 that 40 percent of CDS protection sold worldwide is on companies or securities that are rated below investment grade, up from 8 percent in 2002. On May 7, Moody's wrote that as the economy weakened, high-yield-debt defaults by companies worldwide would increase fourfold in one year to 6.1 percent by April 2009. The pressure is building. On May 5, for example, Tropicana Entertainment LLC filed for bankruptcy after the casino owner defaulted on $1.32 billion in debt. A surge in corporate defaults may leave swap buyers scrambling, many unsuccessfully, to collect hundreds of billions of dollars from their counterparties, says Satyajit Das, a former Citigroup derivatives trader and author of ``Credit Derivatives: CDOs & Structured Credit Products'' (Wiley Finance, 2005). ``This is going to complicate the financial crisis,'' Das says. He expects numerous disputes and lawsuits, as protection buyers battle sellers over the technical definition of default - - this requires proving which bond or loan holders weren't paid -- and the amount of payments due. ``It's going to become extremely messy,'' he says. ``I'm really scared this is going to freeze up the financial system.''

Billionaire investor George Soros says a chain reaction of failures in the swaps market could trigger the next global financial crisis.

Billionaire investor George Soros says a chain reaction of failures in the swaps market could trigger the next global financial crisis. CDSs...

Tim Montgomery was sentenced in U.S. District Court in White Plains to 46 months in prison for his part in a phony-check scheme,

Tim Montgomery, 33, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in White Plains to 46 months in prison for his part in a phony-check scheme, the same one that ensnared his former girlfriend and fellow fallen idol Marion Jones. <a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ANNSRoaDZro/SDFCuPHgY0I/AAAAAAAACU0/afn5JeeKizQ/s1600-h/monty.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202012406689063746" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ANNSRoaDZro/SDFCuPHgY0I/AAAAAAAACU0/afn5JeeKizQ/s400/monty.jpg" style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" /></a>The former world-record holder in the 100-meter sprint pleaded for leniency from Judge Kenneth Karas, citing in part his recent arrest on charges of conspiring to distribute heroin. He said he has fallen from the heights he once reached. "I have had everything I ever wanted in life," he said leaning his slight but no longer athletic frame against the defense table. "The gold medal, all those people cheering, that was part of another world."His world now is behind bars. "I've been in rooms with murderers, pedophiles," he said. "In jail my status is gone."Montgomery and Jones share several things: They have a child together, they were Olympic champions, they were banned from track and field competition after being tied to illegal steroid use - and now they both will be inmates in the federal penitentiary system. Jones is scheduled to be released Sept. 5 from a federal prison in Texas after completing a six-month sentence for lying to federal investigators about her steroid use and her role in the check-fraud scheme.Montgomery, of Virginia Beach, Va., set his world record of 9.78 seconds in the 100 meters in September 2002. Two years earlier, he won a gold medal at the Sydney Olympic Games as part of the 400-meter relay team. He was stripped of his world record in 2005 when the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency determined he used illegal steroids. He was connected to steroids through BALCO, the San Francisco-based laboratory at the center of a wide-ranging federal investigation into the use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs by athletes. He was banned from track and field in 2005. Jones admitted her steroid use during her guilty plea in October in federal court in White Plains. The case was moved from Manhattan when Karas transferred to Westchester last summer. Montgomery pleaded guilty last year to bank fraud and conspiracy to commit bank fraud. Federal prosecutors said he conspired with at least four other people in the scheme, including track coach Steven Riddick and sports agent Charles Wells. Prosecutors said Montgomery caused three bogus checks totaling $1.2 million to be deposited into various bank accounts, including one check for $200,000 into a joint business account he shared with Jones.Yesterday, Montgomery said his participation in the scheme came in part because as a track star he was accustomed to following the instructions of his coaches. But Karas rejected that excuse, as well as pleas for leniency by Montgomery's lawyer, Timothy Heaphy, and his father, Eddie Montgomery. "Being a track star does not somehow disable someone from saying no when approached to take part in a crime," the judge said. "Someone saying you should commit bank fraud, that's not the same as someone saying you should eat Wheaties." federal judge denied bond for former track star Tim Montgomery on federal heroin distribution charges. Montgomery appeared Tuesday in U.S. District Court before Magistrate Judge F. Bradford Stillman. He pleaded not guilty to the charges and requested a jury trial, which the judge set for July 9. The former 100-meter world-record holder was arrested last week on a sealed indictment accusing him of dealing more than 100 grams of heroin in Virginia. stillman said Montgomery is a flight risk and a danger to the community, noting he is accused of dealing heroin in Virginia four times to a government informant after he pleaded guilty in a New York-based check-kiting conspiracy. He is to be sentenced May 16 in that case.The 33-year-old Montgomery pleaded guilty in the New York case, admitting he helped his former coach, Olympic champion Steve Riddick, and others cash $1.7 million in stolen and counterfeit checks. He faces up to 46 months in prison. Eric Hurt, an assistant U.S. attorney, called the heroin case straightforward. Montgomery met four times with a confidential informant from August to April, dealing a total of 111 grams of heroin for $8,450, Hurt told the judge. Authorities recorded the meetings on audiotape and, in two cases, also on videotape. Drug Enforcement Administration agents also observed the transactions, Hurt said. Montgomery's defense attorney James O. Broccoletti declined to comment after the hearing, as did members of Montgomery's family, who were in court. Riddick is serving a five-year prison term. Montgomery's former companion, Olympic gold medalist Marion Jones, is serving a six-month prison term for lying to investigators about the check-fraud scam and using steroids. Montgomery won a gold medal in the 400 relay at the 2000 Olympics and a silver medal in the 400 relay at the 1996 Olympics. Montgomery retired in December 2005 after he was banned from track for two years by the Court of Arbitration for Sport for doping linked to the investigation of BALCO, the lab at the center of a steroid scandal in sports. He never tested positive for drugs and has said he never knowingly took any banned substances. All performances after March 31, 2001, were wiped from the books, including his world record of 9.78 seconds in the 100 meters in September 2002.

Tim Montgomery was sentenced in U.S. District Court in White Plains to 46 months in prison for his part in a phony-check scheme,

Tim Montgomery, 33, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in White Plains to 46 months in prison for his part in a phony-check scheme, the sa...

Bryan Darrell Oliphant faces eight felony charges of offer or sale of an unregistered security and three felony charges of fraud

Bryan Darrell Oliphant, 35, of 57940 C.R. 33, Middlebury, faces eight felony charges of offer or sale of an unregistered security and three felony charges of fraud in connection with offering or selling a security. Brett M. Oliphant, 29, of 10 Renwood Place, American Canyon, Calif., faces felony charges of offering or selling an unregistered security, transacting business as an unregistered broker, fraudulent offering, sale or purchase of a security and conspiracy to commit fraudulent or deceitful acts with the offer, sale or purchase of a security.All the charges are connected with the brothers' actions between Nov. 1, 2004, and Aug. 31, 2005, running companies called 85 West, LLC, and Electronic Scrap Recycling Corp. Both lived in the area at the time, according to court documents. Bryan Oliphant used some of the money to pay for construction work on his house, according to an affidavit by Kim Haskins, an investigator with the Indiana Secretary of State Securities Division. Brett Oliphant used the money to pay for his rent, clothing, flowers and a vehicle, according to Haskins.In all the brothers took in more than $1.1 million from the illegal sales, though they returned $350,000 to two "investors" who got suspicious, according to Haskins. They also gave people fake investment documents, the investigator wrote in her affidavit. Bryan Oliphant's plea-bargain deadline is coming up next week, and Brett Oliphant's is the following week in Elkhart Superior Court 2. No trial date has been set for either man.

Bryan Darrell Oliphant faces eight felony charges of offer or sale of an unregistered security and three felony charges of fraud

Bryan Darrell Oliphant, 35, of 57940 C.R. 33, Middlebury, faces eight felony charges of offer or sale of an unregistered security and three ...

Rebecca Parrett former vice chairwoman of National Century Financial Enterprises a federal judge in Columbus issued a warrant for her arrest.

Rebecca Parrett who disappeared days after being convicted in a $1.9 billion corporate fraud case likened to the Enron and WorldCom scandals said that she would flee to Costa Rica if found guilty, her son recalled.Rebecca Parrett, 59, a former vice chairwoman of National Century Financial Enterprises in suburban Columbus, flew into Phoenix less than 48 hours after her conviction in March, picked up a two-month supply of a prescription drug at a pharmacy near her home and told relatives she would spend a few days at a bed-and-breakfast.Parrett hasn’t been seen since, and a federal judge in Columbus issued a warrant for her arrest.Her only child, Rob Parrett, recalled a conversation with his mother just after she was indicted in 2006.“She said she ‘wasn’t going to jail for something she didn’t do,’ ” Rob Parrett said in an interview published Sunday in The Columbus Dispatch. She mentioned Costa Rica as a destination, he said.Parrett and four other executives were convicted March 13 of securities fraud and other charges in what prosecutors said was a scheme to defraud National Century investors. National Century, based in Dublin, called itself the country’s largest health care financing company when it collapsed in 2002.Parrett, who faces a prison term that could top 20 years, had given up her passport and was supposed to be confined to her home in Carefree, Ariz., until sentencing. A few days after her disappearance, federal prosecutors alleged the defendants plotted to escape to Aruba on a cruise ship, and the remaining four were arrested.Defense attorneys deny any such plot.Rob Parrett, 41, said he’s worried about his mother. He said his mother has a life-threatening medical condition but he doesn’t know what it is. “I don’t think she would have taken off without saying something,” he said. “I want to know she’s OK.”If she were going to flee, she would have made arrangements for things important to her, including her three Alaskan Malamute dogs and four cats, her son said. Artwork and jewelry were left in her home, too.Rebecca Parrett told relatives that she was going to a bed-and-breakfast in northern Arizona on March 16, but it’s unclear if she went, said deputy U.S. Marshal Drew Shadwick, the lead investigator in her disappearance. A clerk at the bed-and-breakfast said there is no record of Parrett being there.Shadwick will say little about the search for Parrett except that the investigation is continuing. Her sixth husband, Gary Green, is the last person known to have seen her, Shadwick said.Her defense attorney, Greg Peterson, said he doesn’t know where Parrett is but is concerned about her well-being.Rob Parrett said the last time he saw his mother was March 9, his birthday. She knocked on the guest house at her Arizona ranch estate, where he had been living. She had to fly back to Columbus that morning for the last week of the trial, and she handed him a card and spoke for about two minutes, he said.The card was a serious one, mentioning life’s changes and how they could be overcome. He talked to his mother again, briefly by phone, before her conviction. Calls since then have gone straight to voice mail, he said.

Rebecca Parrett former vice chairwoman of National Century Financial Enterprises a federal judge in Columbus issued a warrant for her arrest.

Rebecca Parrett who disappeared days after being convicted in a $1.9 billion corporate fraud case likened to the Enron and WorldCom scandals...

Keane-Collopy gang credit union accounts suspect were used by gang members in Moyross to conceal hundreds of thousands of euro in drugs money

Officers from the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) were last night trawling through credit union accounts which they suspect were used by gang members in Moyross to conceal hundreds of thousands of euro in drugs money. CAB is also investigating a number of property transactions which they suspect were a ruse to launder money. Three men arrested in the operation were last night released from Limerick Garda stations. Files are being prepared for the DPP.In the swoops drugs and cash amounting to more than e300,000 were found. Further raids will be carried out over the coming days.Chief Superintendent Willie Keane said the operation was the culmination of months of work in what was phase one of the operation. “We have made good progress and it was geared to target criminal gangs and designed to curb their activities. I hope it will go a long way to do that,” he said. It also emerged last night that CAB has delivered a detailed questionnaire to a number of households in the city asking them to account for their opulent lifestyles, such as owning expensive cars, while also drawing welfare payments. The Garda operation began early yesterday when local gardaí, joined by reinforcement gardaí from the southern division and specialist units from Dublin, sealed off main roads. Members of CAB worked on information supplied to them by a specialist profiling unit set up in Limerick to delve into the lifestyle of known gang members, their families and associates. Chief Supt Keane said CAB took possession of a large amount of documentation as well as computer software. One of the shops raided is run by a known member of the McCarthy-Dundon gang. And one of the men arrested is aligned to the rival Keane-Collopy gang based in St Mary’s Park. A rifle and a handgun were also found in the raids. criminals were asked how they had vehicles worth up to €100,000 parked in front of their homes The country's most dangerous criminals have been informed that their social-welfare payments are being cancelled. The criminals, who are believed to have accrued millions of euro from illegal means, are now under investigation by the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB).Until the targeted individuals can provide investigating authorities with detailed and legitimate evidence as to how they acquired the means to purchase numerous properties at home and abroad, top-of-the-range vehicles and hi-fi equipment, their State benefits will cease. On Thursday, CAB officers, accompanied by more than 250 gardai, raided over 120 private dwellings in Limerick in an operation to expose the wealth of the city's criminal gangs. The criminals, who are members of or associated with Limerick's feuding gangs, were provided with questionnaires by CAB officers to fill out to explain how they had vehicles worth up to €100,000 parked in their driveways and in front of their homes. Social-welfare payments and benefits from the Department of Social and Family Affairs are now being halted as CAB and the gardai turn the screw on individuals who have until recent months managed to avoid having their financial affairs examined. Photos of the interiors of homes -- decked out in brand new furniture and fitted with state-of-the-art kitchens -- were also taken by officers.Yesterday, CAB officers and local detectives went to Limerick District Court to secure court orders to hold onto €250,000 which they uncovered in 12 separate locations following searches in Limerick and Clare on Thursday as part of Operation Platinum. Approximately €230,000 was found in euro notes and the remainder in sterling and US dollars. The biggest amount seized in one location was in excess of €30,000.Judge Aeneas McCarthy granted all applications to allow officers investigate the origins of the cash.Offices of solicitors, accountants, auditors and a credit union were also raided as a detailed examination to uncover an intricate paper trail began, following months of planning.Computers, hard drives, safes, documents, ledgers and credit-union books were all seized. Seven business premises including a shop were also raided.Three men aged in their 20s were arrested, questioned and released without charge. One of the men was arrested on the outskirts of the city after a stolen VW Passat with false plates was found on his property. Another of the individuals from the city's southside is believed to have stored expensive cars for the city's criminals. The third man is from St Mary's Park and is connected to the Keane-Collopy gang.The major operation was planned for several months and CAB officers are this weekend beginning a meticulous examination of the property seized as they bid to uncover the tangled paper trail.

Keane-Collopy gang credit union accounts suspect were used by gang members in Moyross to conceal hundreds of thousands of euro in drugs money

Officers from the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) were last night trawling through credit union accounts which they suspect were used by gang m...

Norman Schmidt sentenced to 330 years in prison

72-year-old Norman Schmidt of Denver sentenced to a mind-boggling 330 years in prison and ordered him to forfeit more than $38 million for h...

Leib Pinter,Barry Goldstein principals of Olympia Mortgage Corp charged with conspiracy, wire and mail fraud

Leib Pinter, 64, and Barry Goldstein, 59, were charged with conspiracy, wire and mail fraud in a four-count indictment unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn. Both men were identified in the indictment as principals of Olympia Mortgage Corp., which was on Coney Island Avenue until it closed in late 2004.The charges are the first brought by a new mortgage fraud unit in the eastern district U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn.Pinter was accused of misappropriating $44 million disbursed by Fannie Mae to refinance some 257 original home mortgages. The indictment charged that instead of using the funds to pay off the original loans owned by Fannie Mae, Pinter stole the money, leaving tens of millions of dollars in unpaid mortgages that had been refinanced through Olympia.In a second scheme, Goldstein was accused of falsifying bad loan repayment histories to fool Credit Suisse First Boston, the investment banking firm, into repurchasing what were actually nonperforming mortgages.Brooklyn prosecutors said that Credit Suisse purchased 12 loans with false payment histories. Investigators didn't put a dollar amount on those loans. Both Pinter and Goldstein pleaded not guilty. Magistrate-judge Joan Azrack released Pinter on an $800,000 bond secured by his home while Goldstein was released on a $350,000 bond, also secured by his residence.

Leib Pinter,Barry Goldstein principals of Olympia Mortgage Corp charged with conspiracy, wire and mail fraud

Leib Pinter, 64, and Barry Goldstein, 59, were charged with conspiracy, wire and mail fraud in a four-count indictment unsealed in federal c...

China broke its silence on the issue to admit that organs of executed prisoners were sold to foreigners for transplantation

The horrifying trade in human organs has been revealed by British surgeons who say patients are being tempted abroad, but may not fully understand the dangers or the human suffering behind the transplant operation. Kidney patients who need a transplant in Britain are being targeted by a medical group offering them new organs taken from executed Chinese prisoners. It is thought that as many as 10 British patients may have gone to China this year to receive a new kidney, at a cost of £23,000. One UK patient was believed to be recovering this weekend at a hospital in southern China following such a transplant. The internet company transplantsinternational.com makes it clear that the organs are from prisoners who are about to be executed. The prisoners apparently give their consent and are told that their families will receive money for the 'donation'. Under the heading 'Where do kidneys come from?', the company states: 'A cadaveric kidney comes from a dead person and in the majority of cases in China, the dead people are prisoners, which allows for us to know at least two weeks ahead of time when the kidney will be ready.' It also makes clear that before the death, blood samples are taken from prisoners to ensure they will be the perfect match for their Western beneficiaries. 'All donors are screened to prevent any disease transmission and the prisoners consent to organ donation. Unlike in some Western countries, the prisoners can receive money for their organs.' Dr Peter Andrews, a consultant nephrologist from St Helier Hospital in Surrey, said: 'In the past 18 months we've had at least five patients say they are considering this. Five years ago, it would have been unheard of.' Another doctor, Professor Stephen Wigmore, head of transplantation surgery at University Hospital Birmingham Trust, said that recently one of his patients had gone some way towards preparing for a liver transplant in China, before deciding against it. Doctors in Oxford, Nottingham and Sussex have reported similar cases, according to Hospital Doctor magazine. Prof Nadey Hakim, head of transplantation surgery at Imperial College London, said: 'It is so disgusting it is hard to know how any doctor can take part in this trade. 'Of course people become desperate for a new kidney - but do they realise what this trade is like? I first heard about it a few years ago from a Chinese doctor and I couldn't believe it. Would anyone want to receive an organ from someone who died in this way?' Hakim also has worries about other kinds of transplants carried out in China. 'We know that they have done around 10 arm transplants so far, and I was told that these donors are also prisoners. It raises many difficult ethical issues.' The kidney transplants are carried out at the Southern Hospital in Guangzhou by Dr Lixing Yu, who has performed thousands of kidney transplants over the past 30 years. According to the website, he specialises in research on the long-term survival of patients and has received more than 19 national awards for his work. Earlier this month, China broke its silence on the issue to admit that organs of executed prisoners were sold to foreigners for transplantation. Huang Jiefu, the deputy prime minister, admitted that the practice is widespread, but said they wanted to tighten the rules. 'We want to push for regulations on organ transplants to standardise the management of the supply of organs from executed prisoners and tidy up the medical market,' Mr Huang told Caijing magazine.

China broke its silence on the issue to admit that organs of executed prisoners were sold to foreigners for transplantation

The horrifying trade in human organs has been revealed by British surgeons who say patients are being tempted abroad, but may not fully unde...

Michel Baini has been charged with 20 counts of extortion and blackmail

Michel Baini has been charged with 20 counts of extortion and blackmail after police raids in the northern suburbs at dawn this morning.Alle...

Samuel Rivera, a former police officer, is the latest of about 130 public officials to be found guilty of corruption in New Jersey

Samuel Rivera, a former police officer, is the latest of about 130 public officials to be found guilty of corruption in New Jersey since 200...

NSW Police Force fraud squad Detectives are warning of a "phishing" scam in which Sydney residents receive an automated phone call at home or work

Victims of a new scam are being targeted by someone claiming to be the head of the NSW Police Force fraud squad.Detectives are warning of a "phishing" scam in which Sydney residents receive an automated phone call at home or work concerning a court appearance they didn't know about. They press a button and are put through to another person.In many cases, that person is someone claiming to be Col Dyson, the fraud squad commander, who asks them for their bank account details.The real Detective Superintendent Colin Dyson said residents were being told their court date has been changed or they were the victim of an identity scam before the courts and should move their money to an account to protect it. "I want to make it clear that I did not, and would not, make such calls. Furthermore, the NSW Police Force would not contact a person and tell them to transfer money into another bank account," Detective Superintendent Dyson warned. "A Fraud Squad strike force is investigating this scam which, based on our intelligence, emanates from a similar scam which has been operating in New York." Residents who believe they have been a victim of this scam are urged to contact their local police station

NSW Police Force fraud squad Detectives are warning of a "phishing" scam in which Sydney residents receive an automated phone call at home or work

Victims of a new scam are being targeted by someone claiming to be the head of the NSW Police Force fraud squad.Detectives are warning of a ...

Kevin Harpers $600,000 Internet fraud scheme with partners in Nigeria

The Nigerian suspects had contacted the animal's owner, used a fake name and agreed to buy the horse. Harper sent the victim a check as payment for the horse and asked the seller to send a portion of the payment to a horse shipper named Kevin Harper via Western Union, Varnau said. 24-year-old man has been arrested by sheriff's detectives who said he was involved in a $600,000 Internet fraud scheme with partners in Nigeria. Officials with the sheriff's financial-crimes unit said Kevin Harper of Vista was paid to create counterfeit checks, which he mailed to addresses provided by his partners. Authorities said he also received Western Union cash transfers from victims and sent the money to Nigeria. Sheriff's investigators contacted Harper on Thursday as they were following up on a complaint involving a victim in Oregon who was selling a horse over the Internet, Sgt. Mark Varnau said. The check bounced and was returned to the victim because it was counterfeit. “He was simply directed to be a middleman, a mail-forwarder for the suspects,” Varnau said. Investigators said Harper admitted he sent out checks for more than six months and estimated he sent his partners about $600,000. Harper told investigators he made about $50,000 from the transactions, Varnau said. Detectives have identified two victims in the case, including another horse owner in Jamul, and will go through Harper's computer files to try to identify others, Varnau said. When detectives searched Harper's apartment, which he shared with his mother, they seized his computer and recovered check-counterfeiting materials and counterfeit U.S. Treasury checks, Varnau said. Harper was being held on $60,000 bail at the Vista Detention Facility on grand-theft, burglary and other charges.

Kevin Harpers $600,000 Internet fraud scheme with partners in Nigeria

The Nigerian suspects had contacted the animal's owner, used a fake name and agreed to buy the horse. Harper sent the victim a check as ...

Virginia Vought Acree was indicted by a federal grand jury on 10 counts of health care fraud.

Authorities arrested a Severna Park woman yesterday on charges that she billed Medicare and private health care companies for more than a half-million dollars for services she didn't provide, the U.S. attorney's office said.A statement from federal prosecutors in Baltimore says Virginia Vought Acree, 49, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on 10 counts of health care fraud. The government also is seeking forfeiture of $578,780.Prosecutors said that Acree is a state-licensed clinical specialist in child and adolescent psychiatric and mental health nursing who worked out of her home in the first block of Brenda Court in Severna Park. Authorities said she had bills sent to that address and another in the first block of Linstead Court, also in Severna Park.The indictment alleges that she billed for visits to patients at homes and assisted-living centers in Glen Burnie "when in fact she was on vacation in another state or country." The charges cover a period between January 2003 and November 2007, prosecutors said.

Virginia Vought Acree was indicted by a federal grand jury on 10 counts of health care fraud.

Authorities arrested a Severna Park woman yesterday on charges that she billed Medicare and private health care companies for more than a ha...

Rabobank has confirmed media reports accusing the Dutch bank of involvement in a major tax scandal

A spokesperson for Rabobank has confirmed media reports accusing the Dutch bank of involvement in a major tax scandal in the United States. ...