Fraud – Page 10 – Infinite Unknown

Ron Paul: The Real Reasons Behind Fed Secrecy

September 29, 2009 by Infinite

An Audit Would Expose The Fed As A Massive Fraud Perpetrated On This Country

By Ron Paul.

Last week I was very pleased that the Financial Services Committee held a hearing on the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, HR 1207. The bill has 295 cosponsors and there is also strong support for the companion bill in the Senate. This hearing was a major step forward in getting the bill passed.

I was pleased that the hearing was well-attended, especially considering that it was held on a Friday at nine o’clock in the morning! I have been talking about the immense, unchecked power of the Federal Reserve for many years, while the attention of Congress was always on other things. It was gratifying to see my colleagues asking probing questions and demonstrating genuine concern about this important issue as well.

The witness testifying in favor of HR 1207 made some very strong points, which was no surprise considering the bill is simply common sense. It was also no surprise that the witness testifying against the bill had no good arguments as to why a full audit should not be conducted promptly. He attempted to make the case that the fed is already sufficiently accountable to Congress and that the current auditing policy is adequate. The fact is that the Fed comes to Congress and talks about only what it wants to talk about, and the GAO audits only what the current laws allow to be audited. The really important things however, are off limits. There are no convincing arguments that it is in the best interests of the American people for anything the Fed does to be off limits.

It has been argued that full disclosure of details of funding facilities like TALF and PDCF that enabled massive bailouts of Wall Street would damage the financial position of those firms and destabilize the economy. In other words, if the American people knew how rotten the books were at those banks and how terribly they messed up, they would never willingly invest in them, and they would fail. Failure is not an option for friends of the Fed. Therefore, the funds must be stolen from the people in the dark of night. This is not how a free country works. This is not how free markets work. That is crony corporatism and instead of being a force for economic stabilization, it totally undermines it.

Pfizer Agrees to a Record $2.3 Billion Criminal Fine in Fraud Probe

September 3, 2009September 3, 2009 by Infinite

Pfizer’s general counsel said: “We regret certain actions taken in the past, but are proud of the action we’ve taken to strengthen our internal controls.” Source: BBC News

The only thing Big Pharma ‘regrets’ is getting caught.

Illegally promoting drugs for conditions that had not been approved by regulators is common practice in the pharmaceutical industry.

big-pharma-pfizer
Pfizer Inc. drugs, from right, the pain pill Lyrica, antibiotic Zyvox, and schizophrenia treatment Geodon are arranged for a photo at C.O. Bigelow Pharmacy in New York on Sep. 2, 2009. Photographer: JB Reed/Bloomberg

Sept. 2 (Bloomberg) — Pfizer Inc. agreed to a $1.2 billion criminal fine, the largest in U.S. history, and a felony plea by a subsidiary to close an investigation into what government lawyers described as fraudulent marketing of drugs.

The fine, over sales practices for a painkiller since pulled from the market, makes up the biggest single share of a record $2.3 billion settlement, announced today, between the U.S. Justice Department and New York-based Pfizer. The deal includes $1 billion in civil penalties, the largest non-criminal fraud case against a drugmaker, the department said.

Pfizer, the world’s largest drugmaker, entered into a five- year integrity agreement with the Health and Human Services Department as well. The government pays for medicines through several health programs and joined the investigation after private whistleblowers filed lawsuits in three states. The criminal case revolved around allegations that the painkiller Bextra and three other medicines were promoted for uses other than those approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Hacker (Ex-US Secret Service) charged with biggest ever US credit card fraud

August 19, 2009 by Infinite

credit-cards

A hacker who had once worked with the US secret service has been charged with the biggest credit card identity theft ever recorded in the US.

Albert Gonzales, 28, of Miami, and his accomplices, allegedly stole at least 130 million accounts from big retail companies.

Gonzales is accused of working with two unidentified Russian conspirators to hack into the databases of retail chains, and then selling the information around the world.

Prof. William K. Black: This economic disaster in based on total insanity and fraud – Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell

August 17, 2009August 17, 2009 by Infinite

William K. Black, the former litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board who investigated the Savings and Loan disaster of the 1980s, discusses the latest scandal in which a single bank, IndyMac, lost more money than was lost during the entire Savings and Loan crisis.

He will examine the political failure behind this economic disaster, in which not only massive fraud has taken place, but a vast transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class continues as the federal government bails out the seemingly reckless, if not the criminal.

Black teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and is the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.

(Run Time: 1 hour, 38 min.)

Posted August 11, 2009

Source: Information Clearing House

Markopolos: Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme ‘Will look Like Small-Time’

August 12, 2009 by Infinite

harry-markopolos

Harry Markopolos — the whistleblower on Bernie Madoff who proved to be much smarter than the SEC — says there are evildoers out there who will make the Ponzi scum “look like small-time.”

Markopolos gave a speech to 400 of the faithful at the Greek Orthodox Church in Southampton and predicted major scandals will soon be revealed about the unregulated, $600 trillion, credit-default swap market.

“To put it in simple terms, it is like buying fire insurance policies from five different insurance companies on your neighbor’s house and then burning down the house,” he said.

After his lecture, Hampton Sheet publisher Joan Jedell reports Markopolos was feted at a dinner at Nello Summertimes hosted by John Catsimatidis and his wife, Margo, who were joined by Al D’Amato and Greek shipping magnates Nicholas Zoullas and Spiros Milonas.

August 12, 2009

Source: The New York Post

The US government completely ignored Harry Markopolos:

– Markopolos: I gift wrapped and delivered the largest Ponzi scheme in history to the SEC

– Madoff whistleblower to slate ‘inept’ SEC regulators:
“It led me to conclude that the SEC securities lawyers, if only through their ineptitude and financial illiteracy, colluded to maintain large frauds such as the one to which Madoff later confessed.”

– Madoff whistleblower wants to be left alone

– Whistleblower document warned SEC in Nov. 2005 about Madoff’s Ponzi scheme

– A Madoff Whistle-Blower Tells His Story

Taxpayer money at work!

New York Medicaid Fraud May Reach Into Billions

July 22, 2009July 22, 2009 by Infinite

It was created 40 years ago to provide health care for the poorest New Yorkers, offering a lifeline to those who could not afford to have a baby or a heart attack. But in the decades since, New York State’s Medicaid program has also become a $44.5 billion target for the unscrupulous and the opportunistic.

It has drawn dentists like Dr. Dolly Rosen, who within 12 months somehow built the state’s biggest Medicaid dental practice out of a Brooklyn storefront, where she claimed to have performed as many as 991 procedures a day in 2003. After The New York Times discovered her extraordinary billings through a computer analysis and questioned the state about them, Dr. Rosen and two associates were indicted on charges of stealing more than $1 million from the program.

It has drawn van services, intended as medical transportation for patients who cannot walk unaided, that regularly picked up scores of people who walked quite easily when a reporter was watching nearby. In cooperation with medical offices that order these services, the ambulettes typically cost the taxpayers more than $50 a round trip, adding up to $200 million a year. In some cases, the rides that the state paid for may never have taken place.

School officials around the state have enrolled tens of thousands of low-income students in speech therapy without the required evaluation, garnering more than $1 billion in questionable Medicaid payments for their districts. One Buffalo school official sent 4,434 students into speech therapy in a single day without talking to them or reviewing their records, according to federal investigators.

On the Edge with Max Keiser (07/03/09)

July 4, 2009 by Infinite

Special guest, Paul Craig Roberts.

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On the Edge with Max Keiser (06/19/09)

June 20, 2009 by Infinite

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Scotland Yard officers are suspected of defrauding taxpayers of millions

June 15, 2009 by Infinite

More than 300 elite Scotland Yard detectives are suspected of defrauding the taxpayer of millions of pounds by abusing their corporate credit cards, the Observer can disclose.

Auditors who have examined the American Express accounts of 3,500 officers involved in countering terrorism and organised crime have reported almost one in 11 detectives to the Metropolitan Police’s internal investigators.

A senior officer appears to have spent £40,000 on his Amex card in one year, without authorisation. Items bought by others without permission include suits, women’s clothing and fishing rods.

The scale of the suspected fraud, disclosed in an internal Metropolitan Police Authority report, will send shock waves through the force. Until now, the investigation into expenses fraud was thought to have focused on fewer than 40 officers. It comes days after Sir Paul Stephenson, the Met Commissioner, faced the potentially damaging disclosure that six officers face investigation over claims that a drug suspect’s head was forced into a lavatory that was flushed repeatedly.

Authority members expressed their dismay last night. Jenny Jones, a Green Party member, said: “Taxpayers have every right to be angry about this. Well done to the current auditing team for uncovering this, but what on earth was happening before? Why was there no accountability?

“It beggars belief that our police, who are supposed to be solving crime, are suspected of fraud on a grand scale.”

Records: Billions Withdrawn Before Madoff Arrest

May 13, 2009 by Infinite

About $12 billion was pulled out of accounts at Bernard L. Madoff’s firm in 2008, according to several people briefed on an analysis of Mr. Madoff’s business records.

cnbc.com

About $6 billion, or half, was taken out in just the three months before the financier was arrested in December and charged with operating an extensive Ponzi scheme, these people said.

Those figures offer a bit of hope for Mr. Madoff’s thousands of defrauded customers. Under federal law, the trustee overseeing the Madoff bankruptcy can sue to retrieve that money from the investors who withdrew it.

Indeed, the trustee, Irving H. Picard of Baker & Hostetler, filed two lawsuits on Tuesday seeking the return of a total of $6.1 billion, which he estimated had been withdrawn over the last decade.

BBC: Allen Stanford may have been a US government informer

June 29, 2009May 10, 2009 by Infinite

Sir Allen Stanford denies any wrongdoing at his Antiguan bank

Evidence has emerged that the Texan who bankrolled English cricket may have been a US government informer.

Sir Allen Stanford, who is accused of bank fraud, is the subject of an investigation by the BBC’s Panorama.

Sources told Panorama that if he was a paid anti-drug agency informer, that could explain why a 2006 probe into his financial dealings was quietly dropped.

Sir Allen vigorously denies allegations of financial wrongdoing, despite a massive shortfall in his bank’s assets.

Related information:
– Kucinich: Who Told SEC to “Stand Down” on Stanford Probe?
– US authorities had been investigating Allen Stanford for 15 years! (Times)
– FBI tracks down Texas financier in $8 billion fraud case (AP):
Stanford is not under arrest and is not in custody.
– Past probes sought to tie Stanford to drugs (Houston Chronicle)
– Former Assistant Secretary of Housing: The U.S. is the Global Leader in Illegal Money Laundering

But the British receiver of his failed Stanford International Bank – based in Antigua – told Panorama that the books clearly show the deficit.

Secret documents

Of the $7.2bn (£4.8bn) in deposits claimed by the bank, only $500m (£331m) has been traced.

The UK government does take financial malpractice very seriously and issues regular advice on countries and jurisdictions where there may be serious deficiencies in regulation

Foreign Office spokesman

The $6.7bn (£4.4bn) black hole in Sir Allen’s off-shore bank affects 28,000 depositors – 200 of whom are British, who have collectively lost $80m (£53m) – and raises serious questions for the British Foreign Office and the American authorities.

Secret documents seen by Panorama show both governments knew in 1990 that the Texan was a former bankrupt and his first bank was suspected of involvement with Latin American money-launderers.

U.S.: Life insurer laundered drug money

March 11, 2009 by Infinite

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., March 11 (UPI) — A now-closed Florida insurance company whose executives have been charged with running an investment scam also laundered drug cartel money, authorities allege.

U.S prosecutors in January charged the two top executives, lead attorney and trustee of Mutual Benefits Corp., of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., with organizing an elaborate Ponzi scheme that cheated investors out of nearly $1 billion.

Court documents obtained by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel indicate the executives also are suspected of fraudulently selling life insurance policies on people with fatal diseases to Latin American narcotics traffickers, who allegedly cashed the policies out early as a way to launder the drug money.

Firms defraud government but get new US contracts

February 27, 2009 by Infinite

More information:
– KBR wins Pentagon contract despite criminal probe of deaths
– Halliburton accused of supplying rotten food to U.S. forces
– KBR, Partner in Iraq Contract Sued in Human Trafficking Case
– US Troops in Iraq talk about Halliburton & KBR (Flashback)

U.S. soldiers secure the area next to a damaged U.S. mine resistant, ambush protected vehicle (MRAP), after a roadside bomb explosion during an operation in the area of Al-leg, some 40 miles south of Baghdad, Iraq. The Army is updating its manual for the electronic battlefield — a move aimed at protecting soldiers against roadside bombs and other nontraditional warfare used by increasingly sophisticated insurgents. (AP)

WASHINGTON – Companies that defrauded the United States and jeopardized American lives received new government work despite rulings designed to stop them from receiving federal contracts, government investigators report.

Payments went to a company whose president tried to sell nuclear bomb parts to North Korea, a company that jeopardized lives on the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy, and a seller of body armor that the Air Force said was defective.

The companies were on a government database of 70,000 individuals and businesses suspended or barred by various U.S. agencies from receiving government contract work.

Kucinich: Who Told SEC to “Stand Down” on Stanford Probe?

February 22, 2009 by Infinite

Chairman of Domestic Policy Subcommittee Opens Inquiry

Chairman of the Domestic Policy Subcommittee, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today sent a letter to Ms. Mary Schapiro, Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requesting documents that could reveal which government agency told the SEC to “stand down” rather than take enforcement action against the Stanford Group in October 2006 as has been reported by the New York Times.

Related articles:
– US authorities had been investigating Allen Stanford for 15 years! (Times)
– FBI tracks down Texas financier in $8 billion fraud case (AP):
Stanford is not under arrest and is not in custody.
– Past probes sought to tie Stanford to drugs (Houston Chronicle)

Recent media reports have indicated that the SEC was aware of improprieties at Stanford Financial Group as early as October 2006, but withheld action at the request of another government agency.

In a report published in the February 17th edition of the New York Times, an SEC official said that an inquiry had been opened on Stanford in October of 2006. According to the Times report, an associate regional director of enforcement said the SEC “stood down” on its investigation as a result of the intervention of another federal agency.

Stanford is now the focus of an $8 billion fraud investigation and, presumably, an earlier inquiry would have spared many Stanford investors and triggered similar inquiries into other funds which lacked transparency.

“The SEC’s recent filing against Stanford stemmed from the 2006 SEC inquiry that had been apparently shelved at the request of the unnamed agency. If this is true, we must find out why the SEC delayed enforcement, and if there were other cases where other government agencies intervened to block enforcement,” Chairman Kucinich said.

“If the SEC did indeed begin an inquiry in 2006 and was called off by another agency, our subcommittee will demand that the SEC reveal the name of that agency which told it not to enforce federal laws which protect investors,” said Chairman Kucinich.

US authorities had been investigating Allen Stanford for 15 years!

February 20, 2009 by Infinite

American authorities have been suspicious of Allen Stanford’s financial dealings for 15 years but only accelerated their investigation after the Bernard Madoff fraud was exposed, it was claimed today.

As investigators continued to hunt Mr Stanford and the $50 billion (£35 billion) of assets connected to him, a financial expert said that the Texan had been on “everybody’s radar” for more than a decade.

Related articles:
– FBI tracks down Texas financier in $8 billion fraud case (AP):
Stanford is not under arrest and is not in custody.
– Texas-Sized Fraud Spreads To 131 Countries (CBS News)
– Stanford lies low as clients count cost of fraud (Reuters)

The claim, made by the journalist and author Jeffrey Robinson, came as a link was made for the first time between the cricket impresario and a feared Mexican drugs cartel.

Trustee: No evidence Madoff bought any securities!

February 20, 2009 by Infinite

NEW YORK (AP) — The trustee in charge of untangling the mess left behind by Bernard Madoff told a packed auditorium Friday there was no indication the disgraced money manager had bought securities for his clients for over a decade.

“We have no evidence to indicate securities were purchased for customer accounts” in the past 13 years, said Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee overseeing the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. “This is a case where we’re going to be looking at cash in and cash out” — the definition of a Ponzi scheme.

FBI tracks down Texas financier in $8 billion fraud case

February 20, 2009February 20, 2009 by Infinite

Texas financier Allen Stanford, pictured in 2008, who is alleged to have committed multibillion dollar fraud, has been located in Virginia, the FBI confirmed on Thursday. (AFP/File/Jewel Samad)

WASHINGTON – Texas financier R. Allen Stanford was tracked down Thursday in Virginia, where FBI agents served him with legal papers in a multibillion-dollar fraud case. FBI agents, acting at the request of the Securities and Exchange Commission, served Stanford papers in Fredericksburg, Va., said FBI spokesman Richard Kolko.

Stanford is not under arrest and is not in custody.

Related articles:
– Texas-Sized Fraud Spreads To 131 Countries (CBS News)
– Stanford lies low as clients count cost of fraud (Reuters)
– Stanford scandal ensnares Yankees’ Damon, Nady (FOXSports)

In a civil papers Tuesday, the SEC alleged Stanford and three of his companies committed an $8 billion fraud that lured investors with promises of improbable and unsubstantiated high returns on certificates of deposit and other investments.

Until regulators got help Thursday from the FBI, the SEC had not been able to find Stanford.

A fraud bigger than Madoff

February 16, 2009 by Infinite

Senior US soldiers investigated over missing Iraq reconstruction billions

In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme.

Former Assistant Secretary of Housing: The U.S. is the Global Leader in Illegal Money Laundering

March 16, 2009February 8, 2009 by Infinite

If you want to understand the current crisis, listen to Catherine Austin Fitts.

Catherine Austin Fitts at the IRTA 08 Barter Convention

Added: 09.10.2008
Source: Google Video

Related information:

– Marc Faber: The U.S. is pursuing the Zimbabwe School of Economics

– Bush administration overpaid banks tens of billions of dollars in bailout, watchdog says

– Ron Paul on Glenn Beck: Destruction of the dollar

– Peter Schiff: Stimulus Bill Will Lead to “Unmitigated Disaster”

– Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts On The U.S. Leadership: “They Are Criminals” – The Potential Here Is Far Worse Than The Great Depression

– Congresswoman Kaptur Points Out The Revolving Door Between Wall Street & The White House

– Paul Craig Roberts: Another real estate crisis is about to hit

– Gerald Celente: The Collapse of 2009; The Greatest Depression

Financial Coup d’Etat

March 16, 2009February 6, 2009 by Infinite

In the fall of 2001 I attended a private investment conference in London to give a paper, The Myth of the Rule of Law or How the Money Works: The Destruction of Hamilton Securities Group (PDF).

The presentation documented my experience with a Washington-Wall Street partnership that had:

Engineered a fraudulent housing and debt bubble;
Illegally shifted vast amounts of capital out of the U.S.;
Used “privitization” as form or piracy – a pretext to move government assets to private investors at below-market prices and then shift private liabilities back to government at no cost to the private liability holder.

Other presenters at the conference included distinguished reporters covering privatization in Eastern Europe and Russia. As the portraits of British ancestors stared down upon us, we listened to story after story of global privatization throughout the 1990s in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

Slowly, as the pieces fit together, we shared a horrifying epiphany: the banks, corporations and investors acting in each global region were the exact same players. They were a relatively small group that reappeared again and again in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Asia accompanied by the same well-known accounting firms and law firms.

Clearly, there was a global financial coup d’etat underway.

Markopolos: I gift wrapped and delivered the largest Ponzi scheme in history to the SEC

February 5, 2009 by Infinite

House Hearing On Madoff

Former investment manager Harry Markopolos, who investigated investment adviser Bernard Madoff in the 90’s, testified before the House Financial Services Subcomittee on his experiences with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This is the second in a series of hearings on the Madoff investment scheme.

Source: YouTube

MORE: Here

Madoff whistleblower to slate ‘inept’ SEC regulators

February 4, 2009 by Infinite

The man who repeatedly tried to blow the whistle on Bernard Madoff’s $50bn (£34.7bn) fraud will this morning brand regulators at the US Securities and Exchange Commission as “inept” and “financially illiterate”.

In a damning written testimony prepared for Congress, where he will be appearing before the House financial services committee, Harry Markopolos says he feared for his safety during a nine-year campaign to unmask Mr Madoff, one of Wall Street’s grandees and a former chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange. Mr Madoff confessed in December to running “a giant Ponzi scheme” which faked returns for thousands of investors built over several decades.

Mr Markopolos, a Boston accountant, says he waged the equivalent of a military campaign, using tip-offs and intelligence reports from field officers, to build the case against Mr Madoff, but when he passed his concerns to the SEC he was repeatedly “dismissed and ignored”. He says: “It led me to conclude that the SEC securities lawyers, if only through their ineptitude and financial illiteracy, colluded to maintain large frauds such as the one to which Madoff later confessed.”

Peter Schiff: We are the United States of Madoff (1/14/09)

January 19, 2009January 18, 2009 by Infinite

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Source: YouTube

Fraud scandal: Treasury regulators allowed IndyMac to cook its books

January 18, 2009 by Infinite

Darrel Dochow May Not Be the Only Official Who Helped Banks Hide Financial Problems

Former bank regulator Darrel Dochow evades ABC News’ questions about the Treasury Department Inspector General’s investigation into allegations he allowed IndyMac to cook its books when he worked at the Office of Thrift Supervision. (ABC News)

A brewing fraud scandal at the Treasury Department may be worse than officials originally thought.

Investigators probing how Treasury regulators allowed a bank to falsify financial records hiding its ill health have found at least three other instances of similar apparent fraud, sources tell ABC News.

In at least one instance, investigators say, banking regulators actually approached the bank with the suggestion of falsifying deposit dates to satisfy banking rules — even if it disguised the bank’s health to the public.

Treasury Department Inspector General Eric Thorson announced in November his office would probe how a Savings and Loan overseer allowed the IndyMac bank to essentially cook its books, making it appear in government filings that the bank had more deposits than it really did. But Thorson’s aides now say IndyMac wasn’t the only institution to get such cozy assistance from the official who should have been the cop on the beat.

The federal government took over IndyMac in July, after the bank’s stock price plummeted to just pennies a share when it was revealed the bank had financial troubles due to defaulted mortgages and subprime loans, costing taxpayers over $9 billion.

Florida money manager, hundreds of millions, missing: police

January 17, 2009 by Infinite

MIAMI (Reuters) – A Florida money manager is missing and police have opened an investigation into the possible disappearance of “hundreds of millions” of dollars, authorities said on Friday.

Police are searching for Arthur Nadel, 75, a prominent Sarasota philanthropist and fund manager who was reported missing by his family on Wednesday.

See also:
Sarasota Fund Manager, Possibly $350 Million, Gone (Sarasota Herald-Tribune)

Sarasota police are investigating complaints from at least five investors in Nadel’s funds, run from a management office in Sarasota, that their money has disappeared. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported investors could be out as much as $350 million.

“It was brought to our attention that there has been a very significant number of victims with a very significant amount of money that has disappeared,” Sarasota Police Capt. Bill Spitler said. “Allegedly it’s hundreds of millions of dollars.”