Category: Financial Crime
Curious Case Of Hunter Biden’s Maltese Bank Account
Emails from the Biden laptop shed light on Burisma’s opening of a Maltese bank account for Hunter Biden in the spring of 2016. This newly discovered development coincides with the allegations made by an FBI source, suggesting that Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma Holdings, allegedly paid a $5 million bribe each to then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son,…
CEO guilty of selling counterfeit Cisco devices to military, govt orgs
A Florida man has pleaded guilty to importing and selling counterfeit Cisco networking equipment to various organizations, including education, government agencies, healthcare, and the military. The 39-year-old resident of Florida, Onur Aksoy, conducted the scheme through 19 companies formed in New Jersey and Florida and in several online storefronts, collectively known as ‘Pro Network Entities,’ Aksoy had a criminal complaint…
Treasury ‘sleeping at the wheel’ on PwC tax scandal
Treasury officials have been accused of being asleep at the wheel on breaches of confidential government information. Officials were grilled on their knowledge of potential breaches of confidential Treasury data by former PwC partner Peter Collins, who has been referred to federal police to investigate the allegations. Greens senator Barbara Pocock hit out at Treasury’s decision to sign new confidentiality…
US sues Binance and founder Zhao over ‘web of deception’
WASHINGTON – US regulators sued Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao on Monday for allegedly operating a “web of deception,” piling further pressure on the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange and sending bitcoin to its lowest in almost three months. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint, filed in a federal court in Washington, DC, listed 13 charges against Binance, Zhao…
Jury Convicts Former Aequitas CEO and Company Executives for Roles in $300 Million Fraud Conspiracy
PORTLAND, Ore.—After a six-week trial in Portland, a federal jury found three former executives of Aequitas Management, LLC, and associated companies, guilty today for their roles in a vast fraud conspiracy. Evidence at trial showed the conspirators raised nearly $300 million from defrauded investors. Robert J. Jesenik, 63, former chief executive officer of Aequitas and resident of Lake Oswego, Oregon;…
JPMorgan Faces Reckoning for Long Ties With Jeffrey Epstein
Jeffrey Epstein was many things: a sexual predator, a friend to the rich and powerful and, for many years, a lucrative customer of the nation’s largest bank. Now the bank, JPMorgan Chase, faces a reckoning for its nearly 15-year relationship with the disgraced financier, one that could cost it a big payout in two civil lawsuits that claim the bank…
PwC faces its Enron moment: Confidentiality breaches, possible conspiracy to defraud
When then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull called for heads to roll after the 2016 census was pulled offline – amid fears IBM’s data servers hosting the survey had been infiltrated – the American enterprise technology giant made an important decision. IBM ran most of the big mainframe systems that had powered core government functions for several decades, earning it billions of…
Wells Fargo to Pay $1 Billion to Settle Pension-Led Lawsuit
Wells Fargo has agreed to pay $1 billion to settle a pension fund-led lawsuit that accused the bank of defrauding shareholders by misleading them over the progress it was making to rectify a slew of scandals. The Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi, the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Pension & Relief Fund and the state of Rhode Island were among the lead…
IRS reportedly pulled ‘entire investigative team’ from Hunter Biden tax fraud probe at behest of DOJ
In October, reports indicated that the FBI believed it had enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with tax crimes. The Justice Department reportedly ordered the team’s removal, according to the New York Post. An IRS criminal supervisory special agent came forward to Congress in April seeking whistleblower protection to share with lawmakers information that allegedly showed the investigation into potential…
‘We have survived’: China’s Huawei goes local in response to US sanctions
In Huawei’s head office last month, staff gathered to celebrate the in-house development of software to replace a US system that, thanks to Washington’s export controls, the Chinese technology company was no longer able to purchase. “Three years ago, we were cut off from the old ERP [enterprise resource planning] system,” said Tao Jingwen, a Huawei board member and president…
Ex-Goldman banker Roger Ng gets delay in starting his prison term
Former Goldman Sachs Group banker Roger Ng won postponement of the start of his 10-year prison term for about three months until Aug 7, a federal judge ruled.
US District Judge Margo Brodie, who sentenced Ng in March for his role in the global 1MDB fraud, granted his request for a delay Monday without explanation.
Ng had been set to begin his prison term May 4.
Defence lawyer Marc Agnifilo on Friday asked for the delay so Ng could spend more time with his wife and 10-year-old daughter, who had travelled to New York from Malaysia.
Harvard’s former chemistry head Charles Lieber avoids prison over undisclosed links to China
More than three years after his arrest, Charles Lieber, the former chair of Harvard University’s chemistry department, has avoided prison for failing to disclose funding from China. For hiding his affiliation with a Chinese university, as well as income tax and foreign bank account reporting violations, Lieber was sentenced yesterday to time served, two years of supervised release with six…
Elizabeth Holmes delays going to prison with another appeal
Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has avoided starting her more than 11-year prison sentence on Thursday by deploying the same legal maneuver that enabled her co-conspirator in a blood-testing hoax to remain free for an additional month.
Holmes’ lawyers on Wednesday informed U.S. District Judge Edward Davila that she won’t be reporting to prison as scheduled because she had filed an appeal of a decision that he issued earlier this month ordering her to begin her sentence on April 27.
The appeal, filed with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals late Tuesday, automatically delays her reporting date because she has been free on bail since a jury convicted her on four counts of fraud and conspiracy in January 2022. The verdict followed a four-month trial revolving around her downfall from a rising Silicon Valley star to an alleged scam artist chasing fame and fortune while fleecing investors and endangering the health of patients relying on Theranos’ flawed blood tests.
The tactic deployed by Holmes mirrored a move made last month by her former lover and subordinate, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, to avoid a prison reporting date of March 16. After the Ninth Circuit rejected his appeal three weeks later, Davila set a new reporting date of April 20.
Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes loses bid to stay out of prison
Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has been rebuffed in her attempt to stay out of federal prison while she appeals her conviction for the fraud she committed while overseeing a blood-testing scam.
No separate trial for former JPMorgan executive in Epstein case
A U.S. judge rejected requests to sever JPMorgan Chase & Co’s lawsuit accusing former executive Jes Staley of concealing what he knew about Jeffrey Epstein from two related lawsuits over its work for the late sex offender.
Monday’s decision by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan is a defeat for Staley, who said the scheduled Oct. 23 trial for all three cases left him too little time to defend against JPMorgan’s “slanderous” accusations.
It is also a defeat for women who claim that Epstein sexually abused them and are suing the largest U.S. bank.
They claimed that JPMorgan sued Staley as a means to “harass and intimidate” them into revealing private medical records and communications in their case.
Epstein was a JPMorgan client from 2000 to 2013. The U.S. Virgin Islands, where the financier had a home, is also suing JPMorgan.
Wells Fargo fined for sanctions breach
The American bank Wells Fargo has been fined $97.8m (£79m) by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department for breaching US sanctions laws. Inadequate oversight meant that it allowed a foreign institution to process $532m in illegal transactions involving Iran, Syria and Sudan. Wells Fargo said it stopped dealing with the client in 2015.