Category: Financial Crime

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 of its quality, business process and IT management department. “Today we are proud to announce that we have broken through…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

An indictment was unsealed today charging Terren S. Peizer, the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ontrak Inc., a publicly traded health care company, for allegedly engaging in an insider trading scheme in which he fraudulently used Rule 10b5-1 trading plans to trade Ontrak stock. “Mr. Peizer is accused of using his insider knowledge as CEO of a publicly traded company to line his own pockets in violation of his duty to his company and its shareholders,” said U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada for the Central District of California. “Mr. Peizer allegedly exploited material nonpublic information and tried to shield himself with a rule designed to ensure a fair and level playing field for all investors. With this indictment, we again affirm that the law applies equally to all and that corporate executives who unlawfully denigrate the integrity of our financial markets will be held accountable.”

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court Tuesday to charges that he cheated investors and looted customer deposits on his cryptocurrency trading platform as a judge set a tentative trial date for October. Bankman-Fried, 30, denied charges accusing him of illegally diverting massive sums of customer money from FTX to make lavish real estate purchases, donate money to politicians and make risky trades at Alameda Research, his cryptocurrency hedge fund trading firm. Bankman-Fried’s attorney, Mark Cohen,…