Leslie John Hamilton was sentenced to 30 years in prison for masterminding a pyramid scheme that he claimed was an investment in rare coins. The scheme involved over 300 victims, who lost more than $10 million. Hamilton was convicted by […]
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced today that over 28,000 home mortgages were approved and federally insured with forged underwriting approvals by lender ABN AMRO Mortgage Group of Ann Arbor, Michgan. From 2000 to 2003, ABN […]
Last week the Wisconsin Law Journal published an article I wrote about the fraud at Milwaukee-area home builder Bielinski Brothers Inc. The company’s CEO, Robert Brownell, was the mastermind of a fraud that cost the company an estimated $12 million. […]
The Milwaukee office of PriceWaterhouseCoopers has settled a lawsuit over its audits of two collapsed Heartland Advisors Inc. mutual funds for $8.25 million. A judge will still have to approve the settlement, and that is not expected to happen before […]
The unregulated broker-dealer unit of Refco Inc., Refco Capital Markets Ltd, says it owes customers about $4.16 billion. This is $486 million more than previously estimated by the parent company. Refco Inc. has filed for bankruptcy protection, and in those […]
The New Yorker recently printed a commentary on Sarbanes-Oxley. While the legislation was viewed by politicians as an important step toward protecting investors from fraud, corporate executives aren’t so impressed. Corporate executives believe that the high cost of implementing the […]
Written by Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, CFF Fraud Magazine – January/February 2006 Hurricane Katrina altered lives forever. Thousands of displaced survivors have lost their jobs as businesses struggle to survive. However, other opportunistic firms shamelessly have taken advantage of the […]
Testing of airport screeners, using images of guns and banned objects during the airport X-ray of bags, had some interesting results. When using a library of 250 images, the performance of the screeners (how often they detected the items) went […]
49 people have been indicted for participating in a scheme that defrauded the Red Cross out of hundreds of thousands of dollars earmarked for Katrina victims. 17 of the people worked at a Red Cross claim center in Bakersfield, CA. […]
Gary Linsey Slater of Harrogate, Tennesee was sentenced to nine years in prison for committing mail fraud and money laundering. Slater owned a company that leased employees to coal mining companies. He conspired to hide the number of employees employed […]
