Wednesday June 28, 2017
For several years I have started a Who's the Worst list of Fraudsters. Last year I began in the summer and ran to January of 2017.
Each Fall I begin a Who's the Worst list of fraudsters.This is preparation for the Accounting Ethics 5308 class taught in the spring. One particular case has already caught my eye so let's get underway.
April 30, 2010
Interestingly I never run out of new material. And there have been so many in subsequent I had to created individual categories.
So let's get started
SPORTS
TIm Duncan testifies about millions lost by Financial Adviser Charles Banks.
Banks wisely plead guilty rather than face a San Antonio jury. Banks defrauded San Antonio Spurs beloved Tim Duncan out of most of his $24 million as alleged by Duncan. Banks admits to $6 million. One can easily imagine any San Antonio jury throwing the proverbial book at Banks. How could Banks think he could get away with defrauding San Antonio's most beloved sports figure?
Baylor loses to Liberty and then UTSA
Our 2016 Who's the Worst featured the sad story of Baylor Fotball player attacks on women being ignored by the former Coach. Baylor has been sued, fined, and sullied as a result. Now there is a new Coach but things are not off to a good start, The Bears are 0-2 against Liberty and UTSA.
FINANCE
Three Men Arrested in San Antonio Mortgage Fraud
The charges allege they all operated a “second chance” financing business under the name of T.G. and Wealth, Infinite Properties and Me in 3D, focusing on individuals who were financially unable to apply for traditional home financing.
The men allegedly offered the individuals financing at a rate of 8.5 percent interest on the principle for a 20-year-term if they could afford a 10 percent down payment on the house of their choice.
Gomez, Rodriguez and Ramos allegedly conducted business in the area of San Antonio by recruiting realtors to funnel prospective home buyers to Infinite Properties.
Ex Barclays CEO Appears in Court.
Wells Fargo May Have Charged 500,000 Clients for Unwanted Insurance.
Wells Fargo May Have Charged 500,000 Clients for Unwanted Insurance
Wells Fargo & Co.’s disclosure that it may have pushed thousands of car buyers into loan defaults and repossessions by charging them for unwanted insurance is raising doubts about the bank’s ability to put proper controls in place.
“The steady drip of revelations is concerning as it makes quantifying and qualifying the extent of the internal control failures difficult,” Isaac Boltansky, an analyst at Compass Point Research & Trading, said Friday in an email. “Which is worrisome for both Washington and Wall Street."
PwC found guilty in Colonail Bank Audit
PwC failed to uncover a $2 Billion Fraud Scheme
The lawsuit concerns a fraud scheme centering on Taylor Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp., once one of the nation’s biggest mortgage companies. Taylor Bean was a major customer of Colonial’s. and authorities have said Taylor Bean overdrew its Colonial account for years to cover its own cash shortfalls. The mortgage firm covered that up by, among other things, selling Colonial thousands of mortgages it had already sold to other investors, according to authorities.
More big firmwoes and the CPA Exam
HEALTH CARE FRAUD
Health Care Fraud is so prevalent that the FBI has a Medicare Fraud Strike Force
The frauds typically involve false invoices for services never performed. This can require obtaining the Health Care Credentials of individuals for an insurance fraud.
The largest fraud ever was announced July 14, 2017
SAVANNAH, GA: On Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Secretary Tom Price, M.D., announced the largest ever health care fraud enforcement action by the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, involving 412 charged defendants across 41 federal districts, including 115 doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professionals, for their alleged participation in health care fraud schemes involving approximately $1.3 billion in false billings. Of those charged, over 120 defendants, including doctors, were charged for their roles in prescribing and distributing opioids and other dangerous narcotics.
Senator Bob Menendez Trial has it all!
Yep, this one reads like an Ian Fleming Bond novel. Those novels typically featured an international bad guy with all sort of nefarious schemes and plenty of money to finance them. Consider this excerpt
Menendez is facing charges that he sold his US Senate office to a Palm Beach, Fla., eye doctor, his co-defendant Salomon Melgen, for bribes in the form of private jets stocked with Menendez’s favorite beverages, a private villa at one of the lushest resorts in the Caribbean, and a Paris hotel suite for which Melgen spent 650,000 American Express points.
The two men met in 1993 when Melgen contributed $500 to Menendez’s first House re-election campaign at a South Florida fundraiser — his first political contribution. In the decades since, Melgen became a major high-dollar Democratic donor, and when Menendez was appointed to the Senate in 2006, they already had an extraordinarily close relationship.
That relationship allowed Menendez to enjoy a lifestyle far beyond his legitimate income of $174,000. It was a life of luxury funded by one of the largest Medicare frauds in history, a $105 million scheme for which Melgen has already been convicted on 67 counts of fraud in a separate federal trial in Florida.
GOVERNMENT
A Federal Jury convicted the former city manager and maor of Crystal City for bribery.
Crystal City finances are now a shambles thanks to over spending by the former officials.
Yankel Rosenthal plead guilty to money laundering.
I guess you could say, it's all in the family, see excerpt below.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A former member of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez' cabinet pleaded guilty in a New York federal court on Tuesday to attempting to launder drug money from the Central American country, prosecutors said.
Yankel Rosenthal, who served as minister of investment under Hernandez, entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni in Manhattan, prosecutors said.
Rosenthal, 48, was charged in October 2015 along with his father, Jaime Rosenthal, a former vice president of Honduras.
His cousin, Yani Rosenthal, a veteran politician and two-time presidential candidate, was also charged in the laundering scheme along with Andres Acosta Garcia, a lawyer with the family's Grupo Continental conglomerate.
The CEO of San Antonio Centro is resigning after discovery of an apparent $175,000 theft.
More on DiGiovanni
Carlos Uresti trial postponed until January, another ponzi scheme
San Antonio Tri Centennial CEO Resigns over conflict of interest just as celebration set to begin
Did you hear who is headlining as a singer-Pat Benatar, really?
Professor Elam 
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