Catch of the Week: SCANA to pay $137.5 Million in Fines & Disgorgement Following Failure of Nuclear Plant Construction; Executives Face Jail Time
Posted 12/4/20
In 2017, the publicly-traded company SCANA Corp. (now Dominion Energy) announced that it was abandoning its plans to expand South Carolina’s Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Station. A settlement reached this week resolves claims of fraud by SCANA in the project. For years, SCANA had publicly claimed it was making progress on the construction and would complete it in time to qualify for $1.4 billion in federal...
COVID Frauds of the Week: Fraudulently Claiming PPP Loans
Posted 10/2/20
This week, DOJ took action against two large alleged frauds on the Paycheck Protection Program. In Hawaii and North Carolina, individuals were charged with fraudulently claiming loans from the critical relief program.
In North Carolina, Tristan Pan found himself charged with wire and bank fraud, plus unlawful monetary transactions, for an alleged scheme to get bogus PPP loans. He allegedly cooked up a series of...
COVID-19 Frauds of the Week: Fake Employees and Fake Treatments
Posted 07/17/20
Taxpayers, rightfully upset about large companies such as Shake Shack and Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse claiming large sums of Paycheck Protection Program money from the Small Business Administration, should consider shifting some of their ire to applicants posing as the original intended recipients—small businesses—who are getting in on the grift. And for fraudsters who prefer to market unproven products rather than...
DOJ Charges Healthcare CEO with Criminal Securities and Healthcare Fraud
Posted 06/12/20
In 2008, Rahm Emanuel, then-President Obama’s chief of staff, famously said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. I mean, it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” However poorly phrased, generations of political and business leaders have understood the kernel of truth in his admonition.
So have scammers and rip-off artists.
We have been following the...
2019 was another busy year for the SEC and CFTC. Once again, the SEC netted hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties and fines from companies and individuals accused of defrauding investors, breaching fiduciary duties, and violating the securities laws. And that’s in addition to the SEC’s robust FCPA enforcement in 2019. Meanwhile, the CFTC continued to root out market manipulators and other fraudsters...
Catch of the Week — Yukom Communications and Others Face CFTC Claims of Binary Options Fraud
Posted 08/16/19
The Commodity Futures Trading Commissionfiled suit against five entities and four individuals on August 12, 2019, in the Northern District of Illinois for running a $103 million fraudulent binary options scheme. The defendants, led by Israeli company Yukom Communications Ltd.,which marketed binary options using two websites known as BinaryBook and BigOption.
In recent years, the CFTC has targeted fraudulent binary...
Top Ten Federal Financial Fraud Recoveries of 2018
Posted 01/25/19
While 2018 has been a banner year for FCPA, Tax, and SEC & CFTC recoveries, in the bottomless pit of financial frauds that hurt taxpayers, the government, consumers, investors, and the American economy, 2018 brought us additional stunning recoveries for violations related to residential-mortgage backed securities, international economic sanctions, consumer protection, anti-money-laundering, EB-5 investment fraud, and...
Healthcare Company Executives Charged with Massive Investor Fraud
Posted 05/17/18
By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team
The former CEO, CFO, and Director of a publicly traded healthcare services company have been charged with defrauding investors out of over $200m in connection with a merger designed to convert the company into a private entity.
All three men were charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud and securities fraud. One of the men has already been arrested.
According to the...
Former Autonomy executive convicted of fraud over role in $10.3bn takeover by Hewlett Packard
Posted 05/2/18
By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team
Sushovan Hussain, the former CFO of the British software firm Autonomy, has been convicted of wire and securities fraud in connection with Hewlett Packard’s (HP) 2011 acquisition of the firm. Hussain stood accused of artificially inflating Autonomy’s valuation, leading HP to buy the company for $10.3 billion. Soon after the acquisition, HP discovered serious accounting...
Founders of Celebrity-Backed Cryptocurrency Charged with Fraud
Posted 04/3/18
By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team
Two founders of Centra Tech, a cryptocurrency firm that was endorsed by Floyd Mayweather, have been charged with carrying out a fraudulent $32 million initial coin (“ICO”) offering by the SEC. The co-founders of Centra, Sohrab Sharma and Robert Farkas, claimed to offer a debit card backed by Visa and Mastercard that allow people to convert cryptocurrency to U.S. dollars to...