By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team
This week's Department of Justice "Catch of the Week" goes to Morgan Stanley. Yesterday, the company agreed to pay a $2.6 billion penalty "for misleading investors about the subprime mortgage loans underlying the securities it sold" in the period leading up to the financial crisis. As part of the agreement, Morgan Stanley admitted that it failed to disclose critical...
Only a day after the SEC announced that agro-giant Monsanto would pay an $80 million penalty to settle charges of accounting improprieties in connection with sales of its flagship product Roundup, attorney Stuart Meissner has said that he represents the whistleblower who brought the matter to the SEC’s attention. If true, under the rules governing the SEC’s whistleblower program, Mr. Meissner’s client...
By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team
This State Enforcement Spotlight features HSBC. On Friday, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced a $470 million joint state-federal settlement with mortgage lender and servicer HSBC to address mortgage origination, servicing, and foreclosure abuses. The terms will prevent past foreclosure abuses, such as robo-signing, improper documentation and lost paperwork. See NY AG...
By Tim McCormack and Molly Knobler (published in the Huffington Post)
Eros International, the so-called Netflix of Bollywood, is deep in the throes of either an Enron-type accounting scandal or a vicious smear campaign by an anonymous source intent on driving its stock price down (perhaps to profit from manipulating the share price). The anonymous source, a blogger known as Alpha Exposure, has published a series...
By Tim McCormack
On January 22, 2016, the Virginia Attorney General announced that the Commonwealth had settled a suit brought under the Virginia False Claims Act (FCA) (formally known as the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act) against 11 banks for misrepresentations made in connection with the sale of residential mortgage-backed securities to the Commonwealth and the Virginia Retirement System (VRS). The...
On Friday, January 15th, the SEC made an award of more than $700,000 to a whistleblower the agency described as a “company outsider who conducted a detailed analysis that led to a successful SEC enforcement action.”
The SEC’s whistleblower program explicitly provides for financial rewards to company outsiders by allowing “independent analysis” — even when based on publicly available information — to...
By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team
Here is our look-back at the top-10 Department of Justice mortgage fraud settlements in 2015.
10. WALTER INVESTMENT -- Walter Investment Management Corp. agreed to pay $29.6 million to resolve allegations that, through its subsidiaries, Reverse Mortgage Solution, REO Management Solutions and RMS Asset Management Solutions, it violated the False Claims Act in...
By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team
Here is our look-back at the top-10 prison sentences secured by the Department of Justice for healthcare, financial and other types of fraud in 2015.
10. CHRISTOPHER CIAMPA -- The U.S. Army soldier stationed in Afghanistan was sentenced to 10 years for submitting fake Transportation Movement Requests (TMRs) for thousands of gallons of fuel that were neither...