Bits and Pieces
In courts now HSBC Holdings PLC: executive charged with front running a $3.4 Billion Forex deal.
Barclays PLC exec used chat rooms with competitors to manipulate the market.
Futures traders charged for claiming to deal in precious metals when in fact they dealt in derivatives contracts.
SEC said city of Miami and its former budget director played a $38 million “shell game” with bond investors and lied to the public with fund transfers.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission targeted California wasteto-construction company Enviro Board Corp. and its co-founders with a fraud suit Friday, alleging they raised $6 million from investors in recent years by lying about the prospects of a company with no revenue.
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP has reached a midtrial settlement of claims brought by the trustee for Taylor Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp. that the accounting giant allegedly made possible a $5.5 billion fraud at the bankrupt mortgage lender, an attorney for the trustee said Friday.
North Carolina prosecutors indicted three men who allegedly swindled more than $2.5 million from 140 investors in compressed natural gas technology many of them elderly.
Broker Beware:
FINRA filed a complaint against a broker who was registered with Bay Mutual Financial LLC when he allegedly caused four retirees to lose money by recommending that they invest heavily in certain gold and energy stocks.
Auditors beware:
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission banned a former partner at accounting firm Crowe Horwath LLP from auditing public companies on Monday for his failure to catch an alleged accounting fraud that sent OCZ Technology Group Inc. into bankruptcy.
Third Avenue Trust junk bond fund opened another class action attack in Delaware’s Chancery Court on Monday, seeking damages for themselves and on behalf of a massively failed fund. United Development Funding III investors claiming damages from a “Ponzi-like” scheme involving real estate trusts and insider deals topping $1 billion.
Keryx Biopharmaceuticals Inc. hid major problems with the supply chain for a new kidney disease treatment, leading to a 36 percent stock drop after production was delayed, shareholders alleged Friday in Massachusetts federal court.
Pays to be a Whistleblower (Sometimes):
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission granted a $22.4 million award to a former Monsanto Co. executive for reporting alleged accounting fraud around the agribusiness giant’s Roundup weed killer, a lawyer for the whistleblower said on Tuesday. Monsanto settled the case for over $80 million, it is reported.
Church Theft?
Mark Northrop from Fort Myers-based investment advisory firm Kingdom Legacy General Partner LLC apparently defrauded innocent investors — whom he solicited for investments at church and used undisclosed fees to steal $3 million from 40 investors. Case pending, but Dante’s waiting.
Dante’s Heat Index: 7
Investment Risk:
Sue and Lose Broker Steven S. Novick filed a wide-ranging appeal Tuesday in his failed attempt to take up to $20 million in contractual damages from two AXA units at trial in a case that has left the Connecticut money man on the hook for $1.6 million — money he borrowed from the financial giant and did not repay — as well as potentially $263,000 in legal fees.