Fifty-two lawyers have written a letter in support of David Becker, the former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) General Counsel who appeared before a joint congressional hearing last week to defend his role advising the SEC on compensating Madoff victims. Read more on POGO [...]
|
||||
|
Three hedge funds run by New York financier and philanthropist Ezra Merkin won dismissal of civil lawsuits accusing them of being part of swindler Bernard Madoff’s massive fraud. In an order dated Friday and made public on Monday, U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts in Manhattan threw out 2008 lawsuits alleging fraud and misrepresentation by the Ascot Fund, the Gabriel Fund and the Ariel Fund. Another defendant was BDO Seidman LLP, the auditor of the Ascot Fund. Read Chicago Tribune article [...] A judge has thrown out several lawsuits by investors who blame hedge funds for failing to detect Bernard Madoff’s massive fraud, saying the one-time Nasdaq chairman “cleverly leveraged his considerable reputation” to dupe even the most sophisticated financial entities, including regulators and Wall Street banks. Read more in the Wall Street Journal here. [...] A key question in the Full Tilt case: how did the company get to the point of paying out winnings to customers when it wasn’t collecting money from them in the first place? The answer has its roots in previous government actions that crippled online poker sites’ ability to accept money from players in the U.S. Those difficulties are at the core of new allegations the government made against the company last week, part of a campaign to stop online poker in the U.S., which the government says is illegal. The online-poker industry argues that it isn’t illegal because federal gambling laws aren’t clear and because poker is a game of skill, and not chance. Read Wall Street Journal article [...] U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who lost millions of dollars in political donations to what the FBI has labeled embezzlement, on Friday sued the campaign treasurer she says stole the money — and the bank she contends should have noticed the theft. Read Reuters report [...] In good times and in bad times – the buck stops at the top and in an era where the entire world suffers from economic recession and lack of faith in institutions, Oswald Gruebel, CEO of UBS was a necessary sacrificial lamb and rightfully resigned Saturday. He stood up and took blame for the $2.3 billion loss which a rogue trader has confessed to losing. Read more on Business Insider [...] Hundreds of investors victimized in an alleged Spokane-based Ponzi scheme are now being sued by bankruptcy officials attempting to unravel the complicated case of Little Loan Shoppe. Some investors call it a “salt-in-the-wound” effort to wring money from those who were scammed out of their savings. Read more on the Spokesman Review [...] American Securities Management LP, a business partner of the owners of the New York Mets, was targeted in a revised lawsuit by the liquidator of Bernard Madoff’s firm demanding $91.9 million that allegedly was taken out of the con man’s firm since January 2000. After meeting Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, owners of Major League Baseball’s Mets, the company, formerly known as American Securities LP, joined with the Mets owners’ Sterling Equities Inc. in 1991 to create a $4.5 billion-asset real-estate investment company, Sterling American Property Inc., according to Madoff trustee Irving Picard. Madoff was among the investors, Picard said in a bankruptcy court filing yesterday in Manhattan. Read more on Bloomberg Businessweek [...] U.S. District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff is expected to issue a ruling as soon as Monday on whether to toss all or part of a $1 billion lawsuit against New York Mets owners, according to two people familiar with the case. Read ESPN New York report [...] Broker-dealers and registered reps shouldn’t always fear litigating against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) as new research from the law firm Sutherland Asbill & Brennan shows it sometimes pays to “swing for the fences” rather than settle. Read more on AdvisorOne [...] |
||||
|
Contact us by phone at (631) 425-0770, fax at (631) 421-5701 or by email at admin@investoraction.org
|
||||