A Mississippi trader pleaded guilty to commodities fraud Tuesday after running up more than $141 million in losses by shorting wheat futures contracts on the Chicago Board of Trade in 2008. Evan Dooley, 44, of Olive Branch, Miss., entered his guilty plea in federal court in Chicago. He worked in the Memphis office of the now-defunct commodities brokerage MF Global Inc. Dooley faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago. He is scheduled to be sentenced on March 8. More in the Chicago Tribune [...]
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Four years ago today, news of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme shocked the world. The fallout from the revelation was massive. Within months, Madoff pleaded guilty to orchestrating the largest fraud in Wall Street’s history for which he received a 150-year sentence. Critics skewered the Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to uncover the scheme despite a number of red flags while pundits wondered how one of Wall Street’s most respected money managers with an elite clientele managed to perpetrate the Ponzi scheme for so many years. Read more in Forbes [...] NEW YORK, Dec 11 (Reuters) – Members of a family that invested in Bernard Madoff’s multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme can only file insurance claims for the actual losses they suffered, not the losses shown on Madoff’s fraudulent account statements, a New York state appeals court ruled Tuesday. Jacobson Family Investments and a number of related corporate entities sued the insurers in 2010 after Madoff’s scheme collapsed, seeking to collect up to $50 million in coverage from a primary policy from National Union Fire Insurance Company and from excess coverage policies from several other insurers. More on Reuters [...] Four years ago, Suzanne Webel was looking forward to retirement. The Longmont, Colo., farmer had saved enough money to cover herself when she stopped working and help pay for her two children’s college education. She had never heard the name Bernard L. Madoff. Now, the 62-year-old Ms. Webel can’t afford fertilizer for her 80-acre farm, a necessity in the arid Colorado soil. The money she set aside for her kids is gone. And the name Madoff has become all too familiar. When Mr. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was disclosed, the money she thought she saved over the years disappeared. “Our kids are now deep in debt,” Ms. Webel said. “We couldn’t afford to pay their bills, so they had to take out huge loans, and they will have to be saddled with that for 40 years. And our retirement funds are gone.” More in the Wall Street Journal [...] KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — The tiny Caribbean nation of Antigua & Barbuda intends to pursue retaliatory sanctions against U.S. commercial services and intellectual property as part of its David vs. Goliath trade battle with the United States, the islands’ finance minister announced Sunday. Antigua Finance Minister Harold Lovell told The Associated Press that the tiny country of less than 90,000 people has tried unsuccessfully for years to negotiate a “fair settlement” with the U.S. It accuses its neighbor to the north of hobbling its fragile economy by banning Americans from placing online bets with gambling operators, including licensed online casinos based in the twin-island nation. More in Bloomberg Businessweek [...] In 2008, Elie Wiesel — bestselling author, teacher, human rights activist, Nobel-prize winner and Holocaust survivor — received a midnight phone call that turned out to be (as Oprah calls it in this video), a “stunning experience.” It was his son on the phone, calling to tell him that financier Bernie Madoff was in jail. Professor Wiesel subsequently learned that he had lost his entire life savings, as well as $15 million from the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity — the foundation that he and his wife had worked on for more than 40 years. During her interview for “Super Soul Sunday,” Oprah asks Professor Wiesel, “What was the first thing you did [after you received the news]?” THIS is the time of year when most people think of gifts and holiday gatherings. I couldn’t help thinking of frauds past. Four years ago this week, Marc S. Dreier, a high-flying lawyer, was arrested and later charged with defrauding his clients of $700 million. A few days later, Bernard L. Madoff’s fraud was uncovered. Totaling an estimated $65 billion, Mr. Madoff’s fraud was in a class by itself. And then, a short time afterward, some of the brokers who had been selling fraudulent certificates of deposit for R. Allen Stanford began to turn on him; he was arrested in February 2009 and later convicted of a $7 billion fraud. These schemes collapsed with the economy in 2008. But on their anniversaries, it may be a good time to ask whether you have done all you can to lower your risk of being caught up in a similar fraud. Call it Madoff Day (celebrated on Dec. 11, the day of his arrest). Read New York Times report [...] Two former clients of Bernard Madoff urged an appeals court to revive their claims against the estate of a Florida businessman who had been one of the money manager’s biggest clients, in a battle with a trustee over recoveries from the Ponzi scheme. The case before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan centered on the authority of trustee Irving Picard, who is liquidating Madoff’s firm, to reach settlements that let victims recover some of their money. At a hearing on Thursday, lawyers for Adele Fox and Susan Marshall asked the 2nd Circuit to undo an injunction that blocked them from going ahead with their own claims against the estate of Jeffry Picower. The trustee’s $7.2 billion settlement with Picower’s estate in 2010 is the largest for victims of Madoff’s fraud. Read more in the Chicago Tribune [...] Ponzi schemer R. Allen Stanford’s Antiguan liquidators have agreed to cooperate with his U.S. receiver and federal prosecutors to jointly control the convicted financier’s remaining assets, the liquidators said. The receiver and liquidators have battled for control of Stanford’s assets since U.S. regulators seized his companies in February 2009. The agreement announced Thursday by liquidators Hugh Dickson and Marcus Wide, and independently confirmed by Kevin Sadler, a lawyer for the court-appointed U.S. receiver, clears one of the last obstacles to compensating victims of Stanford’s investment scheme. The parties “reached an agreement in principle that, if finalized and approved by the relevant authorities,” would result in coordination of victim claims, increased information sharing and cooperation on asset recovery, Wide and Dickson said in an e-mailed statement. More in the Star Telegram [...] A civil suit by 86 defrauded investors was certified by a Baton Rouge judge Wednesday as a class action against Louisiana’s regulator of financial institutions and a Pennsylvania company that compiled customer financial statements on behalf of convicted swindler Robert Allen Stanford. The ruling by state District Judge R. Michael Caldwell could open the door for some 1,000 investors damaged by Stanford’s fraudulent $7.2 billion scheme to join the suit. Those people now have the option to join the original plaintiffs in seeking judgments against the Louisiana Office of Financial Institutions, or OFI, and the financial services firm of SEI Investments Co. If investors win that suit, OFI and SEI could share liability for as much as $1 billion in losses in Louisiana, according to estimates by their attorneys. More in The Advocate [...] |
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