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Listed by Forbes as number 559 of the worlds richest people, Raj Rajaratnam was worth $1.3 billion. Sadly, some of those funds may have been ill-begotten. Yesterday the US Attorneys of the Southern District of New York charged Rajaratnam with securities fraud pursuant to the insider trading portions statutes 15 U.S.C. §§ 78j(b), 78ff; 17 C.F.R. §§ 240.10b-5, and 240.10b5-2. AllegedlyRajaratnam obtained inside information from another hedge fund operator, and traded upon it, making several...

  Michael Palermo, 50, a 16 year veteran of the New York and New Jersey Port Authority Police Department (PAPD) and an 11 year FBI task force officer investigating violent crimes was arrested on charges of mail fraud. According to the FBI, Palermo had received a number of personal services from a cooperating witness that he worked with as part of his task force career. Allegedly, Palermo received from the cooperating witness favorable prices on high end automobiles, free automobile work, and...

Won Sok Lee, 39, an attorney, formerly of Riviera Beach (Singer Island), Florida, and Irvine, California, plead guilty yesterday afternoon to one count of wire fraud in violation of Title 18 U.S.C. §1343 and one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud in violation of Title 18 U.S.C. §371. Lee is set to be sentenced on December 11, 2009 and faces a statutory maximum of 25 years in prison, a $500,000 fine, and restitution.   According to the FBI, Lee, along with John Kim and Yung ...

Thomas James Frederick Smith, 21, and David Anthony Edwards, 20, have been indicted for conspiring to intentionally cause damage to a protected computer and commit computer fraud. The indictment alleges that the two infected susceptible computers with an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) bot that would allow the two to direct the infected computer to repeatedly access an IP address of their choosing as part of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. The two infected numerous computers assembl...

Albert Gonzalez has pled guilty to stealing the credit cards he was charged with (see my prior post here). At sentencing, he faces up to 25 years in prison.

The Department of Justice has reached a $2.3 billion settlement with Pfizer for illegally marketing its anti-inflammatory drug Bextra. A common practice in the pharmaceutical industry, Pfizer representatives would advocate Bextra to doctors for untested or non-approved off-label uses. The settlement will return nearly a billion dollars to Medicare, Medicaid, and other government insurance programs.   Source: Department of Health and Human Services

Reinaldo Guerra, of Miami, Florida, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit Medicare fraud and Medicare fraud. The scheme involved in home medical equipment. Guerra operated 11 corporations that purported to supply this equipment. Through these companies, Guerra submitted about $123 million in fraudulent claims where no equipment had been prescribed or ordered by a physician. Medicare paid a total of $35 million to the companies before Guerra was caught.   Guerra is set to be sentenced November...

This past Friday, August 21, Apple, Google, and AT&T all responded to the FCC's interrogatories that I wrote about here.   Apparently, according to Apple, the Google Voice application was never actually rejected, but was still under consideration. Apple claims that Google Voice replaces Apple's visual voice mail system, its ability to text, and its address book and was initially not added for this reason. Here, in Apple's own words, "It appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user e...

  Three were indicted on Monday in what authorities believe to be the largest identity theft case prosecuted in history. Five corporate entities were victims in the case: 7-Eleven Inc., Hannaford Brothers Co., and Heartland Payment Systems along with two unidentified victims.   The indictment, available below, names Albert Gonzalez, a Miami man (who also went by the names "soupnazi," "segvec," and "j4guar17"), and two unnamed Russian hackers (cleverly named "Hacker 1" and "Hacker 2"). The i...

  Former Credit Suisse broker Eric Butler was found guilty yesterday of conspiracy and securities fraud. The evidence established that Butler and another broker, Julian Tzolov, defrauded clients to obtain higher sales commissions. Butler and Tzolov sold auction rate securities (ARS) backed by mortgages to clients who had placed orders to buy ARS that were backed by government backed student loans. Butler and Tzolov convinced clients that the student loan backed securities were secure and hig...