Blog posts with "fraud"

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has prevailed against the second largest bank of Switzerland Credit Suisse’s motion to dismiss the Attorney General’s $10 billion lawsuit against the bank for fraud concerning the sales of mortgage-backed securities prior to the 2008 financial crisis. This suit was filed back in 2012 as a result of allegations that the bank misrepresented to investors the downside risks of mortgage-backed securities which the bank was hawking prior to the finan...

Journalist Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone recently exposed the story of Alayne Fleischmann, the Department of Justice's key witness supporting the $9 billion (claimed to be $13 billion) mortgage & securities fraud related settlement of November 19, 2013. Fleischmann provides a long and detailed account of the circumstances leading up to the DoJ's resolution of JPMorgan Chase's culpability in relation to what Fleischmann describes as "massive criminal securities fraud" within the bank's mort...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently denied TD Bank’s request for a rehearing concerning the $67 million verdict against TD Bank in favor of Coquina Investment based on TD Bank’s role in the billion-dollar Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Scott Rothstein. Plaintiff Coquina Investments (“Coquina”) invested with Rothstein and lost millions when his scheme collapsed. Defendant TD Bank, N.A. (“TD Bank”) was the bank through which Rothstein handled transactions with h...

Wells Fargo, the largest mortgage servicer in the nation, was unable to keep its infamous Home Mortgage Foreclosure Attorney Procedure Manual from being introduced into evidence in a federal case (case number 1:13-ap-01553) before  Judge Allan L. Gropper of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The recently exposed Wells Fargo manual appears to instruct foreclosure mill attorneys how to fabricate missing loan documents to foreclose on homeowners. In the case, the f...

Democracy Now just reported on “a recently revealed internal Wells Fargo document appears to guide lawyers step by step on how to fabricate missing documents to foreclose on homeowners. Wells Fargo is the country’s largest mortgage servicer and services some nine million home loans.” The attorney that “discovered the Wells Fargo manual on how to produce missing documents to foreclose on homeowners” contextualized and described the manual as follows: The manual [is] entitled the "...

Disbarred-attorney Linda Vasquez and her former husband, Ross Littlefield, have been sentenced to federal prison for money laundering after admitting in a guilty plea to "defrauding 'vulnerable clients' to fund their other businesses, buy real estate, make car payments and finance an extravagant lifestyle," as reported by the Orlando Sentinel. Linda Vasquez (formerly known as Linda Littlefield) was only recently released from two years of incarceration in state prison for the former couple...

“A Kissimmee couple convicted in state court of defrauding elderly clients of their life savings agreed Wednesday to plead guilty to similar charges in federal court and could be sentenced to up to 10 years each in prison,” according to an Orlando Sentinel article by Susan Jacobson. On April 29, 2013, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida filed a formal criminal charge of mail fraud against disbarred-attorney Linda Vasquez Littlefield and her former husband, Ros...

The federal government recovered nearly $5 billion from False Claims Act cases in 2012 according to a recent press release by the Department of Justice. “The False Claims Act is the government’s primary civil remedy to redress false claims for federal money or property, such as Medicare benefits, federal subsidies and loans and payments under contracts for goods and services, including military contracts.” The Act also encourages whistleblowers to speak out by promising them up to 30 pe...

Today, the National Whistleblowers Center (NWC) endorsed the Senate version (S.753) of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act following the Senate’s removal of a provision that “would have given the Administrative Judges of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) the power to summarily dismiss whistleblower cases without a hearing.” According to Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, NWC Director and No FEAR Coalition President, “The MSPB has a long history of victimizing federal employe...

Congratulations to our friends at Kohn, Kohn and Colapinto for securing the largest whistleblower award to an individual in history. On September 11, 2012, the National Whistleblowers Center announced the IRS award of $104,000,000 to Bradley Birkenfeld – the whistleblower who exposed a massive tax evasion scheme involving Swiss bank accounts. At the recorded press conference, Attorney Stephen M. Kohn declared: Today, the IRS sent 104 million messages to whistleblowers around the world...