Forty-five government entities are now joining whistleblower John Hendrix’s suit against JM Eagle. The suit alledges that the largest PVC pipe manufacturer committed fraud by intentionally selling pipe to governments, where the company’s internal quality controls showed 50 to 80 percent failure rates. Questions: 1. What was Hendrix’s position with the firm and what did… Read more »
Posts Tagged: Forensic
The Disappearing Debt Suddenly Reappears!
Jackie Esposito, of Guilford, Conn., got a letter that said her debt with JPMorgan Chase was canceling the amount she owed on a home equity account. While most people would be excited to get such a letter, Ms. Esposito was not. That is because Ms. Esposito had the debt legally wiped out three years ago… Read more »
An Ugly Tale: Double-Life and Secret Fortune
CFO John Franklin Howard, the trusted CFO and CPA for Raley Holdings, Inc., a defense contractor based in Grapevine, Texas, now has more than just $32 million to account for from his embezzlement; he is also facing solicitation of murder charges. Interestingly, he used some of the embezzled money to pay someone to murder his… Read more »
Feds Catch Bid-Rigging Bankers
Federal authorities are pursuing legal action against bankers accused of systematically defrauding states, local governments and non-profits. The ongoing probe is focusing on bankers who have colluded about the offers they’ve made as they bid on contracts to invest municipal bond proceeds. Questions: 1. What is bid-rigging? Summarize the way in which the suspect bankers… Read more »
How to Earn $46,000 for Each Day Spent in Prison
Bradley Birkenfeld, the whistleblower in a tax fraud case against Swiss bank UBS AG, was awarded a record-setting $104 million reward from the IRS. Birkenfeld learned about the inner workings of UBS as an employee of the company and supplied many secrets about his former employer’s dealings with U.S. clients. Despite this, he was jailed… Read more »
The Business Model of Overstating Benefits: How Harmful or Ethical?
It is estimated that between 50,000 to 100,000 patients died or had a heart attack as a result of taking the drug Advandia. For seven years, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) failed to report data that indicated Advandia increases the risk of heart attack by 40%. As we reported back in July, in the biggest health care fraud… Read more »
Are you Suspicious? Maybe you should be!
A few years ago, Todd Rutherford was part of the marketing department at a company that provided services to self-published writers. These services included persuading traditional media and blogs to review the books. Then he realized that there were not enough reviewers to go around. So he started a website, GettingBookReviews.com, which eventually earned him… Read more »
A New Trend?
According to the Associated Press (AP), Chinese companies are withdrawing from the US stock market amid accusations of improper accounting by some companies, as well as complaints that low share prices do not reflect the true value of Chinese companies. On top of this, the AP note that a state bank has provided $1 billion… Read more »
Robo-Signing Redux
Debt collection practices focusing on erroneous documents, incomplete records and generic testimony from witnesses in lawsuits by credit card companies is mirroring problems similar to those in the mortgage foreclosure process. According to Noach Dear, a civil court judge in Brooklyn, about 90% of the cases he sees are flawed and cannot prove who the… Read more »
LIBOR Scandal Widens
Bank of America, the second largest U.S. bank, has received subpoenas from the U.S.Justice Department, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and U.K. Financial Services Authority requesting information about the company’s possible role in the rigging of a key international lending benchmark, LIBOR. Regulators have queried at least a dozen banks worldwide about their roles in… Read more »