NATIONAL
January 30, 2013 | By Marisa Gerber
For years Diane Hathaway sat behind the dais as a Michigan Supreme Court justice. This time, she was the defendant. Hathaway, who has resigned from the bench, pleaded guilty to bank fraud during a federal court hearing Tuesday in Ann Arbor. As part of her plea agreement with the U.S. attorney's office , Hathaway faces a year and a half in prison for concealing information from her bank. Sentencing was set for May 28. The case stems from 2010, when Hathaway entered into debt forgiveness negotiations with ING Bank for her home in Grosse Pointe, a Detroit suburb.
BUSINESS
September 1, 2012 | By E. Scott Reckard, Los Angeles Times
A well-known banking consultant has taken a dispute with CBRE Group Inc. to court, saying the Los Angeles real estate giant and Florida's Stonegate Bank defrauded him by rigging the bidding for a bank branch in an upscale Miami suburb. The case is a potential embarrassment for CBRE, the world's largest commercial real estate firm, and for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which hired the company to sell off property it inherits from failed banks. CBRE violated FDIC rules by letting Stonegate pay less for the branch than consultant Kenneth H. Thomas bid for it, according to Thomas' lawsuit, filed in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court.
BUSINESS
June 29, 2012 | Bloomberg News
Former Citigroup Inc. Vice President Gary Foster was sentenced to 97 months in prison for embezzling almost $23 million from the bank, according to federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York. Foster pleaded guilty to bank fraud in September, admitting that he transferred money from various Citigroup accounts to his own at JPMorgan Chase & Co. He concealed his activities by making false accounting entries, according to the government. He used the money to buy real estate and luxury sports cars, including a Ferrari and a Maserati, prosecutors said.
BUSINESS
February 13, 2012 | By Stuart Pfeifer, Los Angeles Times
Here is a roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for. Counterfeit luxury items Bargain hunters should take extreme care when shopping for discounted brand-name merchandise on the Internet, the Better Business Bureau said in a recent bulletin. Websites such as Craigslist and EBay have been used to sell counterfeit items, the BBB said. Plus, some firms have set up their own websites to market knockoff luxury goods, which often are of poor quality and likely to disappoint buyers, the group said.
BUSINESS
December 18, 2011 | By Kenneth R. Harney
Could today's seductive conditions in the housing market — severely marked-down prices, record low interest rates and hundreds of thousands of foreclosures waiting to be resold — be breeding new generations of the very practices that led to the crash? In an ironic twist, there are signs that the wreckage left over from the housing bust may be reigniting dubious real estate schemes and fraud. According to researchers: •Property flippers are back in action in places like south Florida and Las Vegas, where condominium prices crashed but are now appreciating again in some areas.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
June 16, 2011 | By Kate Mather, Los Angeles Times
A man accused of stealing a nearly $1.4-million tax refund check from billionaire Irvine Co. Chairman Donald Bren has pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud. Federal prosecutors say Moundir Kamil, a 41-year-old convicted bank robber, obtained Bren's Social Security number, date of birth and other personal information and opened an account in Bren's name in February 2010 at an East West Bank branch in Cerritos. Bren, a 79-year-old real estate tycoon, is listed as Forbes magazine's 64th richest person in the world and has an estimated net worth of $12 billion.