Bank Fraud

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.

Full Tilt Poker founder Raymond Bitar, accused of using online player funds to finance his company in what prosecutors called a Ponzi scheme, pleaded guilty but was spared from serving time in prison because he needs a heart transplant. U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska on Monday approved a plea agreement between Bitar, 41, and prosecutors, sentencing him to the seven days he served in jail last year, after saying a prison sentence would kill him. Bitar, who participated in a hearing in Manhattan federal court by video link from Los Angeles, near his home, pleaded guilty to two felonies that carry a maximum sentence of 35 years in prison.

A Beverly Hills man whose bad checks cost Ventura County-based Bank of A. Levy $212,000 received a two-year federal prison sentence last week for writing checks on a nonexistent bank account at a nonexistent bank. David Alan Wolfson, 38, was also ordered to repay $30,000 in the sentence handed down Friday by U. S. District Judge John G. Davies in Los Angeles. The bank fraud case dates to 1989, when Wolfson agreed to invest in a business venture with a Camarillo man, Stuart J.

WASHINGTON - Assistant Atty. Gen. Lanny A. Breuer, who boosted white-collar prosecutions and oversaw the investigation into the 2010 Gulf Coast oil spill, announced that he would resign as one of the longest-serving chiefs of the Justice Department's Criminal Division. Breuer, whose resignation is effective March 1, had been expected to leave after President Obama's first term. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, noted that Breuer was the third top Justice Department official to depart after the department's inspector general reviewed Fast and Furious, the program that allowed illegal gun sales along the Arizona-Mexico border in an effort to trace them to drug cartels.

A man accused of charming women to defraud a bank of $63,500 has pleaded guilty to five federal charges of bank fraud. Chester Doc Moore, 30, lived in hotels on the proceeds of the worthless checks that he deposited into the accounts of girlfriends, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Greg Schetina. "He would befriend women and date them and get their confidence and started depositing in their accounts checks from a company that had closed," Schetina said of Moore, who was arrested Aug.

Former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth L. Lay won't have to stand trial on bank fraud charges before he is tried in the larger fraud and conspiracy case stemming from Enron's collapse. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake in Houston granted Lay's request to schedule the bank fraud trial during deliberations in the broader case, which is scheduled to start in January. Lay's lawyer said an early trial on the banking charges would increase the risk of juror bias in the larger case.

Former Miami City Commissioner Humberto Hernandez, once one of the most powerful municipal politicians in south Florida, pleaded guilty to a federal bank fraud charge. Earlier, a state judge sentenced Hernandez to 364 days in jail for trying to cover up voting fraud. Hernandez, a central figure in a series of scandals at City Hall, was a rising star on the Miami political scene and overwhelmingly reelected even while under indictment.

A Las Vegas man who used a boat he didn't own as collateral for a $137,000 loan from Simi Valley Bank has been sentenced to eight months in federal prison, officials said. Donald F. Ford, 56, was sentenced by U. S. District Judge Spencer Letts in Los Angeles. Ford, who will be on probation for three years after his release from prison, appeared before Letts in October and pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud, said Gary Auer, supervisor of the Ventura County office of the FBI.

With the appointment of Assistant U.S. Atty. Nancy Wieben Stock to the Orange County Superior Court, the bank-fraud trial of Janet Faye McKinzie is being delayed to Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana. Wieben Stock is being replaced in the McKinzie trial by Assistant U.S. Attys. Paul L. Seave and David J. Schindler.

Two former officials at the Bank of San Pedro and a lawyer were convicted Wednesday of defrauding the bank out of $2.3 million in a scheme that contributed to the financial institution's failure.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A federal grand jury has brought additional charges against a Ventura man accused of conspiring to swindle several banks and private investors out of nearly $3 million, the FBI reported Friday. Patrick Michael Downey, 42, will face nine felony counts for his alleged involvement in a real estate scheme that began in October, 1989, and continued until June, 1992, under a new indictment handed up Thursday.

A thriving online poker industry catering to Americans but operating from abroad to evade U.S. gambling laws could be wiped out by criminal charges against top executives in the business. Eleven people, including the founders of the three largest poker sites open to U.S. players, were charged by a federal grand jury with bank fraud, money laundering and violating gambling laws. The government also is seeking to recover $3 billion from the companies. The FBI had shut down two of the sites, Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, by Friday evening and were working to do the same with the third, Absolute Poker.

For former insiders at some of the several hundred banks that collapsed during the financial crisis and in its aftermath, a day of reckoning has arrived. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has told dozens of former bank officers and directors that it has drawn up lawsuits accusing them of misdeeds such as fraud and breach of fiduciary duty. The federal agency is seeking damages to help offset losses in the nation's deposit insurance fund. It's time, the FDIC warns these officials, to sit down and work out settlements ?