Consumer Fraud

The owner of a Sherman Oaks company who allegedly cheated senior citizens by selling them overpriced or unnecessary home-alarm systems pleaded no contest to six misdemeanor criminal counts Wednesday, according to the Los Angeles city attorney's office. Jeffrey Roy Bagg, 44, of Rancho Park was charged with operating an unlicensed alarm company and conducting an alarm-company business from a location other than the one for which a license was issued, Deputy City Atty. P. Greg Parham said.

The gig: Hal Rosner is a partner at San Diego's Rosner, Barry & Babbitt, one of the largest law firms in the country specializing entirely in consumer auto fraud cases. Founded by Rosner in 1985, the firm employs 10 full-time attorneys and reviews 200 to 400 potential cases a month, taking on about 10% of them. To date, Rosner has handled more than 1,000 auto fraud cases in the Golden State, winning millions of dollars for his clients. It has won him begrudging respect from the auto industry; last year the head of the California New Car Dealers Assn.

Jeweler Carl Marcus doesn't mind being known as the pawnbroker of Beverly Hills. Because, he acknowledges, he does make no-interest loans to close customers, holding as elegant collateral their Mercedeses, their LeRoy Neiman originals, even the gold Audemars Piguet watches he sold them in flusher times.

Information stolen from as many as 1.5 million credit card accounts is the latest in a long line of data breaches — and an alert for consumers to monitor their accounts for fraudulent purchases, industry watchdogs say. The latest major breach, reported late last week at Atlanta payments processor Global Payments Inc., resulted in no known consumer fraud as of Monday morning, Chief Executive Paul R. Garcia said in a conference call with analysts....

In what is believed to be the first murder prosecution in American history for oleander poisoning, authorities filed charges Friday against a former Pasadena funeral home worker accused of using the lethal plant's leaves to poison a rival mortician. David Wayne Sconce, 33, was charged with poisoning Timothy R. Waters, 24, a rival Burbank mortician, in 1985. The motive, according to Los Angeles County Assistant Chief Deputy Dist. Atty.

Lomas & Nettleton Co., the nation's second-largest mortgage company, has been charged with consumer fraud for enticing home buyers in Pennsylvania by offering one mortgage rate and then delivering a higher rate. State Atty. Gen. LeRoy S.

The Federal Trade Commission has set up a toll-free telephone line for consumers to report fraud. The FTC said it will compile reports of consumer fraud such as Internet scams and phony prizes offered by mail and make the data available to almost 200 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Canada. Before offering the toll-free line, the FTC took complaints on an ad hoc basis and consumers had to call the Washington office.

A convicted con artist who wrote a book on consumer fraud and dedicated it to the Los Angeles federal judge who freed him on probation three times was arrested by the FBI Friday on charges of bilking a new victim out of $100,000. Steven Robert Comisar, 38, was taken into custody after being indicted on eight counts of mail and wire fraud.

When Orange County residents have consumer problems, navigating the patchwork of local agencies that handle complaints can be so confusing and frustrating that they just give up. But help may be on the way. After a brainstorming session in July, about two dozen agencies decided to join to form the Fraud Education Task Force.

State prosecutors on Friday announced a $1.5-million settlement in a consumer-fraud lawsuit against an apartment company owned by George Argyros, the billionaire Orange County businessman awaiting confirmation as ambassador to Spain. The settlement makes thousands of former tenants eligible for refunds of security deposits withheld over the last four years by Argyros' Arnel Management Co., the largest apartment owner in Orange County.

Nevada has filed suit against a major player in the foreclosure business, Lender Processing Services Inc., alleging that the company is responsible for perpetrating widespread consumer fraud in the Silver State. The lawsuit against LPS of Jacksonville, Fla., and several of its subsidiaries alleges that the company falsified, forged or fraudulently filed countless documents in foreclosure cases across Nevada, requiring individual employees to execute or notarize as many as 4,000 foreclosure documents a day. LPS is used by many major banks to process foreclosures, and the suit said the company is responsible for more than 50% of foreclosures annually.

When does hand-delivering a check for $2 million for a worthy cause land you in hot water? For Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich, who is raising money for a possible run for district attorney, it was when he proposed using that hefty sum for a program that would help one of his political allies. The money had come from a legal settlement won by city lawyers against an outdoor advertising company. Under state law, half of the settlement must be given to the county for consumer protection enforcement and, in the past, the county has doled out those funds to the district attorney's office — the office Trutanich may seek in next year's election.

The Better Business Bureau is warning consumers about phony debt collectors. The watchdog organization issued a national alert about calls coming from lawyers claiming to be from the Financial Accountability Assn. or the Federal Legislation of Unsecured Loans. The callers say that the consumer has defaulted on a payday loan and will be immediately arrested and extradited to California to stand trial unless as much as $1,000 is wired or the consumer provides bank account or credit card numbers.

The pitch: "Our program offers the ability to repair, restore or establish your credit!" The scam: Not only did the Home Buyers Network, Good Credit Co. and GoodCredit.com promise in their ads to repair credit, they also said they could boost credit scores and erase "derogatory items" from credit reports, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The North Carolina businesses, owned by Home Buyers Consulting Network Inc.

It's time for the top 10 scams of 2007. From cruel foreclosure frauds to Nigerian puppies -- in other words, from the tragic to near comical -- this was a banner year for consumer scams. Much like many other years. The Internet continued to provide a worldwide platform for fraudsters. New scams popped up and some old-fashioned schemes came back. So, without further ado, here's a countdown of infamous notables for the year. Hold your applause, and your wallet. 10.

Orange County authorities Friday were looking for dozens of people who may have been scammed by a man accused of posing as a contractor and taking homeowners' money before abandoning the jobs. Palavi Tonga, 28, was arrested Wednesday by Anaheim police and booked on three counts of grand theft, said Sgt. Rick Martinez. According to police, Tonga sought out three Anaheim homeowners, falsely telling them he was a licensed contractor and offering them low-cost repairs.

First Alliance Corp. has agreed to pay up to $550,000 to settle a consumer fraud complaint filed last year by the Minnesota attorney general, one of several pending lawsuits and investigations regarding the company's lending practices, officials said Tuesday. Irvine-based First Alliance will offer refunds to about 100 Minnesota borrowers, who were allegedly misled about what kind of loans they were receiving and how much they would pay in fees.

For nearly three decades, University of California law and medical schools have been committing consumer fraud by failing to acknowledge that some black and Latino applicants are given preferential treatment, a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court this week contends. The lawsuit, filed by Tarzana attorney Allan J. Favish, does not seek to eliminate racial considerations from the UC admissions process.

albany, n.y. -- The social networking website Facebook has been warned that it could face a consumer fraud charge for failing to live up to claims that youngsters there were safer from sexual predators than at most sites and that it promptly responded to concerns, a spokesman for New York Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday. "We expect an immediate correction eliminating the dangers exposed by our investigation," spokesman Jeffrey Lerner said.