Scheme

It was a dream invention--a machine that would convert old vehicle tires into $1-million worth of oil, methane gas, carbon, ammonia and steel wire every year. And potential Southland investors were told that anyone who wanted one would have to pay a franchise fee of only $100,000, authorities said. But after investigators from the Los Angles County district attorney's office obtained evidence that the machines will not do what they are supposed to do, Craig F.

Ernest Frank Cossey, former chief executive of investment firm TLC America Inc., was sentenced to nearly five years in prison for his role in a $146-million scheme that targeted the elderly. Cossey had pleaded guilty in March to income tax evasion and conspiracy to commit mail fraud. He also was ordered to return more than $60 million to his investors.

Tax shelter promoter Charles Agee Atkins and two others were convicted Thursday of a scheme that generated more than $1 billion in fictitious losses in what officials believe is the largest tax fraud case in U.S. history. Several celebrities were involved in the transactions, including Michael Landon, the late Andy Warhol and Postmaster General Preston R. Tisch. They are not accused of wrongdoing but will have to deal with the Internal Revenue Service over paying back taxes.

A former Countrywide Financial Corp. loan officer has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to charges related to a nearly $40 million mortgage fraud scheme. Federal prosecutors alleged that Paige Kinney of Phoenix operated the scheme from 2005 to 2007, using “straw buyers” to apply for home loans they never intended to repay. She submitted altered documents, such as bank statements and pay stubs, to make the buyers appear more credit-worthy than they were, prosecutors said.

A federal grand jury has indicted a bank executive and a jewelry store owner in connection with a $1.3-million scheme that allegedly defrauded Trans American National Bank of Monterey Park and the Bank of Trade of San Francisco. Ronald Fook Tao Wong, 43, and Siu Chun Wong, 44, were charged Friday with engaging in a scheme to defraud the banks by submitting false documentation for loans obtained by "straw borrowers," borrowers in name only.

The former controller for the Los Angeles Boy Scouts Council pleaded guilty Friday to stealing $22,000 from the organization in a sophisticated scheme involving false entries in a Scout computer. Garland C. Groom, 43, was caught only because of another Scout official's curiosity about a $30 lunch tab, Scout Executive Edward C. Jacobs said. Groom, who is free on bail, entered his guilty plea at a preliminary hearing before Municipal Judge Rand Schrader. He will be sentenced Feb.

A fraternity loyalty ritual goes blazingly wrong in the jacked-up indie thriller "Brotherhood. " The film invests a lot of emotional energy in raising moral stakes for the kind of boorish male pranksters it's hard to feel sympathy for when one reads about them in newspaper accounts of fatal hazings and sexual assaults. In first-time feature director Will Canon's all-nighter scenario, co-written with Doug Simon, a frat house's carefully rigged scheme to make a pledge think he's robbing a convenience store leads to bullets flying, a wounded freshman, a kidnapped clerk and circumstances that get progressively worse, complete with the kind of shaky handheld camerawork and endless shouting matches that are the usual indie-movie distress signifiers.

Four men pleaded guilty Friday in Van Nuys Municipal Court to swindling people in a scheme police call the "Jamaican Switch." Authorities said one of the victims in the scheme was Los Angeles attorney James M. Epstein, who said he sniffed out the confidence game and was trying to set up an arrest when he lost $5,000. In the elaborate scheme that netted more than $33,000, at least three more victims each lost thousands of dollars in cash, police Sgt. Dennis E. Adams said.