CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 1, 2006 | John Spano, Times Staff Writer
A wealthy brokerage house executive was convicted Thursday of murder for the shooting death of his wife, who was having an affair with a gym trainer. Jurors in Pasadena deliberated two days before finding 51-year-old Richard Robert Russo guilty of the first-degree murder of his wife, Carmen, 42, last summer. Because Russo pleaded insanity, the trial is in two parts; the jury will return Wednesday to consider the insanity plea.
BUSINESS
April 29, 2004 | From Reuters
Ten stockbrokers at a now-defunct securities firm were accused Wednesday in a racketeering indictment of defrauding hundreds of customers out of millions of dollars, authorities said. The brokers, who once worked for LCP Capital Corp. in Manhattan, were paid millions of dollars in cash bribes by stock promoters to pump up the prices of 14 stocks, Manhattan Dist. Atty. Robert Morgenthau said.
BUSINESS
March 2, 2004 | From Associated Press
Telling careful lies but making careless mistakes, Martha Stewart and her broker were bent on keeping investigators from the truth about why she sold stock, a federal prosecutor said Monday. In a methodical three-hour closing argument, prosecutor Michael S. Schachter told jurors that Stewart and Peter E. Bacanovic believed they would never be caught in their deception. "But Martha Stewart and Peter Bacanovic were wrong," Schachter said.
BUSINESS
February 5, 2004 | Thomas S. Mulligan, Times Staff Writer
Martha Stewart sold her stock in ImClone Systems Inc. after her broker's assistant told her the company founder was trying to dump his shares, the assistant said Wednesday in the first testimony directly implicating the lifestyles mogul. Douglas Faneuil, 28, then an aide to Stewart's Merrill Lynch & Co. stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, recounted the two-minute phone call on Dec. 27, 2001, that is at the heart of the federal fraud and obstruction-of-justice case against Stewart and Bacanovic.
ENTERTAINMENT
September 17, 2003 | Lynell George, Times Staff Writer
There are fairy-tale stories. Then there's singer-songwriter Rhian Benson's. Just three years ago, the Ghanaian-born musician was well on a path: a degree in econometrics and mathematical economics from the London School of Economics; a skin-toughening stint on the stock trading floor; a few months of graduate studies at Harvard in the School for Arts and Sciences. Now, somehow, this 26-year-old has become a pop diva in training.
BUSINESS
June 20, 2003 | Thomas S. Mulligan, Times Staff Writer
Lifestyles entrepreneur Martha Stewart will get her day in court in January to face charges that she and her former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, conspired to thwart a federal probe of her 2001 sale of stock in biotech firm ImClone Systems Inc. U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum on Thursday set a Jan.