Victim Compensation

An Orange County Superior Court judge ruled Wednesday that an evangelical preacher had conned an heiress out of nearly $500,000 and ordered him to repay the money plus $250,000 in punitive damages. Mel Tari, 48, of Dana Point, an evangelist and author of several Christian books, must repay Christine Kline, 41, of Denver for the small fortune she signed over to him. Kline, who had inherited Capital Printing Co.

Actor John Malkovich is seeking to recover $2.3 million from an account he had with the securities firm of Bernard Madoff, who conducted the biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. Irving Picard, the trustee liquidating Madoff's firm, in August approved a claim for $670,000 for the actor's pension plan and trust, more than $1.5 million short of the value of the securities in Malkovich's account listed on his November 2008 final statement, attorneys for the actor said in a filing Thursday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.

Orange County pastor Ralph A. Wilkerson has agreed to answer questions about a former associate accused of raising more than $160 million from evangelical Christians in an elaborate international investment fraud, Wilkerson's attorney said. Wilkerson, 77, was criticized last month by a court-appointed receiver who said the pastor had failed to help recover assets that would benefit people left destitute by the alleged scam run by Gregory E. Setser, an Inland Empire-based entrepreneur.

It was a stakeout gone bad, featuring jumpy police officers, human traffickers, a roughed-up federal agent, and a multimillion-dollar twist of an ending. Sergio Lopez, an undercover U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, was tracking smugglers in October 2006 when Chula Vista police officers pulled him over. These were dangerous times in the San Diego suburb. A Mexican gang had been kidnapping residents, sometimes by posing as law enforcement officers. "What . . . are you doing speeding through my city?"

Former piano distributor Vernon Schafer Jr. was awarded $10 million in punitive damages Friday by a jury that found the U.S. affiliate of giant Daewoo Group defrauded him and destroyed his business. A day earlier, the jury awarded Schafer $3.62 million in compensatory damages in a case that originally was filed against Schafer by Daewoo International (America) Corp. "I thought I was going to die before the verdict came in," Schafer said in an interview from his Anaheim home.

A federal judge has ordered Lewis Allen Rivlin, a former Justice Department attorney, to pay about $6.5 million for defrauding investors, including an Ecuadorean charity for underprivileged girls. Ruling in a civil case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1999, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said Thursday that Rivlin violated federal securities laws in 1997-98 by selling $6.2 million worth of phony securities to four groups of investors.

Former World War II prisoners of war and other activists stepped up their pressure against Japanese corporations in the United States, announcing Tuesday a nationwide class-action lawsuit alleging that the companies brutalized POWs and forced them to perform slave labor in Asia during the war. The lawsuit, part of an escalating U.S. offensive to win reparations for Japanese war crimes, targets five corporate giants: Mitsubishi International Corp., Mitsui & Co. (USA) Inc.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department agreed Friday to pay almost $1 million to a sergeant who claimed the department retaliated against him after he ran against Sheriff Lee Baca in the 2002 elections and criticized Baca's management of healthcare in county jails, a sheriff's spokesman said. The settlement was reached shortly after a federal jury found the department liable for retaliation in a lawsuit brought by Sgt. Patrick Gomez, 51. Gomez said he was passed up for promotions and targeted for an internal inquiry because he was critical of Baca in the run-up to the election, in which he and another sergeant waged campaigns against the incumbent sheriff.

Traditional alliances are taking a beating in the smoking wars. Filial piety is too. Consider the latest assault on Big Tobacco--a multibillion-dollar suit against cigarette makers by the Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust. The trust, which was spawned by the 1982 bankruptcy of asbestos giant Johns Manville Corp., compensates workers for the asbestos-related diseases that drove Manville to seek bankruptcy protection.

In a strong bipartisan signal, House Armed Services Committee members warned the Reagan Administration on Thursday that it faces stiff obstacles in selling Congress on the idea of compensating families of the victims of last month's downing of an Iranian airliner.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department agreed Friday to pay almost $1 million to a sergeant who claimed the department retaliated against him after he ran against Sheriff Lee Baca in the 2002 elections and criticized Baca's management of healthcare in county jails, a sheriff's spokesman said. The settlement was reached shortly after a federal jury found the department liable for retaliation in a lawsuit brought by Sgt. Patrick Gomez, 51. Gomez said he was passed up for promotions and targeted for an internal inquiry because he was critical of Baca in the run-up to the election, in which he and another sergeant waged campaigns against the incumbent sheriff.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let stand a record $83-million judgment in favor of a San Diego County woman who was paralyzed when her Ford Explorer rolled over and its roof partially collapsed. The justices rejected an appeal from lawyers for Ford Motor Co., who argued that the punitive damages were unfair and unconstitutional because the design of the sport utility vehicle met all the government and industry safety standards. The jury had been told, however, that Ford could have strengthened the roof and possibly avoided such a catastrophic accident had it spent an extra $20 per vehicle.

Two men who contend PepsiCo Inc. stole their idea to sell bottled water sued the snack- and drink-maker in Wisconsin and won a $1.26-billion judgment last month after the company didn't respond. PepsiCo, which calls the accusation "dubious," says it didn't know about the lawsuit until almost a week after the court granted the award without a trial. The company wants the court to toss out the ruling, known as a default judgment, or at least give PepsiCo a chance to fight the accusation.

A last-minute rush by investors, including one who drove from Mexico to Dallas to beat the July 2 deadline, pushed the final number of claims in the Bernard L. Madoff fraud to more than 15,000, officials said Friday. They e-mailed, mailed and walked their claims to a central processing office in Dallas and the New York office of Irving Picard, the trustee appointed by the federal Bankruptcy Court to recover assets for distribution to defrauded investors.

Hundreds of Californians, many of them elderly and nearly broke, are pressing legislators for help in getting compensation for some of the money they lost in a Ponzi scheme run by confessed swindler Bernard Madoff. They're asking lawmakers to change state laws so they can get refunds of past taxes paid on income from Madoff that they might never have received. "I've been victimized once by Mr. Madoff.

The Serbian government confirmed it has paid $900,000 in compensation to the family of an American who was badly beaten, allegedly by a Serb. Government official Slobodan Homen said the money was paid to the family of Bryan Steinhauer, 22, who was allegedly assaulted by his Serbian classmate Miladin Kovacevic during a barroom brawl in upstate New York in May and left in a coma. Kovacevic, a 22-year-old former basketball player at Binghamton University, jumped bail and fled the U.S. a month later with emergency travel documents provided by Serbian diplomats in New York.

Kevin Green, a Tustin man who was wrongly convicted of raping his pregnant wife and causing the death of their unborn daughter 20 years ago, on Tuesday settled a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by his ex-wife, who continued to hold him partially responsible for the crime. The settlement brings closure to a two-decade-long legal ordeal for Green, who was set free in 1996 after authorities linked the crime to another man.

Shin Jin-tae says he lives in the unluckiest town on Earth. During World War II, when the Japanese occupied Korea, thousands of residents of this small farming community were shipped to Japan to work in munitions factories. Their destination: Hiroshima. Shin and his family were there on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, when the U.S. military dropped the atomic bomb, leveling the city center and vaporizing many of those within a mile of the blast.

Shin Jin-tae says he lives in the unluckiest town on Earth. During World War II, when the Japanese occupied Korea, thousands of residents of this small farming community were shipped to Japan to work in munitions factories. Their destination: Hiroshima. Shin and his family were there on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, when the U.S. military dropped the atomic bomb, leveling the city center and vaporizing many of those within a mile of the blast.