The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed charges against Massachusetts businessman Patrick Muraca to stop an alleged ongoing fraud by misuing investments intended for the development of cancer diagnostic tests to instead pay personal expenses and fund his fiancí©e's restaurant businesses.
According to the SEC's complaint, Muraca established two pharmaceutical companies and raising nearly $1.2...
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Category: Whistleblower Laws
EB-5 U.S. visa for investment program fraud is skyrocketing mostly among Chinese Nationals
The EB-5 investment program, known as the EB-5 visa-for-investment program, is demonstrating a dramatic spike in fraud in EB-5 projects. For example 2016, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought enforcement actions against $1 billion worth of fraudulent EB-5 projects. A majority of the fraud involved Chinese investors, including a $136 million EB-5...
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IRS whistleblower program awards skyrocket by 322% says IRS report
The IRS Whistleblower Office released its 2016 annual report and whistleblower awards have skyrocketed 322%. Last year, the Whistleblower Office made 418 awards, totaling about $61 million a 322% increase over the 99 awards paid in 2015. The number of claims were up too, about 6.4% since 2015.
The...
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Investigation of Caterpillar and report leaked to the Times sheds light on possible billions in foreign tax evasion havens
Since writing briefly yesterday about how federal investigators have raided three Caterpillar office buildings last week, in what may be a major tax evasion case, I kept going back to the New York Times article. The more I read it, the more I kept saying to myself that this could be something really major...
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Trump’s tough AG nominee Jeff Sessions expected to take hard line on financial and corporate crime
The new Trump administration is not expected to take it easy on banks and other financial institutions that commit financial crime.
Senator Jeff Sessions who has been nominated to be the next attorney-general and is expected to be approved by the Senate, has taken a tough line on white-collar crime. While serving on the Senate...
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Supreme Court likely to make insider trading cases easier to prove says US Attorney Preet Bharara
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara says the Supreme Court may soon make it easier for his prosecutors to pursue such cases. Speaking at a CEO meeting Tuesday he said there is "cautious optimism" the Supreme Court will "correct what we think is the clear mistake," referring to a 2014 appeals court decision that threw...
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US Senate investigates allegations that Wells Fargo fired potential whistleblowers
U.S. senators are investigating Wells Fargo about reports of retribution by bank managers against would-be whistleblowers. The senators are probing whether former Wells Fargo workers were fired or pushed to resign after they called the bank's ethics line. The workers say they were resisting the widespread unethical sales practices that are at the center...
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New S.E.C. focus on cyber attacks and stolen data –tips on breaches flow from whistleblowers
Yahoo's disclosure that it was hacked in 2014 and user data of at least 500 million of accounts has yielded a possible investigation as to whether Yahoo and its senior execs properly disclosed the attack and did so in a timely fashion. The general increase in cyber attacks and stolen data and the need...
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On Wells Fargo firing whistleblowers reporting the massive fraud and the DOJ’s new focus on prosecuting individuals
A significant number of whistleblowers employed by Wells Fargo who wanted to report the terrible wrongdoing they observed were fired in retaliation by the company for wanting to open up, according to CNN. It is now known that Wells Fargo employees opened up 2,000,000 fake accounts in their customers' names, stealing funds from patrons real...
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Bradley Birkenfeld whistleblower winner of $104 million pens book on how he destroyed Swiss bank secrecy
Bradley C. Birkenfeld, the former banker at UBS, who served two and a half years in prison for conspiring with a California developer to evade United States income taxes and who was awarded a record $104 million for revealing secrets of the Swiss banking system has written a book which will be released on...
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