Fraud

Two Florida men were sentenced Friday for leading a nationwide scheme to defraud the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for millions of dollars in loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration (SBA) under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio sentenced Phillip J. Augustin, 53, of Coral Springs, to...

A former coal company executive was arrested today on charges of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), laundering funds, and receiving kickbacks as part of an alleged scheme to pay bribes to government officials in Egypt in connection with contracts with an Egyptian state-owned and state-controlled company, Al Nasr Company for Coke and Chemicals (Al Nasr). The seven-count indictment...

https://youtu.be/dCUQkaB6-ZI Featured image: by Got Credit.

Washington D.C. — The Securities and Exchange Commission obtained an emergency order to halt an alleged ongoing offering fraud and Ponzi-like scheme by Integrated National Resources Inc. (INR), which does business as WeedGenics, and its owners, Rolf Max Hirschmann and Patrick Earl Williams, who have raised more than $60 million from investors to expand their cannabis operations, but have...

Washington D.C. — The Securities and Exchange Commission announced today an award of about $14 million to a whistleblower who published an online report exposing an ongoing fraud. The whistleblower, who days later shared the same information with the SEC and was persistent in reaching out to the staff, prompted the opening of an investigation which resulted in a...

PORTLAND, Ore. — A resident of the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho and former CEO of the Warm Springs Economic Development Corporation (WSEDC) has pleaded guilty for his role in a fraud scheme targeting the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. Roderick Ariwite, 66, pleaded guilty to theft of funds from a tribal organization and interstate transportation of a security taken...

SEC Uncovers $194 Million Penny Stock Schemes that Spanned Three Continents This week the Securities and Exchange Commission announced charges against 16 defendants, located in the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, Bulgaria, Canada, the Cayman Islands, Monaco, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, for participating in multi-year fraudulent penny stock schemes that generated more than $194 million in illicit proceeds....

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has released its annual report. The 2021 Internet Crime Report (pdf) includes information from 847,376 complaints of suspected internet crime—a 7% increase from 2020—and reported losses exceeding $6.9 billion. State-specific statistics have also been released and can be found within the 2021 Internet Crime Report and in the accompanying 2021 State Reports. The top three cyber crimes reported by...

The Department of Justice, together with federal law enforcement partners, has announced criminal charges against six defendants in four separate cases for their alleged involvement in cryptocurrency-related fraud, including the largest known Non-Fungible Token (NFT) scheme charged to date, a fraudulent investment fund that purportedly traded on cryptocurrency exchanges, a global Ponzi scheme involving the sale of unregistered crypto...

LOS ANGELES – A Riverside County man was sentenced today to 60 months in federal prison for using hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for personal expenses such as luxury cars after he obtained a COVID-business relief loan for more than $7 million on behalf of his pothole-repair company. Oumar Sissoko, 59, of Murrieta, was...