Crime

CEO of Dozens of Companies and Entities Charged in Scheme to Traffic an Estimated $1 Billion in Fraudulent and Counterfeit Cisco Networking Equipment A federal grand jury in the District of New Jersey returned an indictment last week charging a resident of Florida with running a massive operation over many years to traffic in fraudulent and counterfeit Cisco networking equipment...

A federal jury convicted a New York man this week in an over $600 million health care fraud, wire fraud, and identity theft scheme. According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Mathew James, 54, of East Northport, operated a medical billing company that billed for procedures that were either more serious or entirely different than those James’ doctor-clients...

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...

A former Mississippi pharmacist was sentenced this week to 10 years in the Southern District of Mississippi for a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud TRICARE and private insurance companies by paying kickbacks to distributors for the referral of medically unnecessary prescriptions. The conduct resulted in more than $180 million in fraudulent billings, including more than $50 million paid by federal...

LOS ANGELES – Federal authorities today announced a series of cases stemming from an illegal gambling operation that involved current and former professional athletes, some of whom assisted with the business and others who placed large bets on games. In documents unsealed Wednesday in United States District Court, the principals of the operation agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy charges...

Defendants’ Separate Campaigns Both Targeted Software and Hardware for Operational Technology Systems The Department of Justice has unsealed two indictments charging four defendants –all Russian nationals who worked for the Russian government– with attempting, supporting and conducting computer intrusions that together, in two separate conspiracies, targeted the global energy sector between 2012 and 2018. In total, these hacking campaigns targeted...

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...

Fraudulently Claimed Nearly $3 Million in Refunds Two Florida tax preparers were sentenced to prison yesterday for conspiring to defraud the United States and preparing false tax returns. Nikency Alexis, the owner and operator of Unity Tax & Financial Services (Unity Tax), a Broward County tax preparation business, was sentenced to 45 months  in prison, and Thony Guillaume, who worked as...

A Special Report: The Harrowing Impunity of White-Collar Crime (Part IV) The attempted sales are also allegedly linked to conman Marc Lubaszka’s private jet company, Fly Private X, and convicted fraudster Arael Doolittle AN IMPORTANT NOTE: On June 22, 2021, Hadari Oshri –Marc Lubaszka’s business partner– filed a frivolous civil harassment restraining order (CHRO) against me to stop the publication of...

(HOUSTON) – A 56-year-old Houston resident has been ordered to federal prison for scheming to fraudulently sell 50 million non-existent N95 facemasks to the Australian government, announced U.S. Attorney Jennifer B. Lowery. Arael Doolittle pleaded guilty July 27, 2021. Today, U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes ordered him to serve a 54-month sentence. At the hearing, the court heard additional evidence...