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Diamond Sports Group, the bankrupt operator of Bally Sports-branded local sports channels, has struck a deal to continue broadcasting Cleveland Guardians, Minnesota Twins and Texas Rangers games through the upcoming Major League Baseball season, Bloomberg News reported. Diamond said Friday’s agreements with the three MLB clubs avoid potential disruption for fans and that the company will continue talks with the teams and the league as it hammers out a restructuring plan to save the broadcaster from closing. The plan is backed by Diamond’s major debt holders and Amazon.com Inc. The agreements shorten the duration of Diamond’s broadcasting deals with the MLB clubs, which will now expire following the 2024 season, according to court documents. Diamond, a subsidiary of Sinclair Inc., also bolstered the teams’ rights to repayment in chapter 11 should the company breach the new agreements. Financial terms of the deals were not publicly disclosed in court papers. Last year, MLB had to step in to help broadcast San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks games after Diamond dropped telecast-rights deals with those clubs after filing bankruptcy. Diamond has said that it loses money on some of its broadcast deals and attempted to use chapter 11 to reduce amounts it pays certain clubs.

A federal bankruptcy judge on Wednesday approved the sale of a defunct private university’s campus to the owner of a West Virginia construction firm for $5 million, the Associated Press reported. Craig G. Phillips, owner of CGP Construction of Elkins, was awarded the former Alderson Broaddus University’s land, buildings and other property in Philippi after making a bid at the deadline, news outlets reported. The sale is expected to be completed within 30 days. DACK, a real estate company in nearby Buckhannon, had made a $4.9 million initial bid. DACK did not counter CGP’s bid at Wednesday’s hearing. Mr. Phillips did not specify what his plans are for the campus. Alderson Broaddus, which was founded in 1932, had been struggling financially for several years. The small Baptist university filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy in August, a month after announcing that it planned to stop operating. Alderson Broaddus took down its website, encouraged its employees to seek unemployment insurance benefits and announced that it voluntarily resigned its accreditation with the Higher Learning Commission. A board overseeing the state’s four-year colleges and universities had revoked the school’s ability to award degrees effective Dec. 31. The university’s 625 students then scrambled to enroll at other colleges.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has asked the Justice Department’s bankruptcy watchdog to join forces with the tort claimants committee in its appeal to throw out prison healthcare provider Tehum Care Services’ chapter 11 case, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Warren on Wednesday sent a letter to Tara Twomey, director of the Executive Office for U.S. Trustees, and Kevin Epstein, U.S. Trustee for the Southern and Western District of Texas. In that letter, Warren said the committee, in its motion to dismiss, argued persuasively that the case is a “bad-faith attempt to defraud creditors, many of whom faced serious injury or death” under Corizon Health. Corizon split into two in 2022 — Tehum and operating business YesCare — using a controversial legal tactic known as the Texas Two-Step. Tehum filed for chapter 11 in February last year, carrying into bankruptcy court debts and liabilities to prisoners, healthcare providers, insurance companies and others accumulated by Corizon. YesCare, among the nation’s largest providers of healthcare in prisons and jails, operates business as usual, while malpractice lawsuits filed against Corizon by former and current inmates were paused because of Tehum’s bankruptcy.

Three people have been charged with orchestrating a SIM-swapping scam that siphoned more than $400 million from FTX as the cryptocurrency exchange spiraled into bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Hours after FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried resigned, hackers drained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of digital currency from the platform, before funneling it through a web of decentralized exchanges. Bankman-Fried, who is facing decades in prison after being convicted of fraud late last year, distanced himself from the hack, but speculated that it could have been an inside job. Turns out it wasn’t, prosecutors say. The Department of Justice charged Robert Powell, of Illinois, Emily Hernandez, of Colorado, and Carter Rohn, of Indiana, last month with participating in a SIM-swapping ring that targeted FTX and other individuals over a two year period. SIM swappers have repeatedly identified victims in the crypto world and FTX’s lax security — pointed out by the company’s new CEO after he took over — appeared to make it a prime target. According to the indictment filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., Powell, Rohn and Hernandez collected personal data of about 50 victims and used the information to convince cell phone providers to port the victims’ phone numbers to a dummy phone in their possession. In doing so, the trio could intercept text messages — including multi-factor authentication codes, which allowed them to break into the victims’ financial accounts and crypto wallets. The indictment does not name FTX, but two people familiar with the case confirmed it was in fact “victim company-1” in the court filings.

Crypto lender Genesis Global has settled a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit over its defunct Gemini Earn lending program, agreeing to a $21 million fine that will be paid only if Genesis is able to fully repay customers in its bankruptcy, Reuters reported. The deal will help Genesis avoid the costs and risks of defending itself from an SEC lawsuit that had accused the company of illegally selling securities. The settlement will allow Genesis to focus on repaying customers and other creditors, according to documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan on Wednesday evening. Genesis did not admit or deny wrongdoing in the settlement agreement. The SEC sued Genesis the week before it filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2023, claiming that Genesis and cryptocurrency exchange Gemini Trust illegally sold securities to hundreds of thousands of investors through their jointly-managed crypto lending program, Gemini Earn. The two companies partnered in December 2020 to allow Gemini customers the chance to loan their crypto assets to Genesis in exchange for earning interest, ultimately collecting billions of dollars' worth of crypto assets from investors. The Earn program was halted during a crypto market crash in November 2023, and its failure has spurred litigation between Genesis, Gemini, and Genesis's parent company, Digital Currency Group. Gemini, run by the Winklevoss twins best known for their legal battle against Meta Platforms' CEO Mark Zuckerberg, had previously sued DCG over the failure of the companies' crypto lending partnership.

A unit of Byju’s, once one of India’s hottest tech startups, filed for chapter 11 protection in Delaware, Bloomberg News reported. Byju’s Alpha, a special-purpose company formed for financing, listed assets of at least $500 million and liabilities of at least $1 billion in its bankruptcy petition. Lenders to Byju’s won a court fight in Delaware late last year that allowed them to appoint a new director of the financing unit.

Petmate, the Platinum Equity-owned pet company, is nearing a deal to restructure its balance sheet and transfer control to its lenders after consumer demand for its products proved insufficient to satisfy its debt obligations, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The company has engaged the law firm Milbank to advise on the restructuring, which could take place either in or out of a bankruptcy court. A group of lenders is working with the law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher and is in discussions with Petmate over its proposed reorganization plan. Under the proposal, Petmate lenders would swap much of the roughly $750 million of debt for equity in the company. The deal would reduce Petmate’s debt by about $600 million. Platinum, the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based private-equity firm led by Tom Gores, last year provided Petmate with a loan to help buy the company some time to work out a restructuring plan. Petmate has been operating since 1959 and is known for its dog kennels, houses, toys, and other canine treats and accessories. Platinum acquired the company in 2021. Petmate subsequently faced earnings erosion as pet owners scaled back spending due to inflation and sought lower-cost options.

After winding down its out-of-town operations and ducking into bankruptcy last summer, WayForth’s CEO says the Richmond-based moving company is now moving in the right direction, RichmondBizSense.com reported. The once fast-growing firm that caters to seniors and formerly had a multistate presence is now operating solely in central Virginia about five months after it moved to downsize and filed for chapter 11 protection. CEO Craig Shealy said in a recent interview with BizSense that WayForth has pared back operations to the greater Richmond region to build a new foundation for the company as it looks toward a new year as a leaner operation coming out of its bankruptcy restructuring. “Our business in Richmond continues to operate and is doing well. We’re looking forward to finishing the whole restructuring process and getting back to business,” Shealy said. A federal bankruptcy judge recently approved WayForth’s chapter 11 restructuring plan. Shealy said that payments to the company’s creditors are expected to begin in April or May.