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A New Jersey man has been sentenced to six years in prison for running a scam that victimized distressed homeowners and private investors, NationalMortgageNews.com reported yesterday. Randy Poulson was accused of netting about $3 million in illegal profits from his fraudulent scheme, according to a Justice Department news release. Poulson, working through his businesses Equity Capital Investments, Poulson Russo LLC and South Jersey Real Estate Investors Associates, lured victims into attending his paid seminars on real estate. His scheme also included promises to pay the mortgages of homeowners who faced foreclosure, if they sold him their homes. After obtaining the deed, he would then stop making mortgage payments, causing the loans to default. Read more. 

For further analysis of commercial fraud cases, be sure to pick up ABI’s Fraud and Forensics: Piercing Through the Deception in a Commercial Fraud Case. 

The federal judge who ordered a group of bankruptcy professionals to report conversations with Bloomberg LP reporters involving troubled rare-earths mining company Molycorp Inc. changed his mind yesterday and granted the news organization more time to mount a legal challenge, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Sontchi said that he may have erred in denying Bloomberg a chance to challenge the order he issued last week. That order required some 120 professionals involved in Molycorp’s chapter 11 case to file sworn statements about any conversation they had with Bloomberg reporters concerning the mining company in recent months.

Martin Shkreli is looking for new lawyers to help him fight securities fraud charges, Bloomberg News reported yesterday.  Attorneys for the former drug executive filed a letter in Brooklyn, New York, federal court saying their client has indicated he wants new counsel. The lawyers asked to delay a status conference set for today. The lawyers said issues arose over the holiday weekend. On Jan. 17, Shkreli allowed a reporter for New York’s Fox 5 TV station to come to his apartment for an interview in which he complained about being called a “pharma bro” in the press. He described the criminal case against him as “fictitious.”

A U.S. judge yesterday denied a request by media company Bloomberg LP to stay an order requiring more than 100 people to disclose information they shared with its reporters about the bankruptcy of the largest U.S. rare earth mining company, which Bloomberg said inhibits its free speech rights, Reuters reported yesterday. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Sontchi in Wilmington, Delaware, curtly dismissed the request by Bloomberg's legal team to stay his order for 48 hours so the company could appeal. Last week, Sontchi ordered 123 people to disclose by yesterday their contacts with Bloomberg reporters regarding Molycorp Inc. over the prior 60 days. Judge Sontchi had ordered Molycorp and its creditors and other parties into confidential mediation in November, and information from the mediation was apparently reported by Bloomberg. Judge Sontchi's order did not spell out what specific information in Bloomberg's reporting troubled the judge. The order was prompted by the parties to the case, who consented to making the disclosures. "The order issued by the Delaware bankruptcy court last Thursday strikes at the heart of the First Amendment and the fundamental mission of a free press: to provide transparency into important public events," said John Micklethwait, Bloomberg's editor-in-chief.