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Tennis Ace Boris Becker Jailed for Two and a Half Years for Hiding Assets from Bankruptcy

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Grand Slam champion Boris Becker has been jailed for two and a half years after hiding assets and debts worth more than £2.5 million after being declared bankrupt, the Evening Standard reported. The three-time Wimbledon winner deliberately transferred money to family and associates when he ran aground financially in June 2017, successfully keeping £390,000 (€426,930) and the proceeds of a bank loan worth £1.1 million from his creditors. Becker, the former World Number One, also failed to declare his ownership of a £1 million German property and £75,000 in shares he held in a tech firm. The tennis great was made bankrupt after his £38 million sporting fortune was swallowed up by an expensive divorce, child maintenance, and the cost of continuing his luxury lifestyle.

Archegos Founder Bill Hwang, Former CFO Charged With Securities Fraud

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Archegos Capital Management founder Bill Hwang and its former chief financial officer, Patrick Halligan, were indicted on securities fraud and racketeering charges on Wednesday in what prosecutors said was a massive fraud and manipulation scheme that nearly jeopardized the U.S. financial system, the Wall Street Journal reported. Archegos collapsed in March 2021, leaving banks with more than $10 billion in losses and sparking calls for more regulatory oversight. More than $100 billion in stock market value vanished in a matter of days. Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, described the purported scheme as historic in scope, alleging that defendants and their co-conspirators lied to banks to obtain billions of dollars in loans, which they then used to inflate the stock price of publicly traded companies. (Subscription required.)

Doctor Sentenced in $12 Million Medicare Fraud and Device Adulteration Scheme

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A California doctor was sentenced today to 93 months in prison for defrauding Medicare, re-packaging single-use catheters for re-use on patients, and submitting false declarations in a bankruptcy proceeding, according to a DOJ press release. According to court documents, Donald Woo Lee recruited Medicare beneficiaries to his clinics, falsely diagnosed the beneficiaries, and provided the beneficiaries with medically unnecessary procedures. Lee billed these unnecessary procedures to Medicare using an inappropriate code in order to obtain a higher reimbursement, a practice known as “upcoding.” In addition, the evidence showed that Lee re-packaged used, contaminated catheters for re-use on patients. These catheters had been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for marketing as single-use only and the re-use of these devices put patients at risk of infection and other bodily injury. Lee submitted claims of approximately $12 million to Medicare for the vein ablation procedures he performed, and received $4.5 million as a result. In October 2019, Lee was convicted after a five-day trial, when a jury found him guilty of seven counts of health care fraud and one count of adulteration of a medical device. Lee also pleaded guilty on March 2, 2020, to one count of submitting false declarations in a bankruptcy proceeding. In addition to the term of imprisonment, Lee was sentenced to serve three years of supervised release and ordered to pay more than $4.5 million in restitution to Medicare.

Shkreli's Convicted Lawyer Wants DOJ's Hands Off Firm Retirement Funds

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An attorney for convicted former law partner Evan Greebel urged a U.S. appeals court on Thursday to block federal prosecutors from taking his client's retirement account funds to help pay more than $10.4 million owed to victims of a fraud scheme involving ex-pharma executive Martin Shkreli, Reuters reported. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York weighed Greebel's contention that retirement accounts associated with his work at Katten Muchin Rosenman, where he had been a partner until 2015, and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson should be off-limits from the government. A jury found Greebel guilty in 2017 in a conspiracy with Shkreli to dupe investors in his company Retrophin Inc. Greebel was then a partner at Katten Muchin and served as outside counsel to Retrophin. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for helping Shkreli, and sentenced to seven years for related charges. Greebel's lawyer, Reed Brodsky of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, argued his client doesn't meet plan requirements to immediately withdraw the funds to pay for the victims' restitution. He also said that even if the government could reach the accounts, there's a 25% garnishment cap based on the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act.

U.S. Military Landlord Put Families at Risk Even After Fraud Plea, Senate Probe Says

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Balfour Beatty Communities, one of the U.S. military's largest private landlords, continues placing the health of service members and their families at risk even after pleading guilty last year to defrauding the U.S. government and being levied a $65 million fine, a Senate investigation being released Tuesday found, Reuters reported. During their eight-month probe, Senate investigators said they found evidence of environmental hazards at two military housing communities, including mold, faulty gas furnaces, roofing leaks and asbestos concerns, according to the report released by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Senate staff also said that they unearthed inaccuracies in documentation of military housing maintenance by Balfour Beatty, like the earlier ones identified from 2013 to 2019 in a Department of Justice case that resulted in the company pleading guilty to defrauding the U.S. government last December. At the bases examined in the congressional probe — Army Fort Gordon in Georgia and Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas — Balfour Beatty’s housing management practices have continued to “put the health and safety of military families at risk,” the report said. On Monday, Balfour Beatty said in a statement that the company had not yet seen the Senate report and was unaware of any recent improper practices. The company has enacted a new incentive fee compliance program and new mold prevention procedures as well.

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U.S. Charges Two Europeans over North Korea Crypto Conspiracy Involving an American

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The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday announced the indictment of two Europeans for allegedly conspiring with a recently sentenced American cryptocurrency researcher to help North Korea evade U.S. sanctions, Reuters reported. Alejandro Cao de Benos of Spain, who founded a pro-Pyongyang affinity organization, and Christopher Emms of Britain, a cryptocurrency businessman, were accused of recruiting the researcher Virgil Griffith to illegally provide cryptocurrency and blockchain technology services to North Korea. Both defendants are at large. Lawyers for both could not immediately be identified. Prosecutors said Cao de Benos and Emms arranged for Griffith, who holds a doctorate from the California Institute of Technology, to travel to North Korea via China in April 2019 to attend their Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference.

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Infowars’ Alex Jones Seeks to Leverage Small-Business Bankruptcy Law

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Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is attempting to take advantage of a new bankruptcy law that has saved many small businesses during the pandemic in a bid to end costly defamation lawsuits against him and his far-right website, Infowars, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. He isn’t alone in leveraging the small-business bankruptcy option to try to weather allegations of wrongdoing or enterprise-threatening lawsuits. A national coin-dealing business and a medical cost-sharing nonprofit have also used the special chapter 11 process when faced with investigations into their practices by state authorities. But bankruptcy specialists who helped craft the small-business law, known as subchapter V, have said it was meant for cash-strapped mom-and-pop businesses, not companies or people seeking to leverage its protections to settle litigation for less than what they could be forced to pay in the civil justice system. Subchapter V has bipartisan support in Congress and is generally viewed by bankruptcy specialists as helping small businesses to restructure debt, get a fresh start and keep their owners in control. It also lowers the costs of the chapter 11 process, which can be prohibitively expensive for small businesses to even attempt. The efficiency of Subchapter V, however, has also raised concerns it could be abused by bad actors. Joe Pack, a lawyer experienced in subchapter V cases, said it makes some of the safeguards for creditors less effective than in traditional chapter 11 cases. “What you effectively have now is an opportunity for anybody who ever gets sued to be able to simply file for subchapter V, and they can value the damages themselves based on what they think they’re willing to pay,” Mr. Pack said.
 
In related news, the U.S. Trustee cast doubt on far-right radio host Alex Jones’s use of bankruptcy as three companies he once owned prepare for their first day in court Friday, Bloomberg News reported. The DOJ’s bankruptcy watchdog said that the companies’ chapter 11 filing “raises numerous questions — the answers to which may demonstrate these cases are an abuse of the bankruptcy system,” according to court papers filed Thursday. The U.S. Trustee urged a federal judge in Texas to reject a request to appoint former judges to oversee a proposed victim compensation fund. Three small entities Jones once owned are seeking to use bankruptcy to set up a trust to pay damages that may be won in court by relatives of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre. The relatives of Sandy Hook victims won key court rulings in Connecticut and Texas against Jones after he called the shootings a hoax, and future trials will determine the size of the damages. “This Motion to appoint the trustees for the Litigation Settlement Trust seems to be just the first step for Debtors to carry out Jones’s and FSS’s scheme of avoiding the burdens of bankruptcy while reaping its benefits,” the U.S. Trustee added in court papers. Read more.

 

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MoneyGram Sued for Allegedly Delaying Transfers and Withholding Refunds

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The international money transfer company MoneyGram harmed customers by delaying transfers and failing to properly investigate and fix transfer errors, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and New York’s attorney general, the New York Times reported. The suit accuses MoneyGram of repeatedly flouting a variety of consumer protection laws and failing to correct problems identified by regulators. Officials at the consumer bureau did not say specifically how many customers they believe were harmed, but they pointed to MoneyGram’s broad reach: The company transmits around $100 billion a year for some 47 million customers in 200 countries. Immigrant workers often rely on MoneyGram and its competitors to send money to relatives back home. “Consumers deserve to know where their money went,” Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, said in a statement. “Companies have an obligation to be transparent with consumers, treat them fairly and follow the law, but MoneyGram repeatedly failed to do so.” MoneyGram, in a written statement, called the lawsuit “frivolous.” The company has invested heavily “to build a best-in-class compliance program with record-low anti-fraud numbers designed to protect consumers against harm,” it said. Rohit Chopra, the consumer bureau’s director, cast MoneyGram’s actions as part of a pattern of misdeeds. The company paid $18 million in 2009 to settle fraud charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission, and paid $125 million in 2018 to settle charges that it had violated its earlier agreement with the commission and a 2012 deal with the Justice Department regarding its anti-fraud measures.

Former Paralegal for Chicago Law Firm Charged With Embezzling Bankruptcy Estate Funds

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A former paralegal for a Chicago law firm has been indicted for allegedly embezzling more than $600,000 from bankruptcy estate accounts, according to a DOJ press release. Becky Louise Sutton fraudulently embezzled the funds from 2009 to 2018 while working on bankruptcy matters at the law firm, according to an indictment returned Wednesday in U.S. District in Chicago. Sutton orchestrated the fraudulent transfers of bankruptcy funds from fiduciary bank accounts intended for creditors to accounts Sutton controlled, including her personal bank account, credit card account, student loan account, and mortgage account, the indictment states. In one instance, Sutton used a company with a name similar to a true creditor to disguise her fraudulent diversion of the funds, the indictment states. The indictment charges Sutton with three counts of wire fraud and three counts of embezzlement from the estate of a debtor. The indictment seeks forfeiture from Sutton of $611,263 in alleged criminally derived proceeds.  Arraignment in federal court in Chicago has not yet been scheduled.
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Crypto Thieves Get Bolder by the Heist, Stealing Record Amounts

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Cryptocurrency hacks are getting bigger. On Sunday, a hacker exploited a new algorithmic stablecoin project called Beanstalk and drained it of $182 million worth of digital assets, the Wall Street Journal reported. The hack wiped out all of the ether held by the fund. Once the ether was removed, the value of the stablecoin itself, called Bean, collapsed to 10 cents from $1 on Sunday, according to data firm CoinGecko. Most recently it was trading at 6 cents. After the bean stablecoin’s collapse, the hacker’s profit was about $76 million, according to a blog post from Beanstalk Farms, the group that operates the project. The Beanstalk hack was the fifth-largest crypto theft on record, according to Rekt.news, which tracks crypto hacks. The hack follows a $540 million theft last month from the platform for the online game Axie Infinity. The 2022 pace of roughly a hack a week is in line with last year, but the amount stolen is rising, according to Rekt. Since August, there have been 37 hacks in 38 weeks that have drained about $2.9 billion worth of cryptocurrencies. That is on par with the $3.2 billion stolen in all of 2021, according to analytics firm Chainalysis. Hackers are finding larger exploits amid the increase of decentralized finance, or DeFi, projects. Hackers tend to target new protocols that haven’t been fully tested and vetted, said Max Galka, chief executive of crypto forensics firm Elementus. (Subscription required.)
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