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It seemed a facetious question, one intended to provoke the star witness: “Do you think you are good at lying?” But it is the crucial issue at the center of what is likely to be the only trial on U.S. soil in one of the largest international kleptocracy cases in history, the looting of billions of dollars from the people of Malaysia. A former banker at Goldman Sachs, Roger Ng, is accused of taking part in a bribery and kickback scheme that enabled the fraud, which plundered more than $4 billion from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund and bought a king’s ransom of jewelry, art and real estate from Manhattan to London to Beverly Hills, the New York Times reported. Ng’s former boss at Goldman, Tim Leissner, was for years one of Goldman’s most powerful deal makers in Asia. Now, he’s the government’s key witness — and an admittedly prolific fabricator. On the stand in a Brooklyn federal courtroom, he acknowledged misleading co-workers, investigators and all three of his wives. But when Mr. Ng’s lawyer prodded him with the question about whether he’s a good liar, Mr. Leissner coolly replied, “I don’t think so.” Mr. Leissner’s 10 days of testimony — including six days of blistering cross-examination — laid out the details of a global fraud that toppled Malaysia’s prime minister and forced Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s most prestigious financial institutions, to go before a U.S. judge and admit, for the first time in its 153-year-history, that it was guilty of a crime. The question for jurors: How much of what Mr. Leissner said was true? Mr. Leissner acknowledged to the court that he has “lied a lot,” including by presenting a bogus divorce decree to his now-estranged wife, the model and fashion designer Kimora Lee Simmons, so that she would marry him eight years ago. But he insists he’s telling the truth about Mr. Ng, who prosecutors say helped line the pockets of officials in Abu Dhabi and powerful Malaysians close to then Prime Minister Najib Razak.

The Justice Department named a chief prosecutor for pandemic fraud yesterday, following through on President Joe Biden’s State of the Union promise to go after criminals who stole billions in relief money, the Associated Press reported. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said that Kevin Chambers, an associate deputy attorney general, will lead criminal and civil enforcement efforts targeting pandemic-related fraud. Monaco on Thursday convened the department’s COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force, which includes nearly 30 agencies that administer and oversee pandemic relief funding. The Justice Department has already taken enforcement actions related to more than $8 billion in suspected pandemic fraud, Monaco and Attorney General Merrick Garland said yesterday. That includes bringing charges in more than 1,000 criminal cases involving losses in excess of $1.1 billion, opening civil cases against over 1,800 individuals and businesses for alleged fraud involving more than $6 billion in loans, and seizing more than $1.2 billion in relief funds.

In a U.S. court, former Goldman Sachs partner Tim Leissner has admitted to taking $60 million in kickbacks, lying to the bank about his corrupt deals, and twice forging divorce documents to take on new wives, Reuters reported. Despite his history of deceit, Leissner is the key witness prosecutors are asking jurors to believe in the trial of Roger Ng, a former colleague of Leissner's at Goldman who is charged with helping loot Malaysia's 1MDB sovereign wealth fund during a scheme that lasted from 2009 to 2014. Leissner in 2018 pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder money and violate an anti-bribery law, and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. Ng pleaded not guilty to similar charges and is standing trial in Brooklyn federal court. In more than a week of testimony, Leissner has described his high-flying lifestyle as the lucrative 1MDB deals made him a "star," and the steps he took to avoid getting caught. The charges stem from some $6.5 billion in bonds Goldman helped 1MDB sell in 2012 and 2013. Prosecutors say $4.5 billion of that was embezzled by officials, bankers and their associates, in one of the biggest scandals in Wall Street history. Goldman in 2020 agreed to pay a $3 billion fine and have its Malaysia subsidiary plead guilty in U.S. court. The bank said at the time it did not adequately "scrutinize the representations of certain members of the deal team."

U.S. authorities on Tuesday filed criminal charges against a cryptocurrency executive and civil charges against him and his sister, accusing them of defrauding retail investors out of millions of dollars with a digital token known as Ormeus Coin, Reuters reported. In papers filed in Manhattan federal court, the Justice Department said John Barksdale lied about the value and profitability of Ormeus Coin's mining assets, including that the coin was backed by a $250 million mining operation generating more than $5 million of monthly revenue. Barksdale and his sister JonAtina Barksdale were separately charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with conducting fraudulent unregistered offerings of Ormeus Coin. The SEC said the Barksdales since 2017 raised $124 million from more than 20,000 investors through their multi-level marketing company Ormeus Global SA, and spent millions of dollars on travel, real estate and other personal expenses.

A fugitive Malaysian financier said he won support from allies of former U.S. President Donald Trump for a possible settlement of a probe into the looting of funds from the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund, a former Goldman Sachs banker testified on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Tim Leissner offered a glimpse of what he had heard from financier Jho Low about the attempted deal, on the sixth day of his testimony at the trial of Roger Ng, another former Goldman banker. Ng, 49, has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to launder money and violate an anti-bribery law. Leissner, a former Goldman partner, said he had no independent verification of the information. Leissner testified that Low, whom he described as the mastermind of the scheme, told him at a 2017 meeting that Low and his lawyers were in talks with the Trump administration about the potential for a multi-billion dollar deal that would spare several people from U.S. charges. Low told Leissner he had met with Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, in Beijing and had hired Chris Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, as his lawyer with the promise of a $10 million fee if the settlement was successful, Leissner said. Christie said he represented Low in civil forfeiture actions in California that resulted in Low surrendering $700 million to the U.S. Department of Justice. He said he never entered into an agreement to receive a fee if charges were dropped in exchange for payment to the U.S. government.

The Supreme Court declined to take up Citigroup Inc.’s appeal of a $343 million lawsuit demanding the return of funds received from Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme after the bank allegedly uncovered evidence that he was engaged in fraudulent activity, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Citi failed to win the high court’s review of litigation alleging the bank accepted money linked to Mr. Madoff’s phantom investment firm despite knowing facts that suggested a high probability of fraud. As is customary, the justices didn’t give any reason for their refusal on Monday to consider Citi’s appeal. Irving Picard, the trustee digging up money for Mr. Madoff’s victims, first sued Citi in 2010 as part of an international legal campaign targeting alleged beneficiaries of the Ponzi scheme. Mr. Picard has distributed nearly $14.3 billion to account holders of Mr. Madoff’s phantom investment firm, or nearly 70.5 cents on the dollar of allowed customer claims. The bank’s appeal concerned the proper legal standard for evaluating whether indirect recipients of Ponzi scheme proceeds acted in good faith, a possible defense against disgorgement. Monday’s order returns the lawsuit to the bankruptcy court, where Citi and Mr. Picard can resume litigating.

A husband and wife have pleaded guilty to federal charges related to a fraud scheme that included wrongly receiving food assistance, a false bankruptcy and lying to the IRS, officials said, MLive.com reported. Abraham Elsaghir of Dearborn, Mich., pleaded guilty to one count of false statement to an agency of the United States, one count of federal income tax evasion, and one count of bankruptcy fraud, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Samar Elsaghir of Dearborn, Mich., pleaded guilty to one count of false statement to an agency of the United States and one count of federal income tax evasion. They both pleaded before Judge Laurie J. Michelson, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. According to information in the plea agreements, in May 2017, Abraham and Samar Elsaghir filed a voluntary chapter 7 petition in bankruptcy and received a discharge of their debts in August 2017. However, the Elsaghirs falsified their bankruptcy report by underreporting their income.