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The top securities agency in the United States has accused Volkswagen of undertaking a “massive fraud” and lying to investors, the latest in an ongoing diesel emissions scandal that has beleaguered the German carmaker, the New York Times reported. The Securities and Exchange Commission said yesterday that it was suing Volkswagen and Martin Winterkorn, its former chief executive, in a case related to a decade-long scheme undertaken by one of the world’s biggest carmakers to fudge its diesel emissions testing. The agency is seeking to bar Winterkorn from being an executive director of any publicly listed company in the U.S. It is also seeking to recover what it called “ill-gotten gains” from Volkswagen. Federal prosecutors criminally charged Winterkorn in 2018 with conspiring to hide the emissions cheating, elevating the scandal at the automaker to the very top of its management.

The tipster who led federal authorities to the biggest college-admissions scam they have ever prosecuted was Morrie Tobin, a Los Angeles financial executive who was being investigated in a securities fraud case, the Wall Street Journal reported. Tobin was being questioned in an alleged pump-and-dump investment scheme — in which people conspire to inflate the price of a stock so they can sell it at a profit — when he offered a tip to federal authorities in an effort to obtain leniency. Tobin, who attended Yale University, told investigators that the head women’s soccer coach at Yale had sought a bribe in return for getting his daughter into the Ivy League school. That tip led investigators to unravel a wide-ranging scheme in which dozens of wealthy parents allegedly paid a college consultant to facilitate cheating on entrance exams and falsifying student athletic profiles. It also involved allegedly bribing coaches at schools including the University of Southern California, Georgetown University and Stanford University to take their children on as recruited athletes, a near guaranteed way of being accepted.

TPG Capital, one of the world's biggest private equity firms, has placed executive Bill McGlashan on "indefinite administrative leave" after he was named in a sweeping criminal probe of bribery and cheating in college admissions, Forbes reported. Other financiers, from Manuel Henriquez, the CEO of NYSE-listed Hercules Capital, and Doug Hodge, the former head of bond giant Pacific Investment Management, were also named in the probe. Dubbed "Operation Varsity Blues," on Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney in Massachusetts charged 50 people, from television stars, to business leaders, and university coaches of using alleged bribery, fraudulent college entrance exams and quid pro quo deals to get their students into universities, including Yale University, Stanford University, the University of Texas, the University of Southern California, and the University of California – Los Angeles. The schemes were organized by Rick Singer, an owner of a college counseling and admissions company called The Edge College & Career Network and a nonprofit called The Key World Foundation.

Lawyers for Stanley Black & Decker Inc. say the former finance chief at a payments processor from which the tool maker is trying to recover money previously faced a civil lawsuit over alleged bogus expense reports and has done prison time, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. A lawyer representing Stanley Black & Decker in the bankruptcy of IPS Worldwide LLC told a bankruptcy judge on Thursday that it is “pretty obvious that there has been fraud, dishonesty, incompetence and gross mismanagement at the top” at the freight-shipping services provider, where the tool maker says $50 million of its money has gone missing. Mark Bloom, a Greenberg Traurig LLP lawyer representing Stanley Black & Decker, told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Karen Jennemann that his client had uncovered a 2001 California judgment against former IPS Chief Financial Officer Michael McNett, in which he was ordered to pay $4 million to a previous employer. McNett was accused of, among other things, submitting false payment vouchers for personal expenses and cash-advance requests.

From a top bunk in a 12-person prison cell in Fort Dix, N.J., Martin Shkreli is at work on a big second act, the Wall Street Journal reported. Wielding little more than a contraband smartphone, the disgraced pharmaceutical executive remains the shadow power at Phoenixus AG, the drug company that became a national lightning rod for jacking up the prices of rare drugs under its former name, Turing Pharmaceuticals AG. Shkreli still helps call the shots: A few weeks ago he rang up his handpicked chief executive during a safari vacation — to fire him, according to a person familiar with the exchange. Shkreli is 16 months into a seven-year sentence for securities fraud. Shkreli’s continued involvement with Phoenixus, his private Swiss drug company operating out of Manhattan, could prove perilous. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has interviewed associates about his role there.

The founder of a Nevada-based company was arrested on Wednesday on federal charges he participated in a $6 million scheme to defraud people who wanted to buy a virtual currency called My Big Coin that he claimed was backed by gold, Reuters reported. Randall Crater, the principal operator of My Big Coin Pay Inc., was arrested in Florida after being charged in an indictment filed in federal court in Boston with seven counts of wire fraud and unlawful monetary transactions. The indictment came after the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission last year sued the company, Crater and three other men and accused them of participating in a fraudulent virtual currency scheme. The lawsuit led to one of the first court rulings holding that a virtual currency could be considered a commodity within the jurisdiction of the U.S. derivatives regulator. That civil case remains pending. Ray Chandler, a lawyer for Crater, said that the 48-year-old was innocent and plans to plead not guilty when he is eventually arraigned. The case against Crater, of East Hampton, New York, is one of several that U.S. prosecutors and regulators have recently pursued amid concerns about fraud schemes targeting cryptocurrency users. Prosecutors said from 2014 to 2017, Crater and others sought to defraud investors by soliciting investments in My Big Coin, which they falsely claimed was backed by gold and could be traded on a virtual currency exchange.

A federal appeals court said the trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff’s firm may pursue dozens of lawsuits to recoup funds from Koch Industries Inc., controlled by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, and other defendants, including major banks, Reuters reported. Yesterday’s decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned November 2016 dismissals by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein. It gives the trustee Irving Picard a chance to add hundreds of millions of dollars to the $13.36 billion he has recouped for former customers of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. The trustee has estimated that the customers lost $17.5 billion in Madoff’s fraud, which was uncovered in December 2008. Picard had sued Koch, HSBC Holdings Plc, UBS AG and others in 88 lawsuits to recoup funds traceable to the imprisoned swindler, but which had been sent outside the U.S. The lawsuits targeted foreign entities that had received Madoff-linked money from other foreign transferees, including “feeder funds” that sent client money to Madoff. Writing for a three-judge panel on Monday, Circuit Judge Richard Wesley said the later transfers qualified as domestic because the money originally came from Madoff’s firm.

The court-appointed trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff’s firm said he began distributing $464 million to the imprisoned swindler’s former customers on Friday, boosting their recovery to roughly $12.2 billion, Reuters reported. Irving Picard, the trustee, said that the payout means all former customers of Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities LLC who were eligible to recoup up to $1.49 million for their losses will have been repaid in full. The trustee said $13.36 billion, or 76 percent, of the roughly $17.5 billion that customers lost in Madoff’s fraud has been amassed through recoveries or agreements to recover. Some is being held back because of pending litigation. The fraud was uncovered in December 2008, when Madoff was arrested.

Jeffrey K. Skilling, the former Enron CEO who spent the past 12 years in prison for his role in masterminding one of most notorious corporate fraud cases in history, was released from federal custody on Thursday, the Bureau of Prisons said, the Houston Chronicle reported. In August, Skilling was released to a halfway house at an undisclosed location from a minimum security federal prison camp in Alabama. Enron's collapse cost investors billions of dollars and wiped out the retirement savings and jobs of thousands of employees. Skilling was convicted of 12 counts of securities fraud, five counts of making false statements to auditors, one count of insider trading and one count of conspiracy in 2006 for his role in hiding debt and orchestrating a web of financial fraud that ended in the Houston company's bankruptcy.