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The battle for control of Woodbridge Group of Companies LLC, the bankrupt real estate operation caught up in an alleged $1 billion Ponzi scheme, ended Tuesday with a settlement that includes the resignation of the turnaround management team hired by ex-chief executive and accused fraudster Robert Shapiro, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. New board members of the embattled company include Michael Goldberg, a Florida lawyer who specializes in cleaning up after Ponzi scheme fraud, and Freddie Reiss and Richard Nevins, both turnaround executives with decades of experience. Shapiro, who has denied the Securities and Exchange Commission’s claims he ran Woodbridge as a Ponzi scheme, will no longer have influence on the company’s affairs under the deal. His alleged victims, including thousands of elderly people who plunged big chunks of their life savings into Woodbridge, will get more help advocating for their interests in the bankruptcy case, as part of a settlement.

Starting in 2015, KPMG LLP wanted badly to improve its standing in the eyes of its regulator. But when KPMG recruited employees from its overseer, a scandal emerged over leaks of confidential information that resulted yesterday in the indictments of five people on fraud and conspiracy charges, the Wall Street Journal reported. Authorities likened it to “stealing the exam”: Employees of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the main regulator of the audit industry, gave KPMG executives advance peeks at the secret lists of KPMG audits the PCAOB planned to review during annual inspections of the firm, prosecutors alleged in an indictment unsealed yesterday. That information would have enabled KPMG to better prepare for the inspections, an important report card of the firm’s performance. As the scheme unraveled, accountants deleted messages, and considered hiding their communications using prepaid “burner” phones and codes over Instagram, prosecutors said.

An independent management team resigned from the Woodbridge Group of Companies on Friday after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sought a court-appointed trustee to run the property firm that the regulator called a $1.2 billion Ponzi fraud, Reuters reported. The team included Marc Beilinson as independent manager and Lawrence Perkins of SierraConstellation Partners LLC as chief restructuring officer, Woodbridge said in a statement. Perkins will remain until the company hires a chief executive with homebuilding experience, it added. The moves came hours after the conclusion of three days of hearings in Wilmington, Del., during which the SEC and the official committee of unsecured creditors pushed to replace the pair with an independent trustee. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Carey scheduled closing arguments for Tuesday.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday urged a federal judge to appoint a trustee to manage the Woodbridge Group of Companies, a bankrupt property developer the regulator accused of being a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme, Reuters reported. The regulator has said investors are owed more than $961 million, and has alleged the company’s owner, Robert Shapiro, used at least $21 million for private jets, luxury cars, wine and political donations. Shapiro has denied the allegations. Larry Perkins, who was hired as a chief restructuring officer in October, said that the company is investigating the allegations.