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Stanford Financial Group's top investment executive, Laura Pendergest-Holt, is expected to plead guilty to obstruction of justice on Thursday for her alleged role in a $7 billion Ponzi scheme that was among the largest frauds in U.S. history, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The expected plea by Pendergest-Holt, Stanford's chief investment officer, follows the sentencing last week of convicted Ponzi schemer R. Allen Stanford to 110 years in prison. A Federal Bureau of Investigation affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Dallas had alleged that Pendergest-Holt misled Securities and Exchange Commission investigators who took her testimony in the probe of alleged fraud at Stanford International Bank, Stanford's Antigua-based offshore bank. Pendergest-Holt was scheduled to go on trial in September.

U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride said that Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp.'s former finance chief was sentenced to five years prison for helping his boss, Lee Farkas, commit what prosecutors say was one of the largest bank frauds in U.S. history, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. Delton de Armas, 41, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema after pleading guilty on March 20 to one count of conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud and one count of making false statements. De Armas admitted he participated in a scheme that contributed to the failures of Montgomery, Ala.-based Colonial Bank and its parent, Colonial BancGroup, once among the nation's 25 biggest depository banks.

R. Allen Stanford, found guilty of leading a $7 billion international fraud, was sentenced to 110 years in prison after a prosecutor said he treated his victims like "road kill," Bloomberg News reported yesterday. U.S. District Judge David Hittner imposed the sentence today in Houston and ordered Stanford to forfeit $5.9 billion. Jurors in March convicted the Stanford Financial Group principal of 13 charges, including five counts of mail fraud and four of wire fraud.

While former trader David Kugel was helping conman Bernard Madoff fabricate stock trades, his son Craig Kugel was giving U.S. authorities false information about who worked at the now-defunct Madoff firm, Reuters reported yesterday. Craig Kugel, a human resources employee at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC from 2001 until the massive Madoff fraud was revealed in December 2008, pleaded guilty to five criminal charges in U.S. District Court in New York yesterday. He is not charged with involvement in the massive Madoff fraud. However, Kugel told the judge that he sent forms to the U.S. Department of Labor about people who were not employed by the firm even though they were on payroll and entitled to benefits. He also admitted to filing false U.S. individual income tax returns.

Abacus Federal Savings Bank, a small bank with a major presence in New York City's Chinese community, and 19 of its former employees have been charged with inflating the qualifications of mortgage applicants to meet federal loan standards, a scheme that prosecutors say brought the bank tens of millions of dollars in ill-gotten fees and sent hundreds of millions of dollars in risky mortgages to the investment market, the New York Times reported on Friday. From May 2005 through February 2010, hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Abacus mortgages were guaranteed by Fannie Mae based upon false information, the indictment says. In announcing the indictment on Thursday, Manhattan district attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said that nearly all of the Abacus loans were still performing, meaning the borrowers were still making payments on the mortgages they received. However, Vance said that the 2008 financial crisis showed the danger of waiting for illegitimate mortgages to go bad.

Federal prosecutors in Chicago said on Friday that two former executives at Sentinel Management Group Inc. were indicted for allegedly defrauding customers out of more than $500 million before the futures brokerage went bankrupt in 2007, Reuters reported on Friday. Eric Bloom, who was Sentinel's chief executive, and Charles Mosley, who was a senior vice president and head trader, were accused of pledging customer securities as collateral for a bank credit line that funded a "house" trading portfolio meant to benefit them and Bloom's family. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in Chicago, who announced the charges, called the case one of the largest criminal financial fraud cases ever prosecuted by his office. Sentinel's collapse has been compared with the October 2011 bankruptcy of the larger MF Global Holdings Ltd. No criminal charges have been brought in that case, which Fitzgerald's office is also investigating. According to the indictment in the Sentinel case, Bloom also misled customers in a letter four days before the firm's bankruptcy, blaming its inability to honor client redemptions on a market "liquidity crisis" and "investor fear and panic."

A $162 million settlement between the owners of the New York Mets and the trustee seeking money for the victims of Bernard Madoff's fraud was approved yesterday by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, Reuters reported. The settlement, announced on March 19, was a victory for brothers-in-law Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz and their family-run Sterling Equities real estate, baseball and hedge-fund empire. Wilpon and Katz will not have to pay out any cash immediately and trustee Irving Picard dropped his allegation that they turned a blind eye to Madoff's fraud. The court settlement calls for payments over a five-year period. Wilpon and Katz will not have to pay any cash until the fourth year. The $162 million could end up being mostly paid with money due to Sterling Equities as a victim of the fraud.

Recent setbacks by the court-appointed trustee trying to recoup assets on Madoff victims' behalf - combined with frustration over the trustee's legal and other fees, which to date total more than $550 million and counting - are encouraging some former Madoff customers to unload their claims, Reuters reported yesterday. Trustee Irving Picard has so won settlements of $9.1 billion to date through lawsuits against groups and individuals he has accused of turning a blind eye to Madoff's crimes and profiting from his scheme. Much of that money is tied up in litigation over payout calculations, however, and cannot be distributed. So far, Madoff investors have only received payments of $330 million. Picard's office has said Madoff customers ultimately could get a full recovery of the more than $17 billion in approved claims. Picard spokeswoman Amanda Remus declined to comment on claims-trading activity or prices.

Former Enron Corp. CEO Jeffrey Skilling is reviving his quest for a new trial based on evidence his legal team received from prosecutors long after he was convicted of 19 counts of conspiracy, securities fraud, insider trading and lying to auditors, Reuters reported on Friday. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake in Houston, who presided over Skilling's 2006 trial following the bankruptcy of the once high-flying energy company, on Friday gave the go-ahead to his legal team to seek a new trial. Enron crumbled in December 2001 after years of hidden debt and shaky finances fell apart. Skilling is serving a 24-year sentence on his conviction. Last month the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his latest appeal.

Securities and Exchange Commission investigators have concluded their probe of possible financial fraud at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. without recommending enforcement action against the firm or its former executives, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Lawmakers and investors have pressed the agency for more than three years to determine whether Lehman misrepresented its financial health before filing the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history in September 2008. Senior SEC officials have been reluctant to formally close the matter even though investigators found a lack of evidence of wrongdoing and officials have weighed in by issuing a public report on their findings that stops short of an enforcement action while highlighting the firm’s questionable conduct. The SEC has indicated that the case remains under review.