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Elizabeth Holmes: Theranos founder convicted of fraud

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has been convicted of defrauding investors after a months-long landmark trial in California.

Prosecutors said Holmes knowingly lied about technology she said could detect diseases with a few drops of blood.

Theranos, at one point valued at $9bn (£6.5bn), was once the darling of biotech and Silicon Valley.

The firm promised it would revolutionise the healthcare industry with a test that could detect conditions such as cancer and diabetes with only a few drops of blood.

But these claims began to unravel in 2015 after a Wall Street Journal investigation reported that its core blood-testing technology did not work.
For nearly four months at trial, the jury of eight men and four women were presented with two starkly different accounts of the former self-made billionaire, whose downfall shook Silicon Valley.

Her company secretly relied on commercially available machines to run the tests, prosecutors said.

At trial, multiple lab directors testified to telling Holmes about the flaws in Theranos' technology but being instructed to downplay their concerns. At the same time, they added , Holmes told investors the technology was operating as planned.

Holmes "chose fraud over business failure. She chose to be dishonest with investors and patients", said prosecutor Jeff Schenk in closing arguments. "That choice was not only callous, it was criminal."
 
Traffic wardens round here note the number and mark the position of the tyre
valves so they know if it's been moved, probably done on a tablet of some sort
nowadays, it was always going to become a racket once the councils got hold of it.
Round here they suspend parking charges when they want people to enter town
to spend money usually Christmas and so on maybe when they think the shops
need a boost to pay there rates,
:omr:
 
We have a single yellow outside our short terrace of houses, and its always a fight for parking by the residents. We are end terrace so my stepdad has managed to create enough space at the side to park his car off road.

Anyway we watched highly amused as a Pink Peril went diligently along the parked vehicles with his magic tablet recording details whilst the moped he arrived on was parked on the same yellow line. Needless to say I popped outside with phone and grabbed a few shots of the offending bike with PP in background about his business.

Fired them off to the local council parking bods, they replied asking for more details. He hasnt been back ... Was almost tempted to CC Joe Lycett it was so funny!
 
Unfortunately the New York Times rundown of this story is behind a paywall, but here's the gist:
Article

Someone has been stealing manuscripts of loads of books over the past few years, including works by Margaret Atwood, actor Ethan Hawke, and a sequel to the Steig Larsson Millennium series. They're all digital copies. But the weird thing is, the thief has done NOTHING with them, no ransom demands, no putting them on the internet for free, not a thing. I guess we'll find out more soon, but the motive seems to have been collecting, though some say it's a training stunt by hackers. Who knows?
 
Unfortunately the New York Times rundown of this story is behind a paywall, but here's the gist:
Article

Someone has been stealing manuscripts of loads of books over the past few years, including works by Margaret Atwood, actor Ethan Hawke, and a sequel to the Steig Larsson Millennium series. They're all digital copies. But the weird thing is, the thief has done NOTHING with them, no ransom demands, no putting them on the internet for free, not a thing. I guess we'll find out more soon, but the motive seems to have been collecting, though some say it's a training stunt by hackers. Who knows?
Maybe the person just likes knowing they've had prior sight of something? There's a site called Netgalley, where mss go up to be read by anyone who wants to leave a review (with a view to gaining lots of reviews to put up on Amazon as soon as the book goes on sale) - you have to apply to Netgalley and be accepted before you get given any advance copies; being accepted is usually contingent upon you having a track record as a reviewer. LOTS of people apply to try to get 'first sight' on manuscripts that they think are going to go on to be very popular books, so that they can boast that 'they read it before it became famous'.

I've no idea whether this is the case here, but it's something to consider.
 
Thanks, @Erinaceus - Filippo Bernardini is his name.

@catseye - It might be like the sort of person who steals birds' eggs, for the achievement despite it being totally illegal. I guess we'll find out as the case goes ahead.
 
We're enjoying this.

The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman review – astounding true crime TV

This unbelievable and unforgettable three-parter about British con artist Robert Hendy-Freegard focuses on tales of coercive abuse so awful they seem almost absurd at times

Just over a quarter of an hour into The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman (Netflix), one of the contributors says something you cannot quite believe. She recalls how, in 1993, she chose to go on a road trip with two friends and a stranger called Rob: “That decision changed the next 10 years of my life.” At this point, we know we are watching a documentary about a fearsomely persuasive con artist, but even so: 10 years?

By the end of this chilling, frequently astounding three-parter about how powerful lies can be when delivered with confidence – and specifically about the abusive behaviour known as coercive control – it makes perfect, awful sense.
 
This is worth a watch. On player.

Britain’s Outlaws: Highwaymen, Pirates & Rogues

Villains & scam artists in the 18th century - a time generally of huge corruption.

Jack Shepherd - Small time London pickpocket, thief & burglar, caught numerous times for various crimes but ingeniously escaped numerous times from various prisons despite being shackled. He became an immensely popular and legendary antihero but was eventually hanged. One third of London population turned out to see him go & cheer him on.

Mary Toft - Who managed to convince many, including leading surgeons, that she was giving birth to rabbits.

Thomas Brodie - Devon Sheriff & MP who had numerous scams going - Tobaco smuggling, tax fraud, transportation of criminals to USA, only they didn’t get there, instead being dumped on Lundy island. He got away with it by escaping to Portugal.

And more.
 

It’s pretty interesting, isn’t it?

Phony claims of involvement in intelligence work are not at all unknown in the world of fraud. Such claims can be an aspect of romance fraud – for instance, in the cases of William Allen Jordan and Mark Acklom - or might be the background to fraud of a less intimate financial nature. In the US such deceit has been used as a tool to scam the military and security services themselves. Frightening, really, as you’d kind of expect institutions dedicated to state security to be, well, good with security (See the cases of Garrison Courtney, Wayne Simmons and – possibly…probably – Jamie Smith.)

On a practical level, such claims provide the fraudster with a ready reason for having no discernible source of income, why their work patterns may be odd, or apparently non-existent, why they have a tendency to be absent at short notice and for long periods. These would be useful elements for any fraudster. However, it strikes me that the use of the spy persona – and the advantages it offers - might sometimes be an indicator that something somewhat different to fraud of a purely financial nature could be taking place and that something even more insidious and sinister is the true heart of the matter.

Granted, a successful fraudster needs to know how to control the environment they work in, but - in some cases - this aspect seems to go so far beyond necessity that one can't help wondering if the control element is the real driving force to the crime – the money being a by-product necessary to effect that control, rather than the actual point of it all. This seems to me to have been the case with the subject of the Netflix/Hendy-Freegard documentary. Lying is easy – but sustaining and maintaining the complex network of dishonesties that are necessary for this type of fraudster, working on this sort of scale, must be utterly all-consuming. I don’t think people do this just for the money. Which is why I think fraudsters – despite the fact that society often pigeonholes them as less lethal way than other types of criminal – are, at least potentially, extremely dangerous indeed.

The story reminded me a little of the Jeffrey Lash case in the US (probably a fantasist, rather than a fraudster - although I'm not sure anyone ever found out where his cash came from), and the Mark Acklom* case in the UK. I think there may also be resonances with the appalling Dupont de Ligonnès murders in France.

*On the surface Acklom would probably be described as a romance fraudster – however, I think he very possibly fits the same profile I’ve pondered above. Acklom has been described as a psychopath – I have a strong suspicion that all the most effective fraudsters are; in fact, I’m pretty sure that a room full of convicted fraudsters will contain many more actual psychopaths than a room full of convicted murderers.
 
Traffic wardens round here note the number and mark the position of the tyre
valves so they know if it's been moved, probably done on a tablet of some sort
nowadays, it was always going to become a racket once the councils got hold of it.
Round here they suspend parking charges when they want people to enter town
to spend money usually Christmas and so on maybe when they think the shops
need a boost to pay there rates,
:omr:
In your neck of the woods, my neighbour recently took her very elderly mother out shopping. Parked legally, as she was unlocking the car, her mother bolted into the road. Neighbour was smoking, panicked, dropped cigarette into the drain and went to grab her mother. 2 "smoking wardens" approached her, told her she had committed an offence, took her address and fined her (can't remember if it was £30 or £80), even though she explained what happened, which they must have witnessed.
Personally I would not have given my address out and told them to boil their heads. OK they may have been able to trace through registration number but I would then have told the local authority to similarly go forth.
 
It’s pretty interesting, isn’t it?

Phony claims of involvement in intelligence work are not at all unknown in the world of fraud. Such claims can be an aspect of romance fraud – for instance, in the cases of William Allen Jordan and Mark Acklom - or might be the background to fraud of a less intimate financial nature. In the US such deceit has been used as a tool to scam the military and security services themselves. Frightening, really, as you’d kind of expect institutions dedicated to state security to be, well, good with security (See the cases of Garrison Courtney, Wayne Simmons and – possibly…probably – Jamie Smith.)

On a practical level, such claims provide the fraudster with a ready reason for having no discernible source of income, why their work patterns may be odd, or apparently non-existent, why they have a tendency to be absent at short notice and for long periods. These would be useful elements for any fraudster. However, it strikes me that the use of the spy persona – and the advantages it offers - might sometimes be an indicator that something somewhat different to fraud of a purely financial nature could be taking place and that something even more insidious and sinister is the true heart of the matter.

Granted, a successful fraudster needs to know how to control the environment they work in, but - in some cases - this aspect seems to go so far beyond necessity that one can't help wondering if the control element is the real driving force to the crime – the money being a by-product necessary to effect that control, rather than the actual point of it all. This seems to me to have been the case with the subject of the Netflix/Hendy-Freegard documentary. Lying is easy – but sustaining and maintaining the complex network of dishonesties that are necessary for this type of fraudster, working on this sort of scale, must be utterly all-consuming. I don’t think people do this just for the money. Which is why I think fraudsters – despite the fact that society often pigeonholes them as less lethal way than other types of criminal – are, at least potentially, extremely dangerous indeed.

The story reminded me a little of the Jeffrey Lash case in the US (probably a fantasist, rather than a fraudster - although I'm not sure anyone ever found out where his cash came from), and the Mark Acklom* case in the UK. I think there may also be resonances with the appalling Dupont de Ligonnès murders in France.

*On the surface Acklom would probably be described as a romance fraudster – however, I think he very possibly fits the same profile I’ve pondered above. Acklom has been described as a psychopath – I have a strong suspicion that all the most effective fraudsters are; in fact, I’m pretty sure that a room full of convicted fraudsters will contain many more actual psychopaths than a room full of convicted murderers.
Can only nod in regretful agreement. We have threads on lying and liars, as you know, wherein are accounts of often personal experiences with people who spin this sort of yarn.

Everyone's met one and few have been taken in. Or perhaps people don't admit it.

Years ago when hitchhiking I collected a telling-off from a man who gave me a lift. He told me young women aren't safe accepting lifts from strange men and he should know because he was a senior police officer who was working on the Yorkshire Ripper case.

Of course I believed him back then but now I'm not so sure.
 
In your neck of the woods, my neighbour recently took her very elderly mother out shopping. Parked legally, as she was unlocking the car, her mother bolted into the road. Neighbour was smoking, panicked, dropped cigarette into the drain and went to grab her mother. 2 "smoking wardens" approached her, told her she had committed an offence, took her address and fined her (can't remember if it was £30 or £80), even though she explained what happened, which they must have witnessed.
Personally I would not have given my address out and told them to boil their heads. OK they may have been able to trace through registration number but I would then have told the local authority to similarly go forth.


Problem with councils is they tend to be run by people with there own agenda
to them there's no such thing as a mistake, and fines are looked on as a source
of income to be spent on what ever their pet project happens to be, they will
make anyone's life a misery as long as it suites their agenda, allowing the
council Taliban the power to issue fines needs a complete rethink before they
manage to suck any life out of the people as they work towards 1984.


:omr:
 
Problem with councils is they tend to be run by people with there own agenda
to them there's no such thing as a mistake, and fines are looked on as a source
of income to be spent on what ever their pet project happens to be, they will
make anyone's life a misery as long as it suites their agenda, allowing the
council Taliban the power to issue fines needs a complete rethink before they
manage to suck any life out of the people as they work towards 1984.


:omr:
These people were more than likely not council employees at all but ‘contracted out’ & employed by Mouchel Parkman, Serco, or similar.

It’s all very easy to whinge about councils but the reality is that they’ve had budgets cut year on year certainly for the last decade & more. As a result they resort to raising money by other means like this. I’d wager that they receive only a small fraction of fines imposed. The majority goes to the contracted out company.

Round my way, when parking zones & charges to park outside your own home started, I wrote to my council asking how much was raised & how much the council received as a result. They actually wrote back to me - I can’t recall the exact figures now but was surprised at how little the council actually made from it - it was a very small percentage of the overall figure.

That’s the way things are now. Councils don’t have the funds to employ these people but hand it over to companies like the above which do very nicely out of it.

The people who collect your rubbish aren’t council employees either. Probably many other ’service providers’ as well.
 
Can only nod in regretful agreement. We have threads on lying and liars, as you know, wherein are accounts of often personal experiences with people who spin this sort of yarn.

Everyone's met one and few have been taken in. Or perhaps people don't admit it.

Years ago when hitchhiking I collected a telling-off from a man who gave me a lift. He told me young women aren't safe accepting lifts from strange men and he should know because he was a senior police officer who was working on the Yorkshire Ripper case.

Of course I believed him back then but now I'm not so sure.
I can't remember if I've spoken of this bloke on here before or not.

I was newly single and branching out into the world of dating again, when I was put in contact (can't remember how now. Small ad?) with a man. We corresponded for a while and spoke on the phone, before I found myself being invited to his house (yes, yes I know, look, I was younger then...). He'd told me about how he worked in some form of the Secret Service, guarding members of the Saudi Royal family etc etc, how he had a villa in France, but had moved back to live in Leeds for a while. I remember thinking at the time that it was a bit odd that he was telling me all about his 'security' work, but obviously, as he was also a spy (!) he couldn't go into any details about what his work involved. I rang him once and was slightly surprised to catch him at home - I asked why he wasn't at work and he spun me a story about how he had flu and was unwell so couldn't go to work.

His house was a surprise. It was furnished exactly like an old lady's. His bedroom was exactly like that of a single man who lived with his mother. I got a long and involved story as to why it looked like that - he was renting as he'd sold his own real house and was looking for somewhere else to live. He made lots of 'I'd love to move in with you' noises (we'd known each other about a week....) He offered to show me his performance car, and told me that I could see it if I looked through the window of the garage of the house next door. He also started going on and on about how his lease was about to expire and he wasn't going to have anywhere to live, until I pointed out that he could go and live in his 'French villa'.

Of course, by now I'd started to work out that this guy was either a terrible liar or a complete fantasist. From his insistence that he was going to move in with me, I'd go for desperate fantasist, unemployed and living with his parents. And he was shockingly bad at the lying, although he'd got his stories ready, there was little to no internal consistency and any sensible questions were deflected with 'I'm not allowed to talk about that', even though he'd already told me!

It was my first introduction to the world of men who really want to be someone else and it was quite an eye opener. And also the world of men who think they will latch on to a woman who is stupid enough to believe their lies...
 
And also the world of men who think they will latch on to a woman who is stupid enough to believe their lies...
Unfortunately, despite all the warnings, women still seem to fall for this type of bs. These blokes tend to be pathetic creatures, easily spotted by other blokes.

Years ago my mates sister fell for such a character as you describe. She had inherited quite a bit of dosh and it was apparent that this bloke was after it. She had already given him a couple of thousand before brother got wind of it and gave the bloke a damn good warning off. Got the money back too. It caused a rift in the family until sister saw in the paper that the bloke had gone inside for fraud, and all was forgiven. Unfortunately sister learnt nothing from the experience and went on to date a number of total losers.
 
Unfortunately, despite all the warnings, women still seem to fall for this type of bs. These blokes tend to be pathetic creatures, easily spotted by other blokes...

I'm not sure it's as straightforward as this. Although gender clearly plays a practical part in romance fraud, I'm not sure the effectiveness of the fraudster is defined so easily by lines of gender.

What I do believe is that fraudsters - like hypnotists and cold readers - can spot susceptibilities in an individual that make a person a worthwhile subject, and although things like naivety, desperation and mental fragility can be factors, I'm not sure that they are at all absolutely necessary (and neither is stupidity - many victims are clearly intelligent people). Although fraudsters like Hendy-Freegard and Acklom most definitely targeted women, they were clearly successful at defrauding men, too.

I suspect that the experience @catseye mentions above (and the much briefer one described by @escargot earlier) are descriptions of a kind of cold-reading phase. Catseye's experience may seem funny and somewhat ridiculous in retrospect - but one wonders how it might have gone with someone less robust in their dealings with other human beings.

(Back in the noughties I occasionally worked for a guy who turned out to be an inveterate fraudster. What I found odd was that there seemed to no grey areas in other people's attitude to him: I thought he was a joke from the moment I met him, and assumed everyone else felt the same. Many other's did, but not everyone, by any means. At an extremely rough estimate, I'd guess that of five people in a room - two would think he was genuine.)
 
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I'm not sure it's as straightforward as this. Although gender clearly plays a practical part in romance fraud, I'm not sure the effectiveness of the fraudster is defined so easily by lines of gender.

What I do believe is that fraudsters - like hypnotists and cold readers - can spot susceptibilities in an individual that make a person a worthwhile subject, and although things like naivety, desperation and mental fragility can be factors, I'm not sure that they are at all absolutely necessary (and neither is stupidity - many victims are clearly intelligent people). Although fraudsters like Hendy-Freegard and Acklom most definitely targeted women, they were clearly successful at defrauding men, too.

I suspect that the experience @catseye mentions above (and the much briefer one described by @escargot earlier) are descriptions of a kind of cold-reading phase. Catseye's experience may seem funny and somewhat ridiculous in retrospect - but one wonders how it might have gone with someone less robust in their dealings with other human beings.

(Back in the noughties I occasionally worked for a guy who turned out to be an inveterate fraudster. What I found odd was that there seemed to no grey areas in other people's attitude to him: I thought he was a joke from the moment I met him, and assumed everyone else felt the same. Many other's did, but not everyone, by any means. At an extremely rough estimate, I'd guess that of five people in a room - two would think he was genuine.)
What makes "clearly intelligent people" fall for scams, do you think? Lack of worldly experience, living in a bubble ( Prince Andy etc), naivety? I've mentioned before that a very senior female Police officer got conned out of shed loads of money by an obvious scammer. I've called out very obvious scams on other forums, forum members being wholly taken in. I don't get it personally.
 
What makes "clearly intelligent people" fall for scams, do you think? Lack of worldly experience, living in a bubble ( Prince Andy etc), naivety? I've mentioned before that a very senior female Police officer got conned out of shed loads of money by an obvious scammer. I've called out very obvious scams on other forums, forum members being wholly taken in. I don't get it personally.

There are also the influences of desperation and / or delusion when under major duress from one's own life situation. With specific regard to Internet scams it's still the case that certain folks (especially older folks) don't grasp the ephemeral and possibly fake nature of the parties they interact with online and fall for all sorts of scam gambits.

I was mildly acquainted with the brother of an old friend - a successful and affluent businessman of the hard-driven / hard-bitten variety, who to all appearances was a grounded and worldly-wise operator. As he came in on final approach to his retirement era his long marriage and relationships with his adult children disintegrated. He spent increasing time online, eventually becoming ensnared by some woman (or at least a purported woman) in Nigeria, to whom he would end up sending a huge amount of his money. After a breakdown, court-imposed-conservatorship, and a couple of years in hospital care he's finally back out in the world on his own. He's the only person I personally know directly or indirectly who's fallen for one of those popularly derided Nigerian scams.

I can't help but think the destabilization of his relatively rigid personality caused by the family dissolution was the key thing inducing the vulnerabilities that were exploited.
 

Another thing that struck me while watching the documentary is how - certainly in the initial multiple fraud - it kept reminding me somewhat of the way much grander conspiracy theories work, as well as things like QAnon, and the way certain types of political groups operate. I suspect that they all look for similar buttons to push in their mark.

Incidentally - found a not too awful documentary I'd bookmarked on the Mark Acklom case I mentioned in #664. Another one who uses a supposed military/intelligence background to scam people:

 
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There are also the influences of desperation and / or delusion when under major duress from one's own life situation. With specific regard to Internet scams it's still the case that certain folks (especially older folks) don't grasp the ephemeral and possibly fake nature of the parties they interact with online and fall for all sorts of scam gambits.

I was mildly acquainted with the brother of an old friend - a successful and affluent businessman of the hard-driven / hard-bitten variety, who to all appearances was a grounded and worldly-wise operator. As he came in on final approach to his retirement era his long marriage and relationships with his adult children disintegrated. He spent increasing time online, eventually becoming ensnared by some woman (or at least a purported woman) in Nigeria, to whom he would end up sending a huge amount of his money. After a breakdown, court-imposed-conservatorship, and a couple of years in hospital care he's finally back out in the world on his own. He's the only person I personally know directly or indirectly who's fallen for one of those popularly derided Nigerian scams.

I can't help but think the destabilization of his relatively rigid personality caused by the family dissolution was the key thing inducing the vulnerabilities that were exploited.
Also there's the 'sunk cost fallacy' that seems to cut in when people are subject to romance fraud. Something in their psyche thinks 'you've already gone this far, if you give up now, all that has been wasted'. It's at work in a lot of relationships, and why some women (and men) don't walk away when, to onlookers, they're stuck in a dreadful situation.

If you've already spent three months 'getting to know' this person, then, in the mind, that time would be wasted if you just cut and run. And then the money starts, and THAT would be wasted if you cut contact. It's an insidious thing and I wonder where it comes from and why some people seem to come pre-programmed with it and others don't.
 
Also there's the 'sunk cost fallacy' that seems to cut in when people are subject to romance fraud. Something in their psyche thinks 'you've already gone this far, if you give up now, all that has been wasted'. It's at work in a lot of relationships, and why some women (and men) don't walk away when, to onlookers, they're stuck in a dreadful situation.

If you've already spent three months 'getting to know' this person, then, in the mind, that time would be wasted if you just cut and run. And then the money starts, and THAT would be wasted if you cut contact. It's an insidious thing and I wonder where it comes from and why some people seem to come pre-programmed with it and others don't.
All good points. Someone I knew well was so taken in and fleeced by a scammer they were about to declare bankruptcy, but then killed themselves instead. It all came out afterwards, The scammer got clean away with everything. :mad:
 
A former southern California resident has pleaded guilty to defrauding health insurers out of circa $44 million by falsely claiming cosmetic surgeries were medically necessary.
California woman pleads guilty in cosmetic surgery scheme

A former Southern California woman pleaded guilty Friday in a scheme to bilk insurance companies out of some $44 million by billing them for cosmetic surgeries she falsely claimed were medically required ...

Linda Morrow, 69, entered pleas in federal court to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and to contempt of court for fleeing the United States after she was indicted in 2017 ... She could face up to 20 years in prison.

... Prosecutors alleged that she and her husband billed insurers for tummy tucks, nose jobs and other procedures performed at their Morrow Medical Surgery Center and falsely identified them as medically necessary.

The Morrows fled to Israel, which deported them to the U.S. in 2019 after determining they had entered the country on a phony Mexican passport ...

Morrow’s husband ... pleaded guilty in 2016 to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and filing a false tax return before fleeing to Israel. He is serving a 20-year prison sentence ...
FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/health-b...nited-states-90383d402e4ff9e42fed104d27d38190

See Also:
Free cosmetic surgery offered in massive health fraud scheme
https://apnews.com/article/business-health-california-97d15b5fd5f77275104461ef8716dbdc
 
An Arizona Home Depot employee has been arrested for stealing cash from his store and replacing it with realistic play money bought from Amazon.
Home Depot employee arrested for swapping store cash with counterfeit bills for years, authorities say

A Tempe, Arizona, Home Depot employee is facing a federal charge, after authorities said he repeatedly took cash from the store and replaced it with counterfeit currency before depositing it in the bank ...

According to a US Secret Service news release, agents from the Phoenix field office arrested Adrian Jean Pineda, a vault employee at the store, who was responsible for counting cash and preparing it for deposit.

Pineda is accused of ordering counterfeit bills from Amazon, swapping them with money taken from store cash registers and sealing them in bags for transfer to the bank ... Pineda, the complaint said, admitted to switching the real money with fake bills in an interview with Secret Service agents. ...

Between January 2018 and January 2022, Home Depot recorded $387,000 in losses due to counterfeit notes in their bank deposits ...

Agents seized $5,000 in counterfeit currency and $5,300 in genuine currency during Pineda's arrest at Home Depot, according to the Secret Service. An additional $22,000 in genuine currency was recovered at Pineda's home when agents executed a search warrant, the release said. ...
SOURCE: https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/us/home-depot-counterfeit-arrest/index.html
 
The U.S. Trade Commission issued a warning that scams and frauds is very high during Valentines particularly when it comes to online dating in which there is money lost or stolen.

According to the internet, 30% of Americans online date.

According to the internet of these 30%, that they report that they have a 60% positive experience.

I wonder about the other 40% ?
 
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NHS doctor struck off after 27 years for faking his CV in 'elaborate scam’

He tried to get jobs in finance with no relevant qualifications or experience after being suspended from the NHS.

Police questioned Dr Hakeem Lateef, 54, after he tried to get a job in finance just six weeks after he was suspended for lying about his involvement in a head-on car crash.
Lateef paid a bank worker £400 to attend a one day Co-op course on due diligence work then gave him a further £100 to ''edit'' his CV and include referees as part of an elaborate scam.

The doctor used this CV to convince a recruitment agency he had worked as a compliance analyst for a string of financial organisations including the National Bank of Egypt and the Nationwide banks.

No criminal action was taken against him for attempting to obtain a pecuniary advantage by deception, but he was referred to the General Medical Council.

Lateef, from Toxteth, Liverpool, who has most recently been working in drug and alcohol detox services was found guilty of serious professional misconduct and dishonesty, at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal service, in Manchester.

The hearing was told how in March 2018 Lateef who previously worked as a police and military forensic medical examiner had been suspended by the MPTS for six months when he was found guilty of falsely understating a woman's injuries when he was convicted of dangerous driving at a court hearing in 2016.

Lateef was later interviewed by Greater Manchester Police and accepted attending the course and paying for his original CV to be edited. But he denied submitting the updated CV to Emponics and suggested that his computer may have been hacked.

During the interview, Lateef admitted to having never worked in the financial sector.

He said he had asked Mr A to "tidy up" his CV only to be 'shocked and flabbergasted when he received the updated version.

He then claimed his computer had been hacked by a female friend who sent the CV to the recruitment agency.

But finding him guilty of misconduct, tribunal chairman Tim Bradbury said Lateef's account was ''inconceivable.''
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Hollywood actor sentenced to 20 years for multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme

Zachary Horwitz, a small-time actor who admitted to operating a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on Monday.

The Department of Justice said in a news release that Horowitz "raised at least $650 million with bogus claims that investor money would be used to acquire licensing rights to films that HBO and Netflix purportedly had agreed to distribute abroad.”
In October, Horowitz pleaded guilty to a federal securities fraud charge and admitted to running the Ponzi scheme.

He received a 240 month sentence, according to Monday's release, and must pay more than $230 million in restitution. CNN has reached out to Horwitz's attorney for comment.

Horwitz, 35, was accused of putting some of the money in his personal accounts and using the money for purchasing a personal residence for approximately $5.7 million in cash, taking trips to Las Vegas and flying on chartered jets, according to a complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Horwitz — better known by his stage name "Zach Avery" — spent the past decade acting in around a dozen mostly low-budget films, including "Trespassers" and "The White Crow," according to his IMDb profile. He also had a minor uncredited role in "Fury," which starred Brad Pitt.
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Revealed: Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters and corrupt politicians

Very long article from a whistle blower’s leak re Credit Suisse & the accounts held by various individuals - money stolen by corrupt government officials from around the world, convicted criminals, drug laundering funds & so on. All hitherto protected by strict Swiss banking secrecy laws. They don’t ask too many questions as to the source of money.

Too many to name but

They include a human trafficker in the Philippines, a Hong Kong stock exchange boss jailed for bribery, a billionaire who ordered the murder of his Lebanese pop star girlfriend and executives who looted Venezuela’s state oil company, as well as corrupt politicians from Egypt to Ukraine.

One Vatican-owned account in the data was used to spend €350m (£290m) in an allegedly fraudulent investment in London property that is at the centre of an ongoing criminal trial of several defendants, including a cardinal.

The huge trove of banking data was leaked by an anonymous whistleblower to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. “I believe that Swiss banking secrecy laws are immoral,” the whistleblower source said in a statement. “The pretext of protecting financial privacy is merely a fig leaf covering the shameful role of Swiss banks as collaborators of tax evaders.”
 

California jogger Sherri Papini staged own violent kidnapping, FBI says​

News story

Bloody Hell! This romanticising of, and aspiration to, victimhood has to stop, people like her just make it far worse for the real victims in this world. "Kidnapped" herself, cut off her hair, beat herself up, etc. And blamed two fictional "Latina women", so racist to boot!
 
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