Labels: Standford Securities Class Action Clearing House

...Rollin M. Dick, a former chief financial officer of Conseco Finance Corp., a subsidiary then known as Green Tree Financial, was ordered to pay a $110,000 civil penalty and barred for five years from acting as an officer or director of any public company.

James S. Adams, formerly chief accounting officer, treasurer, and senior vice-president of Conseco, Inc., was ordered to pay a $90,000 civil penalty and barred for five years from acting as an officer or director of a public company.

In an amended complaint, the SEC alleged, among other things, that from March 1999 through February 2000, Conseco and Conseco Finance made false and misleading statements about their earnings in SEC filings and in public statements announcing their earnings, overstating their financial results by hundreds of millions of dollars.

The complaint alleged that this massive overstatement occurred "primarily because Dick and Adams conducted a fraudulent scheme" to avoid huge write-downs of certain assets held by Conseco Finance known as interest-only securities, and corresponding charges to earnings, through the use of improper accounting techniques in violation of generally accepted accounting principles.

The complaint also alleged that Dick and Adams made a variety of improper and unsupported "top-side" adjustments to Conseco Finance's books and records at the end of the first three quarters of 1999 to further inflate Conseco and Conseco Finance's earnings for these quarters in order to meet Wall Street's analysts' consensus earnings targets...

"If I could rewind the movie, I would have done more of a background check on (the Texas company owner) and Wood, but I trusted my financial planner (Mendoza)." "My advice to the world is hire a private investigator when you're hiring a financial planner," she said.

Labels: background checks

Labels: identity theft

Labels: Eliot Spitzer, New York AG

Labels: Kroll

Labels: Arthur Samberg, Gary Aguirre, insider trading, John Mack, Morgan Stanley, Pequot Capital

Labels: Enron, Milberg Weiss

Labels: Melvyn Weiss, Milberg Weiss

"A banker who had been questioned over a huge corporate scandal was found murdered on Friday, having apparently been kidnapped coming home from a meeting of the Roman Catholic organisation Opus Dei. The body of Gianmario Roveraro, 70, had been chopped into pieces and hidden in a hut beneath a motorway bridge about 30km from Parma. Police said three men had been charged over the crime but a limited confession by the alleged ringleader opened the way for a flood of speculation...

...Luciano Garofano, the chief of the police squad that found the body, said: "We are dealing here with a particularly savage murder." The alleged ringleader of those arrested was Filippo Botteri, 43, described as a former financial consultant from Parma who allegedly had had dealings with Mr Rovera..."

Labels: Parmalat

Labels: Kroll

Labels: Financial Services Authority, Philippw Jabre

Labels: background checks, Techdirt

In Novel-Like Scene, Two Milberg Partners Plead Not Guilty

By Josh Gerstein
Sew York Sun
July 18, 2006

One of the nation's leading class action law firms, Milberg Weiss, and two of its name partners, David Bershad and Steven Schulman, pleaded not guilty here yesterday to a federal indictment charging the firm and the two attorneys with conspiring to make secret and illegal payments to plaintiffs.

Messrs. Bershad and Schulman each said, "Not guilty," when asked for their responses to the charges during a morning appearance before a federal magistrate, Carolyn Turchin. The plea for the firm, Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman LLP, was entered by a Los Angeles defense attorney, Bryan Daly.

In a scene torn from a Scott Turow novel, the Milberg Weiss attorneys shared the busy Monday arraignment courtroom with defendants known by aliases such as Destructo and Mainline.

Messrs. Bershad and Schulman have been free since their indictment, but most of the 20 or so defendants in other cases were clad in orange or turquoise jail smocks and looked on anxiously from behind a glass partition. The clanging of shackles as the men shuffled in and out added an air of gravity to the proceedings.

If convicted on all charges, Messrs. Bershad and Schulman face possible sentences of up to 60 years in prison, though under federal guidelines any sentences are likely to be substantially shorter. Milberg Weiss faces possible seizure of up to $216.1 million, the amount of legal fees the firm was awarded in cases in which the government contends the lawyers committed fraud.

During the 15-minute session before Magistrate Turchin, Messrs. Bershad and Schulman said little, giving one-word answers to questions about whether they understood their rights and had received copies of the indictment...

Labels: Melvyn Weiss, Milberg Weiss

Law firm, partners, plead not guilty to federal charges in LA

ERIC BERKOWITZ
Associated Press
July 17, 2006

A top class-action law firm and two of its partners pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of secretly paying more than $11 million in kickbacks to get people to take part in shareholder lawsuits. Also pleading not guilty in federal court were Seymour M. Lazar, who is accused of acting as a paid plaintiff in some of the firm's cases, and Paul T. Selzer, who is charged with laundering money on Lazar's behalf.

In a 20-count indictment handed down in May, prosecutors alleged that Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, along with partners David J. Bershad and Steven G. Schulman, secretly paid Lazar and others since 1984 to act as plaintiffs in class-action suits against major corporations.

Federal prosecutors alleged that secret kickback arrangements allowed the firm to be among the first to file lawsuits on behalf of shareholders and secure the lucrative position as lead plaintiffs' counsel. The indictment also alleged that "the paid plaintiffs purchased the securities at issue anticipating that the securities would decline in value, in order to position themselves to be named plaintiffs in securities fraud class actions and to obtain kickbacks" from the firm and others.

All the individual defendants were in court to enter their pleas except Lazar, who was unable to attend for medical reasons. Bershad and Schulman are on leave from the firm.

The case, which is the result of an ongoing federal investigation, has already resulted in plea deals with two people allegedly involved in the payoff schemes. Retired real estate mortgage broker Howard Vogel agreed in April to plead guilty to one count of making a false declaration before a court and admitted to receiving $2.5 million in kickbacks from Milberg Weiss in connection with class actions in which he was the plaintiff.

Los Angeles attorney Richard Purtich agreed in May to plead guilty to a federal tax offense by acting as an intermediary through which Milberg Weiss paid his former client Steven G. Cooperman more than $2.5 million in fees for acting as plaintiff in several class actions.
The firm denies any wrongdoing. In a statements released after Monday's arraignment, Bershad's attorney, Robert Luskin, said the indictment "is a disgrace and the charges are utterly baseless," and the firm said it is "confident that we will be fully vindicated"...

Labels: David Bershad, Howard Vogel, hulman, kickbacks, Melvyn Weiss, Milberg, Milberg Weiss, money laundering, Steven Cooperman

Labels: insider trading

...many European firms are chafing at the new requirements, and 17% would consider delisting to escape the law, according to a survey by Mazars, a Paris-based auditing firm. Only 43% of European companies think the law's benefits will outweigh its costs.

Latin American and Asian firms are more receptive. More than 72% of Asian respondents and 81% of Latin Americans think the benefits will exceed the cost, and none would consider delisting...

Labels: Enron, Kroll, Peter Henning

Labels: Kroll, NatWest Three, Peter Henning

Labels: Enron, NatWest Three

Labels: Gary Weiss

Prime Minister Tony Blair is under pressure from political parties, human rights groups and the business community to halt the extradition of the three men — David Bermingham, Gary Mulgrew and Giles Darby — on grounds that the extradition arrangements are unfairly weighted in favour of America.

Under the provisions, America is not required to make a prima facie case when it wants someone extradited from Britain. But Britain has to convince American courts that a prima facie legal case exists against a person for extradition.

This is because the 2003 extradition treaty, pushed through British Parliament in the wake of 9/11 attacks to facilitate extradition of terrorists, has still not been ratified by the U.S. Senate.

Labels: Enron, NatWest Three

"...The technology industry is at the center of this, of course, because stock options long have been the preferred type of compensation for tech executives. In the 1990s shareholders were told, over and over, that even though their stakes in tech companies faced continual dilution because of the huge volume of options granted to executives, the awards were necessary to keep the industry's entrepreneurial spirit alive.

What's more, Silicon Valley leaders fought like mad for a decade to prevent accounting regulators from forcing companies to formally record options granted as a business expense. They finally lost in 2004."

Labels: Comverse, Mercury Interative, Quest

Labels: Milberg Weiss

Labels: Department of Justice, Enron

Labels: Enron