fraud

Dethroning Raj gives feds an overdue win

Ring the bells! The  government actually managed to convict someone of ripping off those of us who, willingly or otherwise, entrust our financial futures to the markets.

A federal jury on Wednesday found hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam guilty of all 14 counts of conspiracy and fraud, after he scored $64 million in a long-running insider trading scam.

Rajaratnam, 53, now faces 20 years in prison. Here's hoping they throw away the key.

Because the decision hands the government MORE

UBS takes $160 million muni probe hit

Another day, another black eye for Wall Street.

UBS (UBS) agreed Wednesday to pay $160 million to settle charges it defrauded local government bond issuers for five years through a bid-rigging scheme. The scheme drove up the prices municipal issuers paid, the authorities said, and delivered millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains to the Swiss bank.

UBS rigged more than 100 bond auctions in 36 states between 2000 and 2004, officials said. UBS, MORE

Have lying mortgage bankers met their match?

How fitting that when Wall Street finally takes a hit after years of mortgage malpractice, the stick is called the False Claims Act.

If there is one thing that's never in short supply in banking circles, after all, it is false claims. Internet stocks are good as gold! House prices never fall! Derivatives make the financial system safer!

Those particular false claims aren't the ones that have Wall Street looking down the MORE

Feds take billion-dollar whack at Deutsche Bank

The Justice Department wants to take a billion-dollar chunk out of the Wall Street mortgage-kiting machine.

The U.S. attorney for Manhattan sued Deutsche Bank (DB) Tuesday, claiming its MortgageIT unit made tens of thousands of bad loans and then duped the Federal Housing Authority into insuring them. The scheme left taxpayers holding the bag to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, the government said.

The government's civil suit was provoked by MORE

The feds' convenient oil market crackdown

There goes Washington again, looking for fraud in all the wrong places.

The top federal law enforcement official, Eric Holder, promised Thursday to crack down energy market manipulation. The attorney general warned that "if illegal conduct is responsible for increasing gas prices, state and federal authorities should take swift action."

That's laudable. The problem is that there is no reason to believe illegal conduct is what's driving up gas prices.

In a world MORE

FDIC seeks $2.5 billion from failed bank honchos

Three years after the financial meltdown started, bank watchdogs are promising taxpayers will have their day in court.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Tuesday it has approved lawsuits targeting 109 former directors and officers of failed banks in actions that seek $2.5 billion in damages.

But don't celebrate the righteous legal offensive just yet. So far, despite the obligatory talk of a wave of bank failure lawsuits, the FDIC has actually filed MORE

No sympathy for the auditors in Lehman case

"Auditors who can't say no" sounds like a support group in the making. But one embattled audit firm isn't getting a terribly sympathetic hearing.

So says a quickie survey conducted Monday by the Argyle Executive Forum. The electronic poll of 498 members finds that nearly half of respondents -- 48% -- believe New York should move forward on civil fraud charges against Ernst & Young over its role in the MORE

SEC says accountant ripped off Hospira

Regulators charged a top accountant at a Hospira subsidiary with bilking the drug company of $1.3 million.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Paul R. Beckwith of Layton, Utah, has been funneling money out of Hospira's Theradoc unit for almost two years.

Beckwith, who is identified as the controller at Salt Lake City-based Theradoc, has made unauthorized transfers exceeding $3 million over that span, the SEC said.

The SEC said Beckwith, who also runs MORE

Ex-Canopy Financial exec admits he's a scumbag

It's been nearly a year since the Canopy Financial fraud began unraveling, and justice is finally beginning to assert herself.

For the uninitiated, Canopy was a VC-backed company that helped streamline the administration of Health Savings Accounts. It raised over $88 million in VC funding, including a $62.5 million slug in the summer of 2009 from Spectrum Equity Investors and return backer Foundation Capital. Not long after, the investors began realizing MORE

Did Plainfield commit fraud? The FBI wants to know.

How one hedge fund went from being a high-flyer to being mired in a federal investigation for fraud.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing whether Plainfield Asset Management, a hedge fund that once had $5 billion in assets under management, committed fraud by overstating the value of some of its investments and charging management fees based on those inflated assets.

Three sources tell Fortune they have been contacted by the MORE