Ponzi Scheme | featured news

A federal appeals court rejected a bid by former Bernard Madoff investors, including a charitable foundation for New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg, to pursue claims against family members of the imprisoned swindler.

A prominent futures-industry executive, Russell Wasendorf Sr., was sentenced to 50 years in prison on Thursday for embezzling from his clients and defrauding banks over nearly two decades.

The son of the disgraced chief of Peregrine Financial said he has been personally and financially devastated by his father's fraud, which brought down the firm and left investors facing tens of millions of dollars in losses.

The star prosecution witness in the trial of convicted Texas financier R. Allen Stanford was sentenced Tuesday to five years in prison for helping to bilk investors out of more than $7 billion in one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in U.S. history.

The brother of imprisoned financier Bernard Madoff was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in prison for crimes committed in the shadow of his notorious sibling by a judge who said she disbelieved his claims that he did not know about the epic fraud.

Timothy S. Durham, the onetime chief executive officer of National Lampoon (NLMP) Inc., was sentenced to 50 years in prison for defrauding investors in an unrelated company he partly controlled. “I found no sincere remorse,” U.S. District Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson in Indianapolis said today before imposing punishment on Durham, 50. She said the former Fair Finance Co. CEO exhibited deceit, greed and arrogance.

The son of Bernard Madoff's longtime accountant, who himself pleaded guilty to securities fraud in the scandal centered on the disgraced financier, has committed suicide in central Ohio, authorities said. Jeremy Friehling, 23, was found dead at his apartment of a self-inflicted gunshot wound Thursday in Columbus, where he was a second-year student at Ohio State's medical school, police there said.

A Puerto Rican man has been accused of defrauding investors of more than $2.3 million through a Ponzi scheme targeting unsuspecting factory workers and evangelical Christians, federal authorities said Tuesday.

Federal securities regulators have filed fraud charges and an emergency order to freeze the assets of a North Carolina company officials say operated a $600 million Ponzi scheme that is on the verge of collapse. The action by the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday is intended to help investors recoup money and avoid devastating losses.

The world's largest poker company and its rival have settled federal money laundering and fraud charges, agreeing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars, authorities said. PokerStars, which is based on the Isle of Man, off the coast of Ireland, agreed to forfeit $731 million, including $547 million that will be available to reimburse U.S. customers of the rival, Full Tilt Poker. Full Tilt also agreed to settle and will cease independent operations.