Securities Fraud | featured news

California is trying to determine whether BofA and its Countrywide Financial subsidiary sold investments backed by risky mortgages to investors in California under false pretenses, a source says. Investigators with the state attorney general's office have subpoenaed Bank of America Corp. in connection with the sale and marketing of troubled mortgage-backed securities to California investors, according to a person familiar with the probe.

Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein has hired Reid Weingarten, a high-profile Washington defense attorney whose past clients include a former Enron accounting officer, according to a government source familiar with the matter.

Bank of America Corp is close to a deal to pay $8.5 billion to settle claims from investors that lost money on mortgage-backed securities, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Investors who were misled into purchasing complex mortgage securities just before the housing market collapsed will receive all their money back.

U.S. securities brokers would be more closely scrutinized by accountants and be subject to stricter rules for how they handle their customers' assets under a plan proposed by federal regulators on Wednesday.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc could release documents to counter a Senate subcommittee report that said the bank misled clients about mortgage-linked securities, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

A former Wall Street titan was convicted Wednesday of making a fortune by coaxing a crew of corporate tipsters to give him an illegal edge on blockbuster trades in technology and other stocks — what prosecutors called the largest insider trading case ever involving hedge funds.

An arbitration panel ordered Citigroup Inc to pay a group of investors $54.1 million for losses from municipal securities funds that cratered between 2007 and 2008, the biggest award yet involving the funds in a long series of legal claims against the bank.

Bernard Madoff's former secretary has made bail and will await her New York trial while on house arrest. Annette Bongiorno, of Boca Raton, Fla., is facing trial on charges of conspiracy and securities fraud.

Jacob "Kobi" Alexander, the fugitive former chief executive of Comverse Technology Inc, agreed to pay nearly $54 million to resolve civil litigation brought by the U.S. government over the backdating of stock options, court papers show.