All articles by Bruce Carton – Page 13
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CSC Discloses $190 Million Settlement Agreement With SEC
Computer Sciences Corp. is settling an SEC enforcement action relating to accounting errors in the company’s 2009-2012 financial statements. As part of the settlement, CSC will pay a penalty of $190 million and restate past financial statements. CSC said the errors concerned operations in Europe and Australia, and the company’s ...
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'British Madoff' Disappears After $200M Fraud Unravels
The UK press reported this week that a trader named Joe Lewis of Yorkshire has disappeared after admitting earlier this month that his investment firm actually stopped operating back in 2009. Despite the firm not engaging in any trading for years, investors in JL Trading continued to receive detailed monthly ...
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'You Know What's Cool? A Billion Dollars,' Part II
"A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars." -- Sean Parker, The Social Network In 2009, when Irving Picard and his law firm, Baker & Hostetler, had been working as trustee on the Madoff case for less than a year, I observed that the firm had ...
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SEC Sues F-Squared for Touting Hypothetical and Inflated Performance
Yesterday, the SEC announced an interesting enforcement action against investment management firm F-Squared Investments and its former CEO, Howard Present. According to the SEC, F-Squared misled investors between September 2008 and September 2013 by touting a lengthy record of stellar performance that was, in fact, not only hypothetical but substantially ...
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Haywood Gilliam, Jr. Confirmed as Federal Judge in California
Yesterday, the U.S. Senate confirmed Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Gilliam is currently a partner and and vice-chair of Covinton & Burling's White Collar Defense and Investigations practice group. President Obama nominated Gilliam in August 2014 to fill ...
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2015 SEC Trial Scorecard Update: Jury Finds Bank, CEO Liable for Fraud
As I did in FY 2014, I am again tracking the SEC's trials and outcomes for FY 2015 in this running SEC Trial Scorecard. To date in FY 2015, which began on October 1, 2014, the SEC has had three trials in federal court reach a verdict (see the ...
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New York Becomes First State to Launch Cyber-Security Exams for Banks
Add the New York Department of Financial Services to the growing list list of regulators (such as the SEC and FINRA) who will be scrutinizing the cybersecurity practices of Wall Street banks and financial institutions. On Wednesday, Benjamin Lawsky, New York's Superintendant of Financial Services, stated in a letter to ...
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Madoff's Secretary Gets Lighter Sentence Due to Her 'Unusually Small Stature'
"Madoff secretary gets 6 years after judge cites ‘small stature’" When I came across the headline above in yesterday's New York Post, I thought that while "small stature" was an odd way to characterize the role of Madoff's secretary in his massive fraud, it did make sense that someone who ...
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'Laws of the Land' Finally Catching Up to Former Satyam CEO, Part II
In July 2014, I noted here that although it had taken over five years, the wheels of justice were finally in motion against B. Ramalinga Raju, former chairman and CEO of Satyam Computer Services, as India's securities regulator had ordered Raju, his brother, and two others to disgorge $307 million. ...
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After Three Years, SFO Obtains First Convictions Under U.K. Bribery Act
It took more than three years, but Britain’s Serious Fraud Office has finally obtained its first convictions under the U.K. Bribery Act. According to the SFO, two men have been found guilty of conspiring to use false e-mail addresses to produce bogus sales invoices, an offense uncovered by an investigation ...
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DoJ Creating Dedicated Cybersecurity Unit Within Criminal Division
Image: Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell has announced that the Justice Department is creating a cyber-security unit within the Criminal Division. Prosecutors will serve as a “central hub for expert advice and legal guidance regarding the criminal electronic surveillance statutes for both U.S. and international law enforcement conducting complex cyber-investigations,” ...
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'FIN4' Hackers Target Over 100 Companies Seeking Market-Moving Information
Cyber-security firm FireEye released a report this week on a group of hackers that has targeted e-mail accounts of individuals with access to confidential information at more than 100 companies. The hackers are looking for non-public information about merger and acquisition deals and other major market-moving revelations, particularly in the ...
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2015 SEC Trial Scorecard Update: Agency is Undefeated After Two Trials
Last year's SEC Trial Scorecard for FY 2014 is in the books, so it is time to get started on our FY 2015 SEC Trial Scorecard. The SEC Trial Scorecard tracks the SEC's trials in federal court, along with the outcome. To date in FY 2014 (which began on ...
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Final SEC Trial Scorecard for FY 2014: SEC Posts 5-7-5 Record in 17 Trials
In March 2014, I began tracking the SEC's federal court trials in FY 2014 (which began on October 1, 2013), and the results in each case. The SEC's final trial scorecard in FY 2014 included a total of 17 trials. Of those 17 trials, SEC had five outright victories in ...
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The SEC's Role in the War of 1812
Today on TheRacetotheBottom blog, Prof. J. Robert Brown Jr. of the University of Denver Law School took a playful poke at the Association of American Law Schools for its recent announcement (still on its website here) that SEC Chair Mary Jo White will be the inaugural speaker for its Showcase ...
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SEC Halts Trading in Four Microcap Cos., Warns Investors About Ebola Scams
As also happened with recent natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy, the Ebola outbreak that has captured the attention of the American public has become a possible tool of scam artists. The SEC suspended trading in four companies today -- Bravo Enterprises Ltd., Immunotech Laboratories Inc., Myriad ...
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SEC: Sending Saudi Officials on 'World Tour' Was FCPA Violation
In case there was any ambiguity that companies may not send foreign government officials on a "world tour" in order to secure business, the SEC made that clear yesterday. In an administrative proceeding filed yesterday, the SEC sanctioned two former employees in the Dubai office of U.S.-based FLIR Systems Inc. ...
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Former Law Firm I.T. Employee Pleads Guilty to Insider Trading
On September 14, 2014, the SEC filed an insider trading case against Dmitry Braverman, a senior information technology professional at law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. The case was the SEC's second in a six month period alleging insider trading by law firm employees, and the SEC emphasized that ...
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Despite Commissioners' 'Dissent' in WSJ, SEC Argues For Fair Fund in SAC Case
As I discussed here last week, the SEC recently stated its intention to create a Fair Fund to distribute the funds from its $602 million insider trading settlement with SAC Capital to the people who were on the losing side of certain trades with SAC. This week, that decision was ...
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Justice Scalia: Congress, Not SEC, Must Define Insider Trading Laws
On November 10, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Douglas Whitman's appeal of his August 2012 conviction on two counts of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and two counts of securities fraud. Prosecutors in the SDNY had charged Whitman, a portfolio manager at Whitman Capital, LLC, with engaging ...