Foreign Collusion, Naked Shorting (Counterfeiting) & Money Laundering — All Illicit Wealth
Goldman to pay $450,000 over short-selling
March Gordon
Associated Press, 4 May 2010
Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $450,000 to settle regulators’ allegations that it violated a rule related to short-selling of stocks in 2008-2009, it was announced Tuesday.
The banking company did not admit or deny wrongdoing in paying the civil penalties in agreements with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York Stock Exchange’s regulatory arm.
SEC v Goldman Sachs Execution & Clearing, L.P.
4 May 2010
These proceedings relate to GSEC’s response to the Commission’s September 17, 2008 emergency order enacting temporary Rule 204T to Regulation SHO (“Rule 204T” or the “Rule”). That Rule was an important part of the Commission’s response to concerns about the effects of “naked” short selling upon securities prices.
PDF (8 pages): SEC v Goldman Sachs Execution & Clearing, L.P.
In another Wall Street misdeed, Morgan Stanley settles oil-trading flap
Kevin G. Hall
McClatchy Newspapers, 29 April 2010
In another black eye for Wall Street, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission late Thursday announced a $14 million fine against Morgan Stanley Capital Group Inc. for allegedly hiding its complex oil trades.
The settlement, in which Morgan Stanley did not admit or deny the accusations, comes as oil prices have continued their steady upwards march and have some oil analysts again saying that excessive speculation is again pushing up energy prices. One recent estimate put the cost of that to consumers and businesses at $300 billion annually.
Alyona follows up with one of our most viewed and asked about stories, CMKM Diamonds. She chats with CMKM shareholder Dave Nelson about the struggles that the shareholders have faced over the past few years.
Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone, 5 April 2010
On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who —made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness — “like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets,” according to one financial analyst.
But what’s even crazier is that the bet paid.
Its the largest fraud case in world history. It is alleged that between June of 2004 and October of 2005, over 2 trillion dollars worth of fake CMKM Diamonds Inc. shares were sold to the public. The companys shareholders are now suing the S.E.C for 3.87 trillion dollars. Tim Barello from the Manhattan Headlines Examiner joins Alyona from New York to tell you more.
Mark Mitchell
DeepCapture, 18 February 2010
You don’t hear much about it, but the March 2007 bankruptcy of a company called New Century Financial was arguably one of the most important events leading up to the financial crisis that nearly caused a second Great Depression.
It was the demise of New Century, then the nation’s second largest mortgage lender, that triggered the collapse of the market for collateralized debt obligations. And it was the collapse in the value of collateralized debt obligations (a majority of which contained New Century mortgages) that hobbled a number of big financial firms. Once hobbled, the likes of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were ripe targets for unscrupulous hedge fund managers who amplified their problems by spreading exaggerated rumors while bombarding them with illegal naked short selling.
Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone, 17 February 2010
On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America’s pre-eminent Marvel Comics supervillain, the CEO used the call to deploy his secret weapon: a pair of giant, nuclear-powered testicles. In his message, Blankfein addressed his plan to pay out gigantic year-end bonuses amid widespread controversy over Goldman’s role in precipitating the global financial crisis.
Testimony Concerning the State of the Financial Crisis
Mary L. Schapiro
SEC, 14 January 2010
I believe the work of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) is essential to helping policymakers and the public better understand the causes of the recent financial crisis and build a better regulatory structure. Indeed, just over seventy-five years ago, a similar Congressional committee was tasked with investigating the causes of the stock market crash of 1929. The hearings of that committee led by Ferdinand Pecora uncovered widespread fraud and abuse on Wall Street, including self-dealing and market manipulation among investment banks and their securities affiliates. The public airing of this abuse galvanized support for legislation that created the Securities and Exchange Commission in July 1934. Based on lessons learned from the Pecora investigation, Congress passed laws premised on the need to protect investors by requiring disclosure of material information and outlawing deceptive practices in the sale of securities.
PDF (29 pages): Testimony Concerning the State of the Financial Crisis
Max Abelson
Observer, 13 January 2010
Last year, a 38-year-old named Judd Bagley found himself on Facebook, looking at the friend lists of reporters from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Barron’s and Reuters, and of wildly important hedge fund managers like Dan Loeb and David Einhorn.
Eventually creating a fake account, one person led to another. These people were all friends, he saw, and their friends were friends, too. A new chapter of a crusade was born.
Former Merrill Lynch official settles Enron allegations
Nick Snow
OGJ, 11 January 2010
Daniel H. Bayly, Merrill Lynch & Co.’s (ML) former global head of investment banking, settled civil charges of aiding and abetting the Enron Corp. fraud, the US Securities and Exchange Commission announced.
SEC said US District Court in Houston entered a final judgment on Dec. 31, 2009, ordering Bayly, who neither admitted nor denied SEC’s allegations, to pay $301,000 for deposit in the commission’s Enron Fair Fund and to not serve as an officer or director of a publicly traded company for 5 years. He also was enjoined from violating federal antifraud provisions and from aiding and abetting violations of the periodic reporting, books-and-records, and internal control provisions, SEC said.
New Evidence Raises Questions About Kingsford Capital – Links To TheStreet.com Inc., Others
Mark Mitchell
Market Rap, 7 January 2010
A blog published by the University of North Carolina School of Journalism reported recently that Steve Cohen of hedge fund SAC Capital managed to kill a story by Reuters reporter Matt Goldstein. It seems that Goldstein was going to shed some light on allegations that Cohen engaged in insider trading. Cohen didn’t like that, and got in touch with Goldstein’s superiors.
Credit Suisse Hit with $24 Billion Fraud Lawsuit
Toby Tobin
GoToby, 7 January 2010
January 6, 2010 – Credit Suisse Bank and real estate service firm Cushman & Wakefield defrauded developers and property owners at four luxury resorts; Ginn sur Mer (Grand Bahama Island in the Bahamas), Lake Las Vegas, Tamarack (Tamarac/Donnelly, Idaho), and Yellowstone Club (Montana), according to a lawsuit filed Sunday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho. Plaintiffs, led by L.J. Gibson and Beau Blixseth seek $24 billion, including $16 billion in punitive damages.
Credit Suisse Is Accused of Defrauding Investors in 4 Resorts
Jim Robbins
New York Times, 4 January 2010
Investors at four high-end resorts have filed a class-action lawsuit against Credit Suisse and the real estate services company Cushman & Wakefield, contending that they conspired to inflate the value of the properties so they could take them over.
The suit, outlined in an 84-page complaint filed Sunday in federal court in Boise, Idaho, details what it calls a sweeping loan-to-own scheme. Credit Suisse, according to the complaint, raked in huge fees on loans against the properties, which it syndicated and sold to hedge fund managers. If the resorts could not pay back the hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, based on the inflated values, Credit Suisse could either assume ownership as the agent for the creditors or sell the resorts.
$24 billion lawsuit filed against Credit Suisse
Rebecca Boone
The Seattle Times, 4 January 2010
Property owners at four struggling and bankrupt resorts in Idaho, Montana, Nevada and the Bahamas have filed a $24 billion federal lawsuit against Credit Suisse Group, saying the banking giant gave predatory loans to the resorts’ investors as part of a scheme to take over the properties.
Property owners at Idaho’s Tamarack Resort, the Yellowstone Club in Montana, Nevada’s Lake Las Vegas resort and the Ginn Sur Mer Resort in the Bahamas contend that Credit Suisse set up a branch in the Cayman Islands to skirt U.S. federal bank regulations and appraised the resorts at artificially inflated values as part of a plan to foreclose.
THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?
