Free Republic

As dedicated NRA supporters, we know it’s maddening to witness the betrayal from within our own ranks. The latest news reveals the agreed-upon settlement that Wilson “Woody” Phillips, the former CFO of the NRA, confessed to unethical conduct, further deepening the trust issues we’ve had with the organization’s leadership. Phillips’ Deceitful Contract Without disclosing their relationship, Phillips admitted to awarding a $1.36 million contract to HomeTelos, a tech company run by his then-girlfriend Nancy Richards. This was a blatant violation of NRA policies designed to prevent conflicts of interest. It took whistleblowers raising the alarm for Phillips to finally come...

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York has announced a guilty plea in a bank fraud and bank bribery scheme. Several banks were defrauded of at least $10 million after a man and his compatriots obtained commercial loans and lines of credit using ...

Daren Palmer, the head of an Idaho firm known as the Trigon Group, has agreed to plead guilty to operating a $78 million Ponzi scheme that allegedly scammed fellow Mormons – including friends, neighbors and relatives – in a classic case of affinity fraud, The New York Times reported. According to government prosecutors, the Times said, Palmer raised more than $20 million by promising investors generous double-digit returns and then misappropriated their funds instead. He stands accused of swindling parents of children he coached in football, the newspaper said, and even his own father and brother-in-law along the way. He...

Note: The following text is a quote: Home • Briefing Room • Presidential Actions • Executive Orders The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release November 17, 2009 Executive Order - Establishment of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to strengthen the efforts of the Department of Justice, in conjunction with Federal, State, tribal, territorial, and local agencies, to investigate and prosecute significant financial crimes and other violations relating to the current financial crisis...

Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Seattle Division 1110 Third Avenue Seattle, Washington 98101-2904 Payment Code: R5109176K Reg No: 132731593 Date: March 29, 2009 The Federal Bureau of Investigation has discovered through our intelligence Monitoring Network that you are eligible to receive the sum of $7,500,00.00 USD regarding to an over-due Inheritance/Award payment which was fully endorsed to be paid in your favor. Therefore, the FBI Seattle Division in conjunction with the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Has screened through our various Monitoring Networks and has been confirmed and notified that the transaction you have with the Financial Institution...

I have been harrassed, followed, suffered property damage and the introduction of substances into my home and vehicle that have been making my family (my 10 year old son and I) ill for over 2 years, I purchased a small bungalow on the south side of Chicago in a neighborhood at the southeast most tip of Chicago that borders Lake Michigan and a lakefront park. The parties involved: I believe are individuals from city government agencies (Department Water and Sewer, Department of Planning, Purchasing, Police Department), It seems that there is interest in this area and I believe there is...

White-collar crooks deserve tough treatment. But 24 years for Dynegy's Jamie Olis? Politics has turned financial fraud into a worse crime than running drugs or killing someone. Former Tyco chief executive Dennis Kozlowski is a lucky guy. Not because a stubborn juror landed him a mistrial. He's lucky because even if New York prosecutors retry him, as they've vowed to do, the flamboyant former exec is looking at 15 to 30 years, no more. Were Kozlowski in federal court instead, he could easily be facing what amounts to a life sentence--with no chance of parole--under rigid new sentencing guidelines. While...

Investigative magistrates are threatening to stage a direct confrontation between two of the alleged masterminds behind the Parmalat scandal this week in an attempt to trace €10bn ($12.6bn) estimated to have disappeared from the bankrupt dairy group. Investigators in Parma on Monday subjected Fausto Tonna, Parmalat's veteran chief financial officer, to a day-long grilling. They are expected on Tuesday to turn to Gian Paolo Zini, Parmalat's chief legal counsel who helped set up many of the foreign and offshore companies now under scrutiny. If there are discrepancies between their testimonies, investigative magistrates are expected to organise a direct confrontation between...

In a recent speech at Harvard, Charlie Munger said that to set up a foolish accounting system is really something sinful. I would agree. A foolish, loose accounting system tempts otherwise good people to cheat. If an accounting system rewards poor behavior, that behavior will spread. If you don't cheat, you end up looking like a slacker. When it comes to companies, the biggest cheaters will end up gobbling up the honest companies that appear to be 'underperforming.' The human mind has an incredible ability to rationalize poor behavior, so the cheater will easily convince himself that he has done...

W A S H I N G T O N, Oct. 10 — Democratic and Republican lawmakers criticized the Justice Department Thursday for failing to prosecute a French bank for its secret purchase of a California-based life insurance company a decade ago. Lawmakers speaking at a hearing of the House Government Reform Committee also urged the Justice Department not to negotiate a lenient settlement with Credit Lyonnais, which California officials allege defrauded 300,000 insurance policyholders of the Executive Life Insurance Co. Although federal prosecutors in Los Angeles recommended indictments against Credit Lyonnais in April 2001, Justice officials apparently are in...

On Wednesday night Ms. Stewart's attorneys agreed to show additional information to congressional investigators looking into her sale of 3,928 shares of ImClone systems on December 27, 2001. That was the day before the Food and Drug Administration agreed rejected ImClones application for approval of its cancer drug, Erbitux. The news sent ImClone shares tumbling.Ms. Stewart's attorneys had handed over 1,000 pages of documents to the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday. But committee staff members complained that some of the documents appeared to have been 'redacted' with important information blacked out.Ken Johnson, committee spokesman, said on Wednesday night...