Libor-rigging trial: ex-Barclays traders jailed for two to six years

Four former Barclays bankers have been sentenced to between 33 months and six-and-a-half years in jail for conspiring to fraudulently rig global benchmark interest rates.

India-born Jay Merchant, 45, the most senior of the men to face a jury in the case, was sentenced to six-and-a-half years. The New York-based former derivatives trader was convicted unanimously.

Merchant’s junior, 38-year-old American Alex Pabon, was sentenced to two years and nine months and junior British Libor submitter Jonathan Mathew, 35, was handed a four-year sentence. Both men were convicted by majority verdict.

Mathew’s former boss, 61-year-old Peter Johnson, a 35-year Barclays veteran, was sentenced to four years. The former senior dollar Libor submitter and head dollar cash trader pleaded guilty in October 2014 and did not stand trial. read more »

Federal Prosecutors Settle Whistleblower Suit for $5.8 Million

A group of five Gardena-based government service contractors agreed Wednesday to pay $5.8 million to settle a federal whistleblower lawsuit alleging the information technology companies duped the government in order to win money specifically set aside for small businesses.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles said that En Pointe, Inc., En Pointe Technologies Inc., En Pointe Technologies Sales Inc., Dominguez East Holdings LLC, and Din Global Corp. collaborated to portray En Pointe, Inc. as a small business when it was not. As a result, it should have been barred from winning small business contracts awarded to it from 2011 to 2014. The government also alleged the companies underreported sales to the General Services Administration to avoid certain fees.

“Small businesses, in some cases, are eligible to receive a preference when government contracts are issued,” U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles Eileen Decker said. “Large companies that fraudulently solicit and obtain contracts under small business set-aside programs, like the companies in this case, not only abuse the system but also harm legitimate small businesses by taking those contracts away from them.”

The government initially sued the companies in 2014 after Virginia-based Minburn Technology Group and its managing member Anthony Colangelo filed a whistleblower action alleging wrongdoing by the En Pointe group companies. As part of the False Claims Act statute, Minburn Technology and Colengelo are entitled to $1.4 million of the total settlement. read more »

Frontier misused federal funds, false claims suit alleges

Bridgeport-based Internet provider Citynet has filed a lawsuit against Frontier Communications under the False Claims Act, alleging Frontier misused $40.5 million in federal stimulus funds and built a high-speed broadband network designed to shut out its competitors in West Virginia.

Citynet accuses Frontier of double-billing, falsifying records and charging excess fees not authorized by the federal grant that paid for the broadband expansion project completed two years ago.

Citynet initially filed the federal lawsuit in 2014, but it was kept under seal until this week. A revised complaint was filed Monday, after the U.S. Justice Department declined to intervene in the case. The federal government typically joins about 25 percent of lawsuits filed under the False Claims Act.