Eric Conn ordered to pay $31 million to government, whistle-blowers in fraud case

A judge has ruled that embattled disability attorney Eric C. Conn should pay $31 million in damages and penalties to the federal government and two former Social Security Administration employees who tried to blow the whistle on his fraudulent conduct. read more »

Ex-NBA player, college star loses appeal in Ponzi scheme case

A former NBA player and college basketball star celebrated for making a game-winning shot in the 1990 NCAA Basketball Tournament that sent his team into the Elite Eight has lost an appeal of a wire-fraud conviction in federal appeals court.

Tate George, who was convicted in 2013 on wire-fraud charges in a $2 million real estate Ponzi scheme, said in his appeal that prosecutors withheld evidence and that one federal agent lied on the witness stand, according to court documents released Wednesday. He was sentenced to nine years in prison in January 2016. read more »

The Unexpected Ways U.S. Law Applies To Any Company Doing Business In Cuba

By some estimates, when Cuba transitions to a market oriented economy and resolves its various disputes with the U.S., the island nation will require more than $50 billion of investment to modernize its economy.

Recent improvements in U.S.Cuba relations have opened up some avenues of economic cooperation in terms of both trade and investment, but many U.S. firms have learned that capitalizing on Cuba’s once forbidden fruit requires patience and planning.

There are unique challenges of doing business with Cuba, including some special circumstances about Cuba’s economic system. read more »

Two Ex-Barclays Libor Traders Cleared of Rigging Charges

Two former Barclays Plc Libor traders were acquitted by a London jury of manipulating the key interest-rate benchmark following a six-week trial, ending another chapter in a case that has cost firms $9 billion.

Ryan Reich and Stylianos Contogoulas were found not guilty of conspiring with others to manipulate the U.S. dollar London interbank offered rate from 2005 to 2007 after four hours of deliberations. The case was a retrial for the pair after another jury was unable to reach a decision in July. read more »

How Wells Fargo sales practice hurt small businesses

Merchant processing is a lucrative business for banks, bringing in more than $18 billion in fees in 2016, industry tracker the Nilson Report reports. At Wells Fargo, bank employees routinely engaged in high-pressure sales tactics to get small businesses to ink deals with the bank, and routinely engaged in reporting false sales information, a source told the paper.

"Wells Fargo fired some staff in this business for policy violations after uncovering evidence that employees coached branch bankers to put false information into the bank’s systems about small-business customers’ sales, the current managers said," the Journal reports.

"Firms with annual sales of less than $750,000 seeking to open accounts were automatically routed to call centers, under Wells Fargo policies at the time. To earn commissions, sales representatives sometimes inflated sales figures so they surpassed the threshold." read more »