U.S. Attorney Asks Court to Reconsider Countrywide Loan Case

Preet Bharara is not giving up on bringing civil charges for “the Hustle.”

In an unusual move, the U.S. attorney for Manhattan’s Southern District has asked a three-judge panel on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a ruling that overturned a verdict that found Countrywide Home Loans and a bank executive liable for fraud. The company made billions of dollars of home loans that defaulted after the 2008 global meltdown.

The case arose from mortgages that Countrywide Home Loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage giants. Back in the late-housing-bubble period, in 2007, Countrywide, then the largest mortgage provider in the country, rolled out a new program for processing mortgage applications.

The company called it the “high-speed swim lane,” internally nicknamed “hustle.” Countrywide, like most mortgage lenders, wrote mortgages for consumers and then immediately sold the loans to Wall Street banks or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which bundled them and, in turn, sold them to investors. Countrywide’s program dropped most of the conditions meant to insure that loans would be repaid. The company didn’t tell Fannie or Freddie it had the loosened conditions, or that the loans no longer met their requirements.

In 2013, a jury found Countrywide, now owned by Bank of America, and a Bank of America executive liable for fraud. 

Sweet Dreams Nurse Anesthesia Group Pays More Than $1 Million to Resolve Kickback Allegations

G.F. “Pete” Peterman, III, United States Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, and Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens announced today a civil settlement with a series of anesthesia businesses, collectively known as Sweet Dreams Nurse Anesthesia (Sweet Dreams).  Sweet Dreams agreed to pay to the United States $1,034,416 and the State of Georgia $12,078.79 to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act and the Georgia False Medicaid Claims Act by paying unlawful kickbacks to health care providers with the intent to induce referrals of Medicare and Medicaid patients. read more »

Walgreens fights punitive damages in whistleblower case at the 9th Circuit

Walgreens will ask a federal appeals court to slash more than $1 million in punitive damages a jury awarded a Fresno, California pharmacist after finding he was fired for challenging questionable billing practices by individual pharmacists at several Walgreens stores in the area.

In briefs filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hold oral arguments in the case on Thursday, Walgreens says that Sami Mitri is not entitled to any punitive damages, and that the $1.15 million he received - 13 times his compensatory award of $88,000 - is unconstitutional under U.S. Supreme Court precedent. read more »

Federal Court Orders Georgia Resident Hendrik A. Van Beuningen and His Company, DeBrink Trading Fund I, LLC, to Pay $910,000 in Sanctions to Settle CFTC Charges of Fraud, Misappropriation, and Registration Violations in Connection with Their Commodity Pool

Defendants Fraudulently Solicited at Least $505,000 from Pool Participants and Fabricated Account Statements to Conceal Their Fraud

Washington, DC -- The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) obtained a federal court Consent Order imposing a permanent injunction against Defendants Hendrik A. Van Beuningen and his company, DeBrink Trading Fund I, LLC, and requiring them to pay a $430,000 civil monetary penalty and restitution of $480,000 to defrauded pool participants.

The Court’s Order against the Defendants finds that they violated anti-fraud provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA), misappropriated pool participants’ funds, and committed registration violations.  The Consent Order also imposes permanent trading and registration bans on the Defendants and prohibits them from further violations of the CEA and CFTC Regulations, as charged.  read more »

CFTC Orders Barclays Capital, Inc. to Pay $800,000 for Supervision Failures

Firm’s Supervisory Failures over Exchange and Clearing Fee Processing Led to Customer Overcharges at Times

Washington, DC – The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today issued an Order filing and simultaneously settling charges against Barclays Capital, Inc. (Barclays), a Connecticut corporation headquartered in New York City, for failing to diligently supervise its officers’, employees’, and agents’ processing of exchange and clearing fees it charged customers for trading and clearing Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Inc. products from January 2011 to April 2015. Barclays is registered with the CFTC as a Futures Commission Merchant.

The CFTC Order requires Barclays to pay an $800,000 civil monetary penalty and cease and desist from violating the CFTC regulation governing diligent supervision. read more »

Wegelin Whistleblower Couple Awarded $17 M

A German couple who helped bring down Wegelin & Cie by luring a Swiss banker to the U.S. for arrest with an elaborately staged transatlantic sting were awarded $17 million by a U.S. court. 

Wegelin went under in 2013 after a U.S. indictment and almost $58 million in restitution and fines to the U.S. for helping wealthy Americans evade taxes. 

Part of the U.S.' Wegelin spoils will go to a German couple living in Florida, Stefan and Katrin Seuss. The two were awarded $17 million by a U.S. court this week for their role in bringing down Wegelin read more »

State medical marijuana director's former company hit with fraud allegations

Pennsylvania has its first medical marijuana director, and Action News Investigates has learned his former company is facing fraud allegations.

Medical Marijuana Director John Collins was chief operating officer of Triad Isotopes, a Florida-based pharmaceutical company.

In 2011, a whistleblower lawsuit accused Triad of bid-rigging on a contract with Cook County in Illinois, inflating the number of certain drugs sold and then bidding very low prices for those drugs.

The lawsuit says Triad defrauded the government out of $300,000 a year, which represents the higher price paid by taxpayers for its products. read more »