Sessions Vows to Enforce an Anti-Bribery Law Trump Ridiculed

Attorney General Jeff Sessions vowed on Monday that the Trump administration would vigorously prosecute white-collar crime amid concerns that such cases would fall by the wayside in favor of higher-profile priorities like violent crime and illegal immigration.

Mr. Sessions affirmed the department’s commitment to prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars corporations from bribing foreign officials to gain a business advantage. President Trump once called it a “horrible law.”

“We will continue to enforce the F.C.P.A. and other anti-corruption laws,” Mr. Sessions said. “Companies should succeed because they provide superior products and services, not because they pay off the right people.” read more »

Wells Fargo Board Scrapes Through Election at Tough Meeting

Support for 15 directors ranged from 53% to 99% in annual vote

‘Why won’t they be held accountable?’ audience member shouts

Wells Fargo & Co. board members narrowly survived a shareholder vote in the wake of the bank’s account scandal, with some eking out such razor-thin majorities that it may hasten their departures. read more »

Expedia IT worker gets 15 months for insider trading scheme

A former information technology worker at Expedia Inc. has been sentenced to 15 months in prison after admitting he accessed the email accounts of top executives and made lucrative illegal stock trades based on the inside information he discovered.

Jonathan Ly was sentenced Tuesday in federal court in Seattle. U.S. District Judge John Coughenour also imposed three years of supervised release.

Prosecutors said Ly made more than $330,000 from the trades he made with the information from 2013 to 2015. read more »

Energy & Process Corp. Agrees to Pay $4.6 Million for Alleged False Claims Regarding Defective Steel Rebar and Quality Control Failures in Nuclear Waste Treatment Facility

The Justice Department announced today that Energy & Process Corporation (E&P) of Tucker, Georgia, has agreed to pay $4.6 million to resolve the government’s lawsuit filed under the False Claims Act alleging that it knowingly failed to perform required quality assurance procedures and supplied defective steel reinforcing bars (rebar) in connection with a contract to construct a Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear waste treatment facility.

“Compliance with contract requirements is expected by all who contract with the U.S. government, but is especially critical in connection with the construction of a nuclear facility,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Chad A. Readler of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. read more »

Southern California Residents Sentenced to Prison for Hiding Millions of Dollars in Secret Foreign Bank Accounts

Three Orange County, California residents were sentenced to prison today for willfully failing to report their foreign bank accounts in Switzerland and Israel.

According to documents and information provided to the court, Dan Kalili, David Kalili and Azarian willfully failed to file with the Department of Treasury Reports of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBARs) regarding secret bank accounts in Switzerland and Israel that each maintained and controlled, many for well over a decade. These secret accounts held assets that reached into the millions of dollars. read more »

2nd Charlottean charged in scheme that swindled more than 140

A second Charlotte resident was charged Monday in a $2.5 million fraud scheme that swindled more than 140 people – many of them elderly, federal prosecutors said.

Ludmilda O. Stencil, 46, was charged with five others from across the country in an indictment unsealed on Monday in federal court in Charlotte.

Stencil was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud, 14 counts each of mail fraud and wire fraud and five counts of money laundering. read more »

Portfolio Manager Charged With Diverting Nearly $2 Million to Personal Account

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced fraud charges against a Massachusetts-based portfolio manager accused of diverting at least $1.95 million to his personal brokerage account from a fund over which he had trading authority.

The SEC’s complaint alleges that Kevin J. Amell carried out a fraudulent matched-trades scheme in which he prearranged the purchase or sale of call options between his own account and the brokerage accounts of the fund at prices that were disadvantageous to the fund and advantageous to him.  In one series of trades involving Amazon securities, for example, Amell allegedly generated a $23,000 profit for himself in less than 23 minutes at the fund’s expense.

“As alleged in our complaint, Amell abused his trading authority at least 265 times by matching trades between the fund and his personal account at prices that he intentionally and fraudulently skewed to benefit himself,” read more »