The Ponzi-Scheming Scumbags of Sports Car Racing That Were on Par With Bernie Madoff

Gregory Loles and Henri Zogaib took those in and outside the racing world for millions of dollars in separate Ponzi Schemes. They're now behind bars.

Having your name read aloud on television by Stacey Keach usually means one of a few things: You've either been robbed, killed, or committed heinous crimes. The veteran character actor, whose most recent body of work has come from doing voiceover work CNBC's show American Greed, spoke the name of Greg Loles during a new episode that aired earlier this month, and with the show's investigative work, more details on the former sports car team owner/Ponzi scheme specialist's evil action were revealed. read more »

U.S. judge orders Volkswagen executive held until emissions case trial next January

A federal judge in Detroit on Thursday ordered that a Volkswagen AG executive charged in the automaker's diesel emissions scandal be detained until his trial set for next year, agreeing with prosecutors that the German national represented a flight risk.

Oliver Schmidt, who was chief of Volkswagen's environmental and engineering center in Michigan, has been held since January when he was arrested in Miami trying to return to Germany. Schmidt is one of seven current and former executives charged in the U.S. emissions probe..

"The allegations of fraud and conspiracy in this case are very, very serious," said Judge Sean Cox of the U.S. District Court for Eastern Michigan. "There is a serious risk that Mr. Schmidt will not appear in this case." read more »

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Gold Company Manager Charged in Vast Peruvian Smuggling Plot

The operations manager at a metals-refining company was charged with helping run a gold smuggling network that reaped billions of dollars for illegal mines controlled by drug dealers and other criminals in South America.

A criminal complaint against Juan P. Granda outlines a vast conspiracy involving employees at NTR Metals to buy huge amounts of gold from illegal mines in Peru that support human trafficking, forced labor and environmental devastation. The scheme allowed the NTR Metals office in Miami to launder billions of dollars for criminal organizations -- including Peruvian narco-terrorists -- by buying gold from mines they control, according to the U.S. complaint filed in Miami.

The charges signal a U.S. crackdown on smugglers exploiting a spike in worldwide consumption of gold mined illegally in the Amazon basin, where laborers use fire hoses and mercury to extract the nearly pure precious metal. read more »

UK steps up anti-money laundering crackdown with new watchdog

The UK government is setting up a new anti-money laundering watchdog in an effort to crack down on ill-gotten gains and dirty money.

The new Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision, or OPBAS, will sit within the existing Financial Conduct Authority, the UK Treasury announced on Wednesday. The new office aims to counter often conflicting guidance currently put out by 25 different organizations that supervise different sectors, such as the law and accountancy. read more »

Feds say they’re still probing research fraud allegations at Duke

Federal investigators have received at least 1.5 million pages of documents and questioned at least seven current or former employees of Duke University as they look into an alleged case of research fraud, recent court filings from the university and a Virginia-based U.S. prosecutor’s office say.

The probe is continuing, among other things to determine whether Duke and people in its medical school tried “to conceal the data fraud from the government and, if so, to determine a proper measure of damages caused by [their] actions,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Giorno said in one of the filings.

Giorno is a staffer in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Western District of Virginia, which is based in Roanoke. It’s involved because a former Duke lab analyst, Joseph Thomas, filed a lawsuit there in 2013 under the federal False Claims Act, a law that encourages whistle blowers to take action on the the government’s behalf against people and organizations that allegedly have misused federal funds.

Thomas alleges that Duke tried to cover up a massive case of research fraud in one of the “core laboratories” that serves its own medical researchers and others based elsewhere in the Triangle. Perpetrated by a former lab tech, Erin Potts-Kant, it compromised numerous projects, journal articles and federal research grants, he says.

Exhibits previously on file in the case suggest the affected grants were worth $112.8 million to Duke and $120.9 million to other institutions, including UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State University.

Former LA County Sheriff Lee Baca Convicted In Jail Corruption Case

The former sheriff of Los Angeles County has been convicted for his role in a scheme to block an FBI investigation into mistreatment of inmates in his jails.

For 15 years, Lee Baca led the nation's largest sheriff's department. He was among the most powerful law enforcement leaders in the country. read more »

U.S. Says No Charges to Be Filed Against New York Mayor De Blasio

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and his aides won’t face corruption charges based on pay-for-play allegations, according to acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim.

De Blasio and his aides were the subject of a long-running probe into whether they granted official favors in exchange for campaign donations. But Kim said the “totality of the circumstances,” including a lack of personal profit derived from the scheme, weighed against filing charges. read more »