Frauds and Swindling

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      2 Brothers Sentenced to More Than 17 Years in Prison in Sextortion Scheme

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      Two brothers from Nigeria helped run an online sextortion operation that prosecutors said resulted in the death of a high school student.A federal judge in Michigan on Thursday sentenced two brothers from Nigeria to 17 and a half years in prison for their roles in a social media sextortion scheme that claimed more than 100 victims across the United States and resulted in the death of a high school student.The brothers, Samuel Ogoshi, 24, and Samson Ogoshi, 21, who each pleaded guilty in April to one count of conspiracy to exploit minors, will be on supervised release for five years after completing their prison terms, prosecutors said in a news release.The brothers, who are from Lagos, Nigeria, were extradited to the United States from Nigeria in August 2023 after they were indicted in November 2022.The extradition marked a new chapter in cooperation with Nigerian authorities in extraditing perpetrators of this kind of scam. Last month, the Justice Department announced the extradition of two other Nigerian nationals on similar charges in Pennsylvania.A third defendant in the case, Ezekiel Robert, is pending extradition from Nigeria, prosecutors said.The brothers were sentenced in a case involving a popular relatively new scam the authorities call financial sextortion, in which scammers pose as young women on social media and send flirty messages to young men and teenage boys before soliciting nude photographs that they then hold as ransom.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Former Volkswagen Chief Executive Faces Trial in Emissions Case

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      Nine years after the carmaker admitted to concealing emissions on a massive scale, Martin Winterkorn will be tried in a German court.Almost nine years after Volkswagen admitted that it had rigged millions of cars to cheat on emissions tests, the company’s former chief executive went on trial Tuesday on charges stemming from the fraud, a vast corporate conspiracy that changed the auto industry.Martin Winterkorn, 77, who led Volkswagen from 2007 until he resigned under pressure in September 2015, appeared at a court in Braunschweig, Germany, after a judge rejected his pleas to postpone the trial because he said he was in poor health. The trial will be a test of whether German authorities can hold top executives accountable for wrongdoing that cost Volkswagen tens of billions of dollars and contributed to poor air quality in Europe and the United States.Mr. Winterkorn, who was once Germany’s highest-paid executive, faces criminal charges including fraud, market manipulation and making false statements. Prosecutors accused him of failing to notify authorities and owners of Volkswagen cars when, in 2014, he became aware of software designed to illegally cloak emissions that exceeded limits imposed by European and U.S. regulators.With Mr. Winterkorn’s knowledge, prosecutors said, Volkswagen continued to sell such vehicles until the cheating was exposed by California regulators and the Environmental Protection Agency in 2015. Over a decade, Volkswagen and its Audi, Skoda and Seat units sold nine million cars with the illicit software.Prosecutors have also accused Mr. Winterkorn of authorizing a recall of the affected vehicles in 2014 with the purpose of preventing regulators from learning about the forbidden software. And he is accused of lying under oath to a German parliamentary committee investigating the cheating.The market manipulation charge arises from allegations that Mr. Winterkorn failed to notify Volkswagen shareholders of the financial risk posed by the software as required by securities law.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Letitia James Fights to Preserve Trump’s Over $450 Million Fraud Penalty

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      Ms. James, New York’s attorney general, argued that the civil fraud judgment, which the former president has appealed, should stand. It could wipe out his cash reserves.The New York attorney general’s office late Wednesday night urged a state appellate court to uphold a more than $450 million civil fraud judgment against Donald J. Trump, arguing that the punishment was needed to protect “the integrity of the marketplace.”In a legal filing, the attorney general, Letitia James, defended a judge’s February ruling that Mr. Trump had conspired to inflate the value of his properties to receive favorable loans and other financial benefits. Mr. Trump, the attorney general’s office has argued, exaggerated his net worth by as much as $2.2 billion in any given year.“Mr. Trump indisputably participated in the fraud,” Ms. James’s office wrote in response to an appeal filed last month by Mr. Trump, adding that he, his adult sons and his company had “used a variety of deceptive strategies.”The response marked the latest phase of a battle between Mr. Trump and Ms. James that has spanned the better part of five years. The appeals court will hear oral arguments on Sept. 26 and its decision could come by year-end, coinciding with the final stretch of a presidential campaign that has pitted Mr. Trump against Vice President Kamala Harris.Ms. James, a Democrat who campaigned for her office on the promise of bringing Mr. Trump to justice, began to investigate the former president in 2019 and filed the lawsuit in 2022. Since then, Mr. Trump has lost nearly every step of the way. Even before the trial, the judge overseeing the case, Arthur F. Engoron, ruled against Mr. Trump, finding that he had committed fraud by inflating his assets.The trial was held largely to determine how much Mr. Trump, his company and his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. would owe the state. Justice Engoron was the decider — there was no jury — and after 11 weeks and 40 witnesses, he ordered Mr. Trump to pay $355 million plus interest, a total of more than $450 million.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      George Santos Is Expected to Plead Guilty, People Close to Case Say

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      Mr. Santos could change his mind, but witnesses in his campaign fraud case were told by federal prosecutors that he intends to plead guilty on Monday.George Santos, the former Republican congressman from New York undone by a mind-bending array of biographical lies and moneymaking schemes, has told prosecutors that he intends to plead guilty and avoid a federal trial that was expected to begin next month, according to two lawyers involved in the case and two other people with knowledge of the matter.The plea, which is expected to occur on Monday in Federal District Court in Central Islip, N.Y., would spare Mr. Santos from a trial that almost certainly would have been a colorful spectacle. Mr. Santos, whose trial on 23 felony charges was scheduled to begin on Sept. 9, could still change his mind. But this week, two lawyers representing multiple witnesses in the case were told by federal prosecutors that Mr. Santos had decided to plead guilty.Two others with knowledge of the plans confirmed that he intends to plead guilty on Monday; one of the people said Mr. Santos is expected to give a statement in court acknowledging his crimes. The terms of his expected guilty plea and what sentence he might face were not clear.Lies, Charges and Questions Left in the George Santos ScandalGeorge Santos, who was expelled from Congress in 2023, has told so many stories they can be hard to keep straight. We cataloged them, including major questions about his personal finances and his campaign fund-raising and spending.Public court records show that an in-person hearing has been scheduled for Monday afternoon at the request of prosecutors and Mr. Santos’s lawyers. The records did not explain the purpose of the hearing. Mr. Santos and one of his lawyers, Joseph Murray, did not respond to requests for comment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      To Save Conservatism From Itself, I Am Voting for Harris

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      I believe life begins at conception. If I lived in Florida, I would support the state’s heartbeat bill and vote against the referendum seeking to liberalize Florida’s abortion laws. I supported the Dobbs decision and I support well-drafted abortion restrictions at the state and federal levels. I was a pro-life lawyer who worked for pro-life legal organizations. While I want prospective parents to be able to use I.V.F. to build their families, I do not believe that unused embryos should simply be discarded — thrown away as no longer useful.But I’m going to vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 and — ironically enough — I’m doing it in part to try to save conservatism.Here’s what I mean.Since the day Donald Trump came down that escalator in 2015, the MAGA movement has been engaged in a long-running, slow-rolling ideological and characterological transformation of the Republican Party. At each step, it has pushed Republicans further and further away from Reaganite conservatism. It has divorced Republican voters from any major consideration of character in leadership and all the while it has labeled people who resisted the change as “traitors.”What allegiance do you owe a party, a movement or a politician when it or they fundamentally change their ideology and ethos?Let’s take an assertion that should be uncontroversial, especially to a party that often envisions itself as a home for people of faith: Lying is wrong. I’m not naïve; I know that politicians have had poor reputations for honesty since Athens. But I have never seen a human being lie with the intensity and sheer volume of Donald Trump.Even worse, Trump’s lies are contagious. The legal results speak for themselves. A cascade of successful defamation lawsuits demonstrate the severity and pervasiveness of Republican dishonesty. Fox paid an enormous settlement related to its hosts’ relentless falsehoods during Trump’s effort to steal the election. Rudy Giuliani owes two Georgia election workers $148 million for his gross lies about their conduct while counting votes. Salem Media Group apologized to a Georgia voter who was falsely accused of voter fraud and halted distribution of Dinesh D’Souza’s fantastical “documentary” of election fraud, “2,000 Mules.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Texas Woman Is Sentenced to 15 Years in Fraud Scheme

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      Janet Yamanaka Mello, 57, stole over $100 million from a youth development grant program for children of military families, spending the money on a lavish lifestyle, prosecutors said.A Texas woman who stole over $100 million from a youth development grant program for children of military families and spent the money to fund a lavish lifestyle was sentenced on Tuesday to federal prison, the authorities said.The defendant, Janet Yamanaka Mello, 57, pleaded guilty in March to five counts of mail fraud and five counts of filing a false tax return, according to a criminal court docket.Judge Xavier Rodriguez of the Western District of Texas sentenced Ms. Mello on Tuesday to 180 months, or 15 years, in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas. According to federal prosecutors, Ms. Mello was a civilian employee for the U.S. Army and worked as a financial manager for a child and youth grant program at the Fort Sam Houston Base in San Antonio. Part of her job was to determine whether funding was available for various organizations that applied to the grant program, called the 4-H Military Partnership Grant.Around the end of 2016 through at least August 2023, Ms. Mello formed a fraudulent business called Child Health and Youth Lifelong Development, which she used to steal Army funds by falsely claiming it provided services to military members and their families, prosecutors said. In some cases, Ms. Mello forged her supervisor’s digital signature on the paperwork, they said.Ms. Mello used her “experience, expert knowledge of the grant program, and accumulated trust,” to swindle her colleagues, prosecutors said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Scams Tied to the CrowdStrike Crash Have Bloomed. Here’s How to Stay Safe

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      People posing as airline customer service representatives may be making fraudulent attempts to access your money or private data, experts warn.In the hours after the American cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike deployed a flawed software update that crippled critical businesses and services around the world, scammers pounced.Government agencies and businesses have warned that the panic caused by the CrowdStrike crash on Friday has given criminals an opening to take advantage of customers who are looking to reschedule flights, access banking information or fix their technology.Here are some ways to guard against the fraudulent schemes.Scammers see an opportunity.CrowdStrike provides cybersecurity for some 70 percent of Fortune 100 companies, so the crash led to widespread failures that grounded planes, crippled businesses, disrupted 911 emergency systems and delayed banking transactions.Thieves online are using the confusion to carry out a variety of scams, including phishing attempts, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said. The National Cyber Security Center in the United Kingdom issued a similar statement noting that an “increase in phishing referencing this outage has already been observed.”Scammers may look to get your money immediately by offering a product like a bogus plane ticket. But they could also be after personal identifying data that would allow them to access your finances in the future.What industries are being targeted?Because grounded planes caused frustrated customers to look to reschedule their flights, travel has been particularly subject to schemers, said Anton Dahbura, the executive director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supreme Court Rejects S.E.C.’s Administrative Tribunals

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      Such tribunals, common in executive agencies, hear enforcement actions without juries, a practice that challengers said violated the Constitution.The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected one of the primary ways the Securities and Exchange Commission enforces laws against securities fraud.The agency, like other regulators, brings some enforcement actions in internal tribunals rather than in federal courts. The S.E.C.’s practice, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for a six-justice majority in a decision divided along ideological lines, violated the right to a jury trial.“A defendant facing a fraud suit has the right to be tried by a jury of his peers before a neutral adjudicator,” the chief justice wrote.The case is one of several challenges this term to the power of administrative agencies, long a target of the conservative legal movement. The court last month rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of the way the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is funded. In January, it heard arguments in a pair of challenges to the Chevron doctrine, a foundational principle of administrative law that requires judicial deference to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes. (That case has not been decided.)A central question in the new case, Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, No. 22-859, was whether the administrative tribunals violate the right to a jury trial guaranteed by the Seventh Amendment in “suits at common law.”Lawyers for the agency said juries were not required in administrative proceedings because they were not private lawsuits but part of an effort to protect the rights of the public generally. They added that agency adjudications without juries are commonplace, with two dozen agencies having the authority to impose penalties in administrative proceedings.The case concerned George Jarkesy, a hedge fund manager accused of misleading investors. The S.E.C. brought a civil enforcement proceeding against him before an administrative law judge employed by the agency, who ruled against Mr. Jarkesy. After an internal appeal, the agency eventually ordered him and his company to pay a civil penalty of $300,000 and to disgorge $685,000 in what it said were illicit gains.Mr. Jarkesy appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans. A divided three-judge panel of that court ruled against the agency on three different grounds, all with the potential to disrupt enforcement of not only the securities laws but also many other kinds of regulations.In addition to saying that the tribunals ran afoul of the right to a jury trial, the appeals court ruled that the agency’s judges were excessively insulated from presidential oversight and that Congress could not allow the agency itself to decide where suits should be filed. More