Frauds and Swindling

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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

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      Rampant Identity Theft Is Taxing the I.R.S.

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      The National Taxpayer Advocate criticized the agency for being too slow to resolve cases, leaving victims waiting years for their refunds.Rampant identity theft has overwhelmed the Internal Revenue Service, resulting in a backlog of 500,000 unresolved fraud cases, leaving taxpayers without refunds and credits that they are due, the agency’s watchdog wrote in a report to Congress on Wednesday.The report by the National Taxpayer Advocate described the slow pace of addressing the identity theft cases as a “blemish” on the performance of the I.R.S., which is in the midst of a sweeping modernization campaign that aims to improve taxpayer services. While the I.R.S. was criticized by the watchdog for identify theft delays last year, the backlog has gotten only worse.The I.R.S. is taking nearly two years to resolve identity theft victims’ assistance cases and has an inventory of approximately 500,000 cases, up from 484,000 cases in September.“I.R.S. delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are unconscionable,” Erin Collins, the taxpayer advocate, wrote in the report.Calling on the agency to prioritize assistance for victims, she added: “Delays of nearly two years make a mockery of the right to quality service in the Taxpayer Bill of Rights.” The backlog of cases is likely to give congressional Republicans more fodder to criticize the I.R.S. and to call for cleaving back more of the $80 billion in funding that the agency received through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Critics of the agency have been arguing that it is bloated and failing to put that money to good use.Identity theft has long been a problem for the I.R.S. Criminals often steal taxpayers’ identifying information and file paperwork to fraudulently claim their refund. Taxpayers realize this only when they try to claim their refund, leading to a laborious process in which they have to submit an identity theft affidavit and a paper tax return before the agency will open a case to investigate the matter.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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      A Swindled Immigrant Community in Brooklyn Gets a Housing Reprieve

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      One man wanted to find a home for his aging parents to retire. One young woman’s mother wanted to raise her family there. Three families wanted their children to go to good schools.The five-story building in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, erected on the site of a former Lutheran church, seemed to be the right fit for Asian families with modest incomes — they watched the construction with anticipation in the tight-knit neighborhood with a thriving Asian community. The developer, Xi Hui Wu, was a local whom neighbors recognized from the bank and the grocery store, and his then-wife, Xiao Rong Yang, was known as a prominent real estate agent in the area.For the next several years, tenants moved in and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy their apartments. Then in 2018, each unit received a thick envelope in the mail. Inside was a foreclosure notice, and the tenants came to a horrifying realization: It was all a sham.Promissory notes and handshakes were never going to turn into deeds. For years, Mr. Wu had failed to make payments to a lender. He owed millions of dollars to the bank. And he had never received authorization from the city to turn the building into condos.That could have been the end — 20 different households, $5 million lost between them, evicted by a bank. Mr. Wu’s whereabouts have been hard to pin down, with conflicting information among tenants and government officials as to whether he fled to China or remains in Brooklyn. (Neither Mr. Wu, nor his lawyer listed in court records, could be reached for comment.)But the tenants now stand to become homeowners when the building is eventually converted to co-ops, under a deal that will be announced at a news conference on Wednesday.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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      Book Review: ‘There Is No Ethan,’ by Anna Akbari

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      Reading Anna Akbari’s memoir of online manipulation, you think you’ve seen it all — then you keep reading.THERE IS NO ETHAN: How Three Women Caught America’s Biggest Catfish, by Anna AkbariI did not expect to be shocked by “There Is No Ethan.” Online deception has become so ubiquitous that it’s boring. By now, the term “catfish,” which was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary a decade ago, seems almost quaint. But the twists and turns in Anna Akbari’s book are outrageous. I read it in one sitting, then spent days recounting her story to anyone who would listen, unable to shake off my indignation on behalf of the author and her fellow victims.The book begins in late 2010, when someone presenting himself as Ethan first messages Akbari, a sociologist teaching at New York University, on the online dating site OKCupid. Ethan’s photos are “approachably attractive” and his credentials seem impeccable: a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from M.I.T., a three-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side, an exciting (albeit mysterious) job that involves working for both Morgan Stanley and the U.S. government that he describes as “stealing from the rich.” Akbari is most drawn to Ethan’s “eagerness to keep the conversation going.” A persistent and intuitive communicator, Ethan stands out among the city’s innumerable self-absorbed and flaky men. For weeks, they message each other nonstop.But Ethan’s excuses for why he can’t meet in person grow increasingly implausible: first work, then weather, then a horrifying cancer diagnosis. When Akbari starts fact-checking and finds holes everywhere, Ethan chastises her: “You obviously distrust me right now, and when I’m going through such an ordeal, that’s really the last thing I need on my plate.” She wants to extricate herself but finds it impossible to ignore him; Ethan even persuades her to have cybersex. He offers to pay her rent. He asks her to go away with him for the weekend. When Akbari finally stops responding, she feels awful for abandoning Ethan before he has started chemotherapy.Then Akbari connects with two other women whose (simultaneous) relationships with Ethan mirror her own. Soon she begins hearing from more of his victims, all professionals in their 30s. Ethan has strung some of them along for years.Language is his weapon of choice, Akbari writes, “persuading and emotionally manipulating women with attention, affection and the promise of love and companionship because the thing many women, especially high-achieving women, lack most in this digital age — far more than access to money or sex — is meaningful romantic companionship.” Ethan’s victims have convinced themselves that he is real — and really cares for them — because he doesn’t reap any financial or physical sexual gain. He demands nothing except for, in one woman’s paraphrased words, “her time, openness and emotional vulnerability.”Through some clever sleuthing (and an eerily portentous dream) the group discovers Ethan’s real identity. He isn’t a typical catfisher, a “wannabe influencer,” as Akbari puts it, but instead a “highly educated overachiever” with multiple Ivy League degrees.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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      I.R.S. Failed to Police Puerto Rico Tax Break, Whistle-Blower Says

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      An insider accused the agency of failing to scrutinize a lucrative tax break in Puerto Rico designed to lure wealthy Americans to the island.For the past decade, thousands of wealthy Americans have been flocking to Puerto Rico to take advantage of a tax break that can cut their tax bills to zero. For nearly as long, there have been allegations that the benefit enables multimillionaires to avoid paying what they owe when they reap big investment profits.Now, an Internal Revenue Service insider has accused the agency of failing to police the tax break. Despite a high-profile campaign announced more than three years ago to unearth possible abuse, the agency has audited barely two dozen people and has collected back taxes from none, according to a letter that an agency insider wrote this year to lawmakers and that has been reviewed by The New York Times, as well as interviews with I.R.S. officials.Senate officials have begun an investigation into the whistle-blower’s allegations about the Puerto Rican tax benefit.“It’s been three years since the I.R.S. announced its enforcement campaign on this issue,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. “It needs to pick up the pace.”Hamstrung by decades of budget cuts, the I.R.S. has regularly struggled to crack down on tax avoidance by the wealthiest Americans and large companies. Audits of millionaires have declined more than 80 percent over the past decade, reaching record lows. The agency rarely examines giant private equity firms. And the annual “tax gap” — the difference between taxes that are owed and what is paid — is estimated to be $600 billion.In an interview, Danny Werfel, the I.R.S. commissioner, said the agency’s enforcement campaign in Puerto Rico, while still in its “early chapters,” was accelerating because of the $80 billion in new funding that the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provided to the agency.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