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Secretary of Defense James Mattis is implicated in one of the largest business scandals of the past decades, described by the Securities and Exchange Commission as an “elaborate, years-long fraud” through which Theranos, led by CEO Elizabeth Holmes and president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, “exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance.” Basically, their biotech startup was founded on the promise of faster, cheaper, painless blood tests. But their technology was fake. Mattis not only served on Theranos’s board during some of the years it was perpetrating the fraud after he retired from US military service,...

So much has been said about government waste and abuse. But what about the companies that participate in these kind of things? Freepers seem to be the best researchers out there, let's look at some of them. Who know about Fluor, CH2M HILL, SHAW and yes, the dreaded Halliburton. Are they evil?

The FBI is conducting more than 500 investigations of corporate fraud amid the financial meltdown, the bureau's deputy director told a Senate panel Wednesday. Deputy Director John Pistole also said 38 of the 530 total active corporate fraud investigations involve fraud and financial institution matters directly related to the economic crisis. Additionally, the FBI has more than 1,800 mortgage fraud investigations, more than double the number of such cases just two years ago. There are so many mortgage fraud cases, Pistole said, that the bureau is not focusing on individual purchasers, but industry professionals generating fraud schemes that could total...

Who are the moles? The question was like a parlor game for employees of State Farm Insurance Co. after Hurricane Katrina, one they nervously played during coffee breaks or in the parking lot after work. Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, a prominent lawyer of tobacco litigation fame, created a stir by announcing in March that two "insiders" were helping him build cases against insurers for denying claims for Hurricane Katrina losses. Their identities remained a mystery until the day in early June when Cori and Kerri Rigsby — employees of a company that contracted with State Farm — told a supervisor they...

HOUSTON-Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay wrapped up six days on the witness stand Tuesday by saying that the company's collapse was "the most painful thing in my life.""I lived Enron very much," Lay told jurors in his federal fraud trial. "I think we built a great company. I think the most painful thing in my life was watching Enron finally have to go into bankruptcy."

BERLIN (Reuters) - A court in Germany convicted a man for fraud after he racked up huge phone bills phoning a sex hotline from work and split the proceeds with a woman working at the service, authorities said Wednesday. "He wasn't calling for the stimulation," said a spokesman for the court in the western city of Duesseldorf. The court handed the 38-year-old an eight-month suspended jail sentence for the ruse which he cooked up with the hotline worker while working for a local medical insurer. German media said the man had made more than 160 calls within half a year,...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former WorldCom Inc. finance chief Scott Sullivan began his long-awaited testimony on Monday by implicating ex-CEO Bernard Ebbers in an $11 billion accounting scandal that drove the telecommunications company into the largest U.S. bankruptcy. "I falsified the financial statements of the company," Sullivan admitted under questioning from prosecutor William Johnson, who then asked the government's star witness to name anyone else involved in the crime. Sullivan named five, including Ebbers. He was the first witness during the trial to directly link the one-time chief executive to the accounting fraud he stands accused of orchestrating. Sullivan also...

Attorney General John Ashcroft, in a farewell speech yesterday to Justice Department employees, praised their efforts in deterring terrorism since the September 11 attacks on America,...... -snip- "Al Qaeda has not lost its thirst for American blood. ... We know that terrorists will strike when and if they can. For three years, terrorists have not struck at America because you and people who work with you in this law-enforcement community have not let them," he said. Mr. Ashcroft's tenure as the nation's chief law-enforcement officer has been under constant attack from civil rights groups, other liberal organizations and political opponents...

The company (NYSE: HLR) allegedly paid for personal perks that included corporate jets, a $42,000 birthday party, and the refurbishment of a Rolls Royce. Conrad (Lord) Black, Hollinger International’s former chief executive officer, David Radler, its former chief operating officer, and other controlling shareholders and associates constituted a “corporate kleptocracy” which systematically looted the company of more than $400 million, according to a report issued Tuesday. The 513-page report, filed in a Chicago court by a special committee of Hollinger’s board that is probing financial improprieties at the company, alleges that the group stole what amounted to 95.2 percent of...

NEW YORK (AFP) - Bernie Ebbers, former chief executive of telecom giant WorldCom, was expected to be charged with fraud and conspiracy in connection with the biggest bankruptcy in US history, media reported. Citing Justice Department (news - web sites) sources, New York's NewsChannel 4 said US Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites) was expected to announce the charges here later Tuesday. Ashcroft scheduled a news conference for 1:00 pm (1800 GMT) in New York on a criminal matter, according to a Justice Department statement. WorldCom, the number-two US long-distance phone carrier, declared bankruptcy in July 2002. The...

MP3s Are Not the Devil Since every penny I earn depends on copyright protection, I'm all in favor of reasonable laws to do the job. But there's something kind of sad about the recording industry's indecent passion to punish the "criminals" who are violating their rights. Copyright is a temporary monopoly granted by the government -- it creates the legal fiction that a piece of writing or composing (or, as technologies were created, a recorded performance) is property and can only be sold by those who have been licensed to do so by the copyright holder. Without copyright, once a...

<p>August 13, 2003 -- Former WorldCom Inc. Chief Financial Officer Scott Sullivan, who's accused of leading a multibillion-dollar accounting fraud, says he should get no more than 12 1/2 years in prison if convicted, about half what's called for under U.S. guidelines.</p>

July 27, 2003 MCI Faces Federal Fraud Inquiry on Fees for Long-Distance CallsBy STEPHEN LABATON ASHINGTON, July 26 — Federal prosecutors have opened an investigation in the United States and Canada into accusations that MCI, the nation's second-largest long-distance carrier, defrauded other telephone companies of at least hundreds of millions of dollars over nearly a decade, people involved in the inquiry said. The central element of MCI's scheme, people involved in the inquiry said, consisted of disguising long-distance calls as local calls to avoid paying special access tariffs to local carriers across the country. Those tariffs are the largest...

The Atlantic Monthly shocks readers with its cover this month: A sculpted Bill Clinton with the headline "Post-President for Life." Two lengthy articles follow: a far too deferential account of what he's been up to and what he might try to accomplish by James Fallows, and a devastatingly accurate assessment of the vulgar appeal and carnival-like progress of the man George Will aptly branded the "worst man ever to be president," by P.J. O'Rourke. Clinton is of course again running for the White House, and Fallows' refusal to analyze his every move in light of Hillary's expected run in 2008...

Bernie Ebbers built a personal empire the way he built WorldCom: with bold deals, big gambles and costly mistakes. Over 20 years, while Ebbers turned WorldCom into the USA's No. 2 long-distance phone company, he also made a string of personal investments that engaged his passions. He bought Canada's biggest ranch and stakes in two farms, a minor league hockey team, a trucking company, an all-terrain-vehicle dealership, a lumberyard, enough acres of timberland to cover half the state of Rhode Island and a yacht company. He also expanded his original hotel chain. Ebbers viewed his outside ventures with pride. With...

For Immediate ReleaseOffice of the Press SecretaryOctober 19, 2002 Radio Address by the President to the Nation      Fact Sheet     Audio THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. I want to discuss with you steps we are taking to help strengthen the retirement security of America's workers. More than 40 million Americans save for retirement through 401(k) accounts, making regular contributions and building economic security over a lifetime. A 401(k) provides a chance to invest in the long-term growth of the American economy and an opportunity to build wealth and independence. Today's workers own more then $1.5 trillion in assets through their 401(k)s. Younger workers...

PRESIDENT BUSH'S CORPORATE FRAUD CRACKDOWN While The Bush Administration Enforces The Law, The Democrat Senate Stalls Pension Reform, Putting American Workers' Pensions At Risk ___________________________________________________________________________ PRESIDENT BUSH ON CORPORATE FRAUD: "I say as plainly as I can to CEOs: if you break the law, we will hunt you down, we will arrest you, and we'll prosecute you."   (President Bush, Remarks At The Economic Forum Plenary Session, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, August 13, 2002) PRESIDENT BUSH ON PROTECTING WORKERS' PENSIONS: "[T]he Senate should protect the retirement security of American workers. In April, the House passed pension reforms based on my...

GOP's escalating political game plan: Blame Bill Clinton WASHINGTON -- Blame everything on Bill Clinton. That's the long pass Republicans are throwing as the clock ticks toward the midterm congressional elections influenced by the sagging economy and corporate accounting scandals. "There's no question our economy has been challenged by a recession that was beginning when we took office," President Bush told his Texas economic forum earlier this month. He repeated the message as he took to the road to campaign for Republicans. The recession rhetoric headlines the White House's new public relations offensive on the economy. Many Republicans on November...

After almost a year of accounting scandals, plummeting stocks and disgraced corporate executives comes what many hope, and some fear, will be a day of reckoning. By Aug. 14, the chief executive officers and chief financial officers of almost a thousand of America's largest corporations must swear to the accuracy of their company's books to the Securities and Exchange Commission. If all goes as planned, those declarations should reveal the true state of corporate finances and, at the very least, remove some of the uncertainty that has spooked the stock markets. But some analysts fear that the new requirements won't...

It's hard to turn on the television or read the newspaper without finding some rehashed "revelation" from more than a decade ago about President George W. Bush at Harken Energy or the so-called accounting scandal at Halliburton Corp. The liberal media and congressional Democrats say they're just trying to see how Bush's words on corporate accountability square with what they imagine to have been his past actions and those of former corporate executives in his administration. "If Bush and [Vice President Dick] Cheney aren't perceived as being clean, how much confidence can investors have in their reforms?" intones a recent...