Free Republic

A San Francisco venture capitalist who was once dubbed 'Silicon Valley's Party Animal' has been convicted of fraud totalling $19 million - and now faces up to 60 years in prison. Michael Brent Rothenberg, who was raised in a Jehovah's Witness family in Georgetown, Texas, used his dense network of successful Ivy League friends to set up his own VC fund in 2012 based on the strategy of throwing opulent parties. He rubbed shoulders with Mark Zuckerberg, rented out baseball stadiums for networking events, and threw all-day-and-night parties in a bid to attract investors and companies to invest in. This...

The Eagle Police Department in Idaho apprehended three Venezuelan men in a major bank fraud operation. The suspects, Heli G. Tronconis-Atencio, 22, Cesar A. Cano-Muskus, 24, and Dioban J. Pineda-Urdaneta, 19, now residents of Florida and Utah, were arrested on Tuesday while attempting to set up fraudulent accounts at two different banks in the Eagle area, according to Eagle Police Department. The trio, now held in the Ada County Jail, faces charges of felony criminal conspiracy with bonds set at $50,000 each. Pineda-Urdaneta, in addition, is being held on an arrest warrant from Florida. This rapid development unfolded after...

Silicon Valley Bank dished out $219 million worth of loans to officers, directors and principal shareholders in the months before it collapsed. The money was handed it out in the final quarter of 2022 and was three times higher than the amount borrowed by insiders in the three months before, marking a two-decade record high. It comes as the San Francisco Federal Reserve boss Mary Daly has felt the wrath of both Democrats and Republicans for her failure to act on signs of weakness at the bank, which caved on March 10. The unusually high number of loans is documented...

Todd and Julie Chrisley will attend a sentencing hearing on Monday Todd and Julie Chrisley are facing time in federal prison after being convicted of financial crimes. Prosecutors in the case are asking the judge to sentence Todd to between 17 and 22 years in prison and Julie to 10 to 13 years in prison, according to court documents obtained by FOX5. The couple will appear in court on Monday after being convicted of financial crimes in June. Todd was convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, tax fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

A secret memo marked “URGENT” detailed how the House Democratic Caucus’s server went “missing” soon after it became evidence in a cybersecurity probe. The secret memo also said more than “40 House offices may have been victims of IT security violations.” In the memo, Congress’s top law enforcement official, Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving, along with Chief Administrative Officer Phil Kiko, wrote, “We have concluded that the employees [Democratic systems administrator Imran Awan and his family] are an ongoing and serious risk to the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of our information systems ... shortly after an IG report came...

Bank Hapoalim (Switzerland) Pleads Guilty and Bank Hapoalim B.M. Enters into Deferred Prosecution Agreement for Criminal Misconduct; Agree to Pay Nearly $875 Million Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jeffrey A. Rosen, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, Richard E. Zuckerman, the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Tax Division, and Don Fort, the Chief of the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (“IRS-CI”), announced today the guilty plea of Bank Hapoalim (Switzerland) Ltd. and entry of criminal charges against Bank Hapoalim B.M. for conspiring with U.S. taxpayers...

Democrat Representative David Nangle was arrested by the FBI and IRS on a 28-count indictment that includes a wide variety of corruption charges. Some of those charges include, at this time, bank fraud, wire fraud, lying to a bank, and even filing false tax returns...

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, January 30, 2020 The former chief of Antigua’s Financial Services Regulatory Commission (FSRC) has pleaded guilty for his role in connection with the Stanford International Bank (SIB) Ponzi scheme.Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Patrick of the Southern District of Texas made the announcement.Leroy King, 74, of Dickerson Bay, Antigua, was the last remaining defendant in the SIB scheme. Today, he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice and one count of obstruction of...

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, December 5, 2019 Russian National Charged with Decade-Long Series of Hacking and Bank Fraud Offenses Resulting in Tens of Millions in Losses and Second Russian National Charged with Involvement in Deployment of “Bugat” Malware Reward of up to $5 Million Offered for Information Leading to Arrest or Conviction The United States of America, through its Departments of Justice and State, and the United Kingdom, through its National Crime Agency (NCA), today announced the unsealing of criminal charges in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Lincoln, Nebraska, against Maksim V. Yakubets, aka...

A group of Democratic senators, half of whom currently running for president, are supporting a new bill that would direct the Federal Reserve to formally factor climate-change risks into its oversight of large financial firms. Sen. Brian Schatz, (D., Hawaii) announced on Wednesday that he was joining with nine other Democrat senators on the legislation—including presidential hopefuls Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), Michael Bennet (D., Colo.), Cory Booker (D., N.J.), Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) and Kamala Harris (D., -Calif.). Rep. Sean Casten (D., Ill.) has introduced a companion bill in the House of Representatives. The bill, if passed, directs the...

NBC News spoke to nine American families who say Marcela Zavala Taylor, a former banker with Grupo Financiero Monex, had gained their trust only to disappear after they discovered money had gone missing from their personal accounts. These families, whose estimated losses total more than $7 million dollars, all say they were blindsided by what had happened.

Michael Avenatti, the former attorney for porn actress Stormy Daniels, pleaded not guilty Monday to federal charges that he allegedly stole millions of dollars from his clients, failed to pay taxes and lied in bankruptcy cases. The 48-year-old Avenatti, who was indicted earlier this month on 36 counts including wire and bank fraud, appeared in federal court for an arraignment in Santa Ana, California on Monday. Asked to enter a plea, Avenatti told the judge, "Not guilty to all charges." The trial is set to begin on June 25 with a status hearing scheduled for June 15. Prosecutors accused Avenatti...

New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez interceded on behalf of an Ecuadorian woman who was banned from traveling to the U.S. because of allegations she had engaged in visa fraud. The woman, Estafania Isaias, is the daughter of a fugitive from Ecuador convicted in absentia for bank fraud and whose relatives in Florida made significant campaign donations to the New Jersey Democrat's 2012 campaign and the Democratic Party. Current and former U.S. government officials tell NBC 4 New York that Estefania Isaias was barred from traveling to the U.S. in 2007 because she allegedly lied on visa applications to bring immigrant...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A chief strategist of Venezuela's government-backed cryptocurrency is a former U.S. congressional intern who once organized protests against the same socialist administration he's now helping to circumvent U.S. financial sanctions.Gabriel Jimenez, 27, was catapulted to something of tech stardom in Venezuela last month when he stood alongside President Nicolas Maduro and two Russian businessmen on national TV signing a contract to position the petro, as the fledgling currency is known, among international investors."It's a company founded and led by young Venezuelan geniuses, boys and girls of Venezuela, who have one of the most technologically advanced blockchain...

Imran Awan, the former IT aide to congressional Democrats whose federal court case has drawn the interest of President Trump and other Republicans, pleaded guilty Tuesday to federal bank fraud in a plea deal as prosecutors said they "uncovered no evidence" that Awan "violated federal law with respect to the House computer systems." During a hearing before U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan in Washington, Awan pleaded guilty to making a false statement on a loan application. As part of the deal, the prosecution dropped fraud charges against Awan's wife, Hina Alvi. The case has generated interest from Republicans on...

Update: Paul Manafort is heading to jail, ahead of his trials for bank fraud and money laundering, Bloomberg News reports. A judge in Washington revoked Manafort’s bail Friday after being told by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s lawyers that Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, attempted to tamper with witnesses for his trial. Manafort has "abused" the trust placed in him six months ago, the judge said. Previous report: Paul Manafort could be locked up as soon as Friday if a judge agrees with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s argument that he tried to tamper with witnesses while under house arrest. Manafort,...

Russian meddling? Campaign collusion? Forget that. That “did they or didn’t they” story has nothing on the ongoing saga of cybersecurity breaches with the possible involvement of a foreign government taking place in the House of Representatives. The story has all the features of a political spy novel: stolen servers, access to confidential congressional files, claims of “controlling the White House” and $12,000 in a suitcase. Compared to the rampant speculation over yet-unproven claims of Russian collusion in the Trump campaign, the events in the House have received minimal attention from the mainstream press (the exception is the impressive level...

Copy sent to Vatican criminal prosecutor for further investigationVATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) - A Vatican watchdog is claiming in a new book there has been homosexual abuse of underage seminarians at a Vatican-run minor seminary. Gianluigi Nuzzi, an Italian journalist who was a big part of the 2015 "VatiLeaks II" scandal, has released a new book titled Original Sin. He alleges there has been homosexual sex abuse in the Vatican's St. Pius X pre-seminary for middle and high schoolers, and includes a letter from a gay ex-seminarian who claims that his roommate, who was underage at the time, was being visited...

Congressional technology aides are baffled that data-theft allegations against four former House IT workers — who were banned from the congressional network — have largely been ignored, and they fear the integrity of sensitive high-level information. Five Capitol Hill technology aides told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group that members of Congress have displayed an inexplicable and intense loyalty towards the suspects who police say victimized them. The baffled aides wonder if the suspects are blackmailing representatives based on the contents of their emails and files, to which they had full access. “I don’t know what they have, but...

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz threatened the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police with “consequences” for holding equipment that she says belongs to her in order to build a criminal case against a Pakistani staffer suspected of massive cybersecurity breaches involving funneling sensitive congressional data offsite. The Florida lawmaker used her position on the committee that sets the police force’s budget to press its chief to relinquish the piece of evidence Thursday, in what could be considered using her authority to attempt to interfere with a criminal investigation. In a highly unusual exchange, the Florida lawmaker uses a hearing on the...