Fraud News from around the Blogs
Sam Antar has an interesting post about Overstock, Did Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, Deliver a Trojan Horse to the Securities and Exchange Commission?
"In the Crazy Eddie fraud investigation they called it the Trojan horse diversion. My uncle Sam M. Antar (Eddie Antar's father) and his sons Mitchell and Allen, sent two former Crazy Eddie employees to lie to the Securities and Exchange Commission and cover-up their crimes in an attempt to make Eddie Antar and I take the fall. The Securities and Exchange Commission and later, the Justice Department, thought that they delivered the goods on the Crazy Eddie frauds on a silver platter. They thought the information was a gift. They were wrong. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department quickly learned about witnesses bearing false gifts.Read the entire article and decide for yourself how much of a diversion, if any, Patrick Pyrne creating.Is a similar attempt being made by Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne? Did Patrick Byrne send a Trojan horse to the Securities and Exchange Commission in an attempt to take them off his trail."
The WSJ Law Blog also has a nice post on the NBA ongoing scandal.
Ref Betting Scandal Rattles Well-Lawyered NBA: "
A Law Blog reader emailed us this morning surprised that we’ve yet to weigh in on the NBA referee betting investigation. ‘This is a catastrophe in the making,’ he wrote. ‘How many millions do Nike, Reebok, UnderArmour, etc., spend to market in the NBA? What are the league’s TV revenues and when is the renegotiation of the contract? When are we going to get the first civil suit filed by a Suns fan?’
Too bad the NHL had its own betting scandal with Ric Tocket, otherwise we could all hope in vain for the NHL to overtake the NBA in television ratings.
Finally, also from the WSJ Law Blog, just because we haven't shown them enough link love lately, we have the first class action lawsuit in the subprime mortgage debacle.
An Investor With the Moody’s Blues Sues: "
The Law Blog has felt a bit left out lately with so many of our WSJ colleagues reporting on one of the biggest business stories of the day — the subprime mortgage mess. But we’ve found a way in this morning, thanks to a lawsuit filed in Chicago late last week.
Raphael Nach, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, filed a good-ol fashion securities-fraud complaint against Moody’s, reports colleague Ianthe Jeanne Dugan. He bought stock last October in Moody’s Corp without knowing that Moody’s had given ‘excessively high ratings’ to bonds backed by subprime loans. He claims Moody’s stock price — which has steadily decreased in 2007 — was inflated because of the ratings. Here’s the complaint, filed by Joel Lipman of O’Rourke, Katten & Moody.
The wannabe class-action names Moody’s CFO Linda Huber as defendant because she had access to ‘adverse undisclosed information about the company’s business.’ A Moody’s spokesman told the WSJ, ‘There’s no basis whatsoever for the lawsuit and we are confident it will be dismissed expeditiously.’
