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☆ Fraud Economy: How Current Economic Trends Lead to More Corporate Scams
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Linette Lopez | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Get ready for what will feel like an inescapable wave of corporate fraud. And as interest rates have risen, the stock market has fallen off — which makes it harder to get dollars by whipping up new investors or offering stock. Despite Scheck's assertion that the risk of a wave of corporate fraud has heightened, he didn't want to speak in historical analogies. There be icebergsOf course, there's also fraud that goes undetected in times of easy money — companies where the very act of existing means stretching the truth. Kreuger had managed to hide that he had stretched the company's finances beyond solvency by raising money on the US stock market while it was raging.

☆ Anthony Scaramucci says he bought Sam Bankman-Fried a suit for their Middle East fundraising tour and that the trip sparked FTX's downfall
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Sam Bankman-Fried and Anthony Scaramucci went on a Middle East fundraising tour in October. Scaramucci told Insider he bought SBF a suit so the FTX CEO wouldn't wear a T-shirt with investors. Scaramucci told Insider he bought the then-FTX CEO a suit from Bloomingdale's to help impress investors. "I bought him a suit, frankly, to take him to the Middle East with me and told him he can't dress with a T-shirt in the Middle East," Scaramucci told Insider. "So in some ways, I'm happy that we took that trip because we could still be living in a world of FTX," Scaramucci said.

☆ Explainer: Who is behind Hindenburg, the company that is shorting Adani?
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Carolina Mandl | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

NEW YORK, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Short-seller Hindenburg Research disclosed on Wednesday short positions in India's Adani Group, citing potential stock manipulation and accounting fraud in a report. WHAT IS HINDENBURG RESEARCHFounded in 2017 by Nathan Anderson, Hindenburg Research is a forensic financial research firm which analyses equity, credit and derivatives. On its website, Hindenburg says it looks for "man-made disasters," such as accounting irregularities, mismanagement and undisclosed related-party transactions. After finding potential wrongdoings, Hindenburg usually publishes a report explaining the case and bets against the target company, hoping to make a profit. HOW MANY COMPANIES HAS HINDENBURG TARGETEDHindenburg has flagged potential wrongdoing in at least 16 companies since 2017, according to its website.

"FTX in my view now gets painted as a crypto problem. I think if you really peel enough onion layers, it's not really a crypto ... problem to happen here, it's fraud. "We talk about this as a crypto problem. But really, this is just fraud, and I think in some ways, not that dissimilar than Bernie Madoff," said Garlinghouse. "When Bernie Madoff occurred, we didn't totally restructure how we thought about oversight and regulation of hedge funds."

☆ Anthony Scaramucci compared Sam Bankman-Fried to Bernie Madoff, and alluded to Dante's 'Inferno' as he discussed the FTX founder's downfall
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Anthony Scaramucci spoke about his relationship with Sam Bankman-Fried at a Davos crypto panel. Scaramucci alluded to the circles of hell in Dante's "Divine Comedy" and compared SBF to Bernie Madoff. FTX bought 30% of SkyBridge Capital for $45 million in September 2022. The Financial Times reported that SkyBridge Capital also bought $10 million of FTX's cryptocurrency, FTT, as part of the deal's requirements. "I made a mistake being involved with Sam," Scaramucci said.

☆ ‘Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street’ Review: Ponzi Scheme of a Sociopath
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-04 | by ( John Anderson | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

The subject of director Joe Berlinger ’s captivating, penetrating, four-part “Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street” is described by one of its kinder voices as a “financial sociopath.” Later, someone just comes right out and calls him a “serial killer.” All of which may help explain our persistent obsession with the man who perpetrated the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. After so many productions, dramatic and documentary, shouldn’t we be tired of Bernie Madoff ? One might as well ask if we’re tired of Charles Manson , or Jack the Ripper. It’s certainly not violence that makes the Madoff story magnetic, although the death toll does begin to resemble the post-heist body count in “Goodfellas” after Madoff’s nearly $65 billion rip-off goes belly up in 2008. Madoff, who died in 2021, is very matter-of-fact about the crimes he committed, dispassionate, even clinical.

☆ Bernie Madoff was a 'sociopath' with no empathy, says documentary director Joe Berlinger
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-04 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailBernie Madoff was a 'sociopath' with no empathy, says documentary director Joe BerlingerJoe Berlinger, series director, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss how Berlinger got access to confidential files regarding Bernie Madoff's deposition, what Berlinger makes of SBF's current situation and more.

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried may have trouble getting a plea bargain as 'the buck presumably stopped with him,' former federal prosecutor says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-27 | by ( Brian Evans | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A plea bargain may be out of reach for Sam Bankman-Fried, according to a former federal prosecutor. The buck presumably stopped with him. But it's unclear if Bankman-Fried can point the finger at others. He could still offer a quick guilty plea, similar to what Bernie Madoff did in 2009 after his Ponzi scheme was exposed. But Madoff got a substantial sentence anyway, McGinley noted, so "the options here are very limited" for Bankman-Fried.

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried doesn't 'have the typical profile of a crook' – and his fear of failure might explain FTX's collapse, Bill Ackman says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-23 | by ( George Glover | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Ackman compared SBF to convicted fraudster Bernie Madoff, saying neither "have the typical profile of a crook.' The crypto exchange cofounded by Bankman-Fried seems to have been profitable and backed by top venture capitalists, Ackman said Friday. This reminds me of Madoff," tweeted Ackman, the founder and CEO of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management. Young Wall Street trader Bankman-Fried went from relative obscurity to the head of crypto empire FTX in just four years. That runaway success soon after leaving a top college sheltered Bankman-Fried from learning how to cope with failure, Ackman suggested.

FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried is escorted out of the Magistrate's Court on December 21, 2022 in Nassau, Bahamas. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried will be released on $250 million bond while awaiting trial for fraud and other criminal charges, a New York federal judge ruled Thursday. Judge Gabriel Gorenstein said Bankman-Fried would require "strict" supervision following his release to his parents' home in California. Bernie Madoff posted a $10 million bond while awaiting trial on his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. Jeff Skilling, former Enron CEO, posted a $5 million bond, while Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos founder, posted a scant $500,000.

☆ Explainer: How did Bankman-Fried secure $250 mln bail?
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Jack Queen | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Dec 22 (Reuters) - FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried clinched a bail deal on Thursday that would see him released on a $250 million bond secured against his parents' property with restrictions on his movement. Here is an explainer on how his deal stacks up and how bail works:Was Bankman-Fried expected to get bail? Does the bail amount mean Bankman-Fried or his family has $250 million? In Bankman-Fried's case, the $250 million bond is secured by his parents' home. The $250 million bond does not reflect the family's assets, which could not be determined.

Bankman-Fried initially had said he would fight extradition after his arrest a week ago in the Bahamas, where he lives and FTX is based. Reuters reported first on Saturday that Bankman-Fried would return to court to reverse his decision, citing a source. Bankman-Fried's defense lawyer however told Magistrate Shaka Serville that he does not know why Bankman-Fried was brought to court this morning. LONG ROAD TO EVENTUAL TRIAL[1/7] The Founder and former CEO of crypto currency exchange FTX Sam Bankman-Fried arrives at the Magistrate Court building in Nassau, Bahamas December 19, 2022. REUTERS/Dante Carrer 1 2 3 4 5Upon being extradited to the United States, Bankman-Fried would be required to appear before a judge in Manhattan within two days, though the hearing would likely take place quickly.

Dec 19 (Reuters) - Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, is expected to appear in court in the Bahamas on Monday and agree to be extradited to the United States, where he faces fraud charges. Bankman-Fried initially said he would fight extradition after his arrest a week ago in the Bahamas, where he lives and FTX is based. Reuters reported first on Saturday that Bankman-Fried would return to court to reverse his decision. Upon being extradited to the United States, Bankman-Fried would be required to appear before a judge in Manhattan within two days, though the hearing would likely take place quickly. Any trial of Bankman-Fried is likely more than a year away, legal experts told Reuters.

☆ 'O.C.' star and crypto critic Ben McKenzie tells lawmakers that the crypto market is the 'largest Ponzi scheme in history'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Carla Mozée | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The crypto market is the "largest Ponzi scheme in history," actor-turned-crypto critic Ben McKenzie said Wednesday. McKenzie, who co-wrote a book about crypto, testified to the Senate Banking committee about the fall of FTX. McKenzie was referring to financier Madoff who in 2009 was convicted of running a decades-long Ponzi scheme that conned his investors out of $65 billion and which collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis. In my opinion, the cryptocurrency industry represents the largest Ponzi scheme in history," said McKenzie, who co-wrote "Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud". "They have been lied to, in ways both big and small, by a once-seemingly mighty crypto industry whose entire existence in fact depends on misinformation, hype, and yes, fraud."

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried is set to testify before Congress on Tuesday. He could be grilled on his past statements — and expose himself to more legal risks.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-12 | by ( Sindhu Sundar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Sam Bankman-Fried plans to appear remotely before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday. The House Financial Services committee has its own investigative mandate, outlined by its role in inquiring into financial failures, and in helping to craft legislation to prevent similar episodes in the future. Participating could expose Bankman-Fried to more legal risksTestimony provided to House lawmakers would usually be under oath, thought not necessarily so. The House Financial Services committee, chaired by Democratic Representative Maxine Waters of California, comprises progressive political stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. The House Financial Services committee hearing is scheduled to kick off at 10 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday.

CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin reported that the charges against Bankman-Fried include wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and money laundering. Bahamas Attorney General Ryan Pinder said the United States was "likely to request his extradition." "While the United States is pursuing criminal charges against SBF individually, The Bahamas will continue its own regulatory and criminal investigations into the collapse of FTX, with the continued cooperation of its law enforcement and regulatory partners in the United States and elsewhere," the statement said. The Bahamas and the United States have had an extradition treaty in place since the early 20th century, when the Bahamas was still under British control. Legal experts told CNBC that if the federal government pursues wire or bank fraud charges, Bankman-Fried could face life in prison without the possibility of supervised release.

☆ Arielle Charnas' company, Something Navy, is floundering amid dwindling sales, an employee exodus, and furious suppliers
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Katie Warren | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +36 min

From the outside, it doesn't look as if Charnas' company is in trouble. Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images for Beach MagazineSeveral former employees told Insider they cut ties with Something Navy because they saw signs the company was struggling. Several current and former Something Navy employees told Insider they'd been inundated with emails since the spring from suppliers, freelancers, and models asking where their money was. In one email viewed by Insider, Scanlan told a supplier that cash was tight but promised payment was on the way. The current Something Navy employee said that based on data she'd seen, the retail locations most likely don't turn a profit.

Bankman-Fried could face a host of potential charges – civil and criminal – as well as private lawsuits from millions of FTX creditors, legal experts told CNBC. There are three different, possibly simultaneous legal threats that Bankman-Fried faces in the United States alone, Levin told CNBC. He told CNBC, "prosecutors would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bankman-Fried or his associates committed criminal fraud." (Carter was not an FTX investor, and told CNBC that his fund passed on early FTX rounds.) "People should not jump to the conclusion that something is not happening just because it has not been publicly disclosed," Levin told CNBC.

☆ Billionaire investor Leon Cooperman says the S&P 500 won't hit a new high for a long time - and predicts a US recession and stubborn inflation
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Theron Mohamed | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Leon Cooperman expects the S&P 500 to eke out mediocre returns for the rest of this decade. The billionaire investor predicts a US recession and stubbornly high inflation. Sign up for our newsletter to get the inside scoop on what traders are talking about — delivered daily to your inbox. "The 4,800 high this year will be the high for quite some time," he said about the benchmark stock index. Rising prices, declining growthA prolonged economic downturn and elevated inflation lie ahead for the US, Cooperman said.

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried says he ‘got a little cocky’ before FTX collapsed
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Allison Morrow | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New York CNN Business —Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of now-bankrupt FTX, has fallen from the peak of crypto celebrity, but he’s not going quietly. “I think I got a little cocky — I mean, more than a little bit,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in an interview on Good Morning America. Bankman-Fried, echoing comments he also made to The New York Times on Wednesday, denied knowing of any improper transfers of customer funds between the exchange and Alameda. “I don’t think that’s who I am at all, but I understand why they’re saying that,” Bankman-Fried told Stephanopoulos. In that interview, Bankman-Fried said he “didn’t ever try to commit fraud on anyone,” while admitting he made mistakes as chief executive.

☆ Fact Check-Fabricated WSJ headline calling Sam Bankman-Fried ‘saintly’ and ‘on a mission from god’
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

A Twitter user shared the fabricated screenshot of the headline: “The Saintly Sam Bankman-Fried Was On a Mission From God to Save Humanity But Was Unfairly Destroyed by His Evil Enemies” with the comment, “Shame on you @WSJ cowards. A Google search reveals no record of the headline circulating on social media having been published by the WSJ (tinyurl.com/yc7cv55z). There is also no evidence that the WSJ has ever previously referred to Bankman-Fried as “saintly.” A search for “saintly Sam Bankman-Fried” on the WSJ website did not return any relevant results (tinyurl.com/3c75y4nd), (here). By 11:53pm EST the same day, the article was updated with the headline “Sam Bankman-Fried Said He Would Give Away Billions. There is no evidence that the WSJ published a headline that referred to Sam Bankman-Fried as “saintly,” but the fabricated image includes a subtitle from an authentic WSJ article published on Nov. 24.

☆ Cathie Wood breaks down FTX, Elon Musk, and Twitter in a new interview. Here are her 9 best quotes.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-25 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Cathie Wood spoke to Bloomberg on Tuesday in a wide-ranging conversation on crypto, FTX, Elon Musk, and investing. She compared Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, and shared her thoughts on Elon Musk, Twitter, and Tesla. "We do think bitcoin — and you can see through the behavior of the infrastructure it hasn't skipped a beat, not one beat — it's more secure than yesterday, the day before, the day before. "We think bitcoin is coming out of this smelling like a rose." "Think about the amount of data Twitter has, and think about the combination of that and artificial intelligence.

☆ FTX flop evokes history’s great financial swindles
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( Edward Chancellor | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

As Walter Bagehot wrote in “Lombard Street” in 1873, “The good times too of high price almost always engender much fraud. As cryptocurrencies declined in value, FTX provided a line of credit to BlockFi, a stricken crypto-lender. He talked about Three Arrows Capital, the failed crypto hedge fund, as engaged in “punting”. His firm launched a product based on a basket of crypto assets that it called Shitcoin Index Perpetual Futures, with the unsubtle ticker SHIT-PERP. He commissioned an advertisement, aired during the Super Bowl, in which the comedian Larry David casts doubt on the viability of FTX.

"It was like a bomb went off in that place," Patrick Hillmann, Binance CSO, told CNBC on Thursday. It was money that FTX didn't have, because it was using client deposits for other purposes. "Somehow they were always spending more and more and more and more money," Hillmann said. Hillmann said that early on there were some concerns with FTX and its unsavory relationship with Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried's hedge fund. WATCH: Binance decided FTX was beyond saving after two-hour review of balance sheet

☆ Never seen 'such a complete failure' of corporate controls, says new FTX CEO who also oversaw Enron bankruptcy
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Rohan Goswami | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Ray formerly served as the CEO of Enron after the implosion of the energy titan. He promised to work with regulators to investigate FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Bankman-Fried." Ray excoriated Bankman-Fried and his management team for what were described as lackadaisical controls on systems and regulatory compliance. Coordinating with regulators, Ray wrote, the chapter 11 bankruptcy process would examine the actions of Bankman-Fried in connection with FTX's collapse.

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