We’ll be rid of her soon
Posted on November 18, 2009 at 7:29 amMTSU officials say they began taking formal action on Pam Holder’s employment status “immediately” after the nursing professor was sentenced for her role in a mortgage fraud scheme.
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Ex-MTSU professor sentenced in mortgage fraud scheme
Posted on November 17, 2009 at 7:24 am
Pam Holder, a former Tennessee Board of Regents official and professor of nursing at MTSU, has been sentenenced to 366 days in jail for her part in a mortgage fraud scheme that used straw buyers.
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Counterfeit checks issue for big community bank
Posted on November 9, 2009 at 10:44 amFor the second time in two months, a local bank has alerted the FDIC that fake checks bearing its name are making the rounds. This time around, the counterfeit cashier’s checks are being presented in the name of First Farmers and Merchants Bank, the $940 million institution based in Columbia with 19 offices in seven counties on the south side of the Nashville MSA.
SEE ALSO: Lebanon Bank warns of fake checks
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‘Not as consumer-friendly as we would have liked’
Posted on November 3, 2009 at 8:16 amDirect General on Friday closed — temporarily, it hopes — a number of its Florida stores after seeing a spike in losses it thinks are being caused by fraud.
Direct General spokeswoman Courtney Ryder said the inquiry has been under way “for quite some time,” but the company opted for a rather abrupt closure of its stores after it became concerned that fraud was widespread and customers were being affected.
“Many innocent people are being impacted by fraudulent behavior and the wrongs being committed here,” the company said in a statement. “We don’t want our customers to be among them.”
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Boots’ broker gets five
Posted on October 9, 2009 at 7:51 amA federal judge has sentenced David Cacchione to five years in prison for his role in the investment fraud led by Preds co-owner William “Boots” Del Biaggio.
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Lebanon bank warns of fake checks
Posted on September 18, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Via the FDIC, First Freedom Bank in Lebanon says someone is writing counterfeit cashier’s checks that bear its name.
The counterfeit items display the routing number 064109086, which is assigned to First Freedom Bank. A security feature statement is embedded in a darkened top border and along the bottom border between two padlocks. The words “CASHIER’S CHECK” appear slightly off center at the top of the items.
Three-year-old First Freedom has about $220 million in assets and lost $1.1 million in the first half of this year.
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Boots sheds tears, gets years
Posted on September 8, 2009 at 3:57 pm
A federal judge today sentenced Boots Del Biaggio, the Silicon Valley financier and Preds co-owner, to eight years in prison for appropriating millions in bank loans and investment funds.
SEE ALSO: The Post’s coverage of the Boots story as it unfolded.
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AG wins TennCare billing settlement
Posted on June 11, 2009 at 11:14 am
Kindred Healthcare and its PharMerica affiliate will pay almost $500,000 in penalties to settle allegations of overbilling TennCare. According to the Attorney General’s office, the investigation was launched after a whistleblower’s internal complaint was not adequately investigated.
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Once more into the breach
Posted on May 26, 2009 at 7:33 amMore and more, employees are making off with sensitive data from their employers:
Brill said Kroll already is seeing a higher rate of incidents involving employees taking sensitive company data — either before or after they’ve been let go — that they intend to use to better themselves with another employer or start a competing business.
Brian Lapidus, a colleague of Brill and the Nashville, Tennessee-based COO of Kroll’s fraud solutions division, said there were about 1,000 more data security inquiries to Kroll in December than just last July.
“We’re seeing more [data] breaches and we’re seeing more activity from those people who have been victims of a breach,” Lapidus said.
A study that Ponemon Institute LLC released last month found that more than 88 percent of all data breaches involved insider negligence, while the remaining 12 percent were the result of a malicious act. The study also found that the cost of data breaches to companies rose in 2008 to an average $202 per record compromised, up 2.5 percent from 2007 and 11 percent from 2006.
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Ingram Micro pays up to settle SEC investigation
Posted on May 12, 2009 at 10:35 pmThe California-based company (Ticker: IM) that is 4 percent-owned by Nashville’s Ingram family will forfeit $15 million to end an inquiry into its role in the fraud perpetrated by software marketer McAfee.
The distributor sought to benefit from McAfee’s willingness to make payments for increasing amounts of unneeded products, the SEC said. Ingram Micro employees ignored internal goals of carrying no more than eight weeks of inventory, accruing a 22-month supply. It later reduced the stockpile by engaging in circular transactions with McAfee that lacked “economic substance,” the regulator said.
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We weren’t crooked… just maybe a little incompetent
Posted on April 30, 2009 at 12:18 pmHighly embattled feeder fund the Fairfield Greenwich Group, co-founded by hometown boy Walter Noel, has fired back over fraud accusations from Massachusetts regulators for its role in the Bernard Madoff debacle.
The company stands by its monitoring of its now-evaporated Sentry funds and claims PricewaterhouseCoopers consistently turned in clean audit reports when it examined them. They claim they were simply duped like everyone else.
However, judging by conversations we’ve had with hedge fund managers who did not invest with Madoff due to his complete and utter lack of transparency, FGG’s chances of convincing the world it was paying close enough attention are not high.
More detail is available here.
Financial adviser pleads guilty to fraud charges
Posted on April 6, 2009 at 11:13 amA financial adviser from the Chattanooga suburb of Ooltewah has pleaded guilty to federal fraud and tax charges.
A statement from the U.S. attorney’s office in Knoxville shows that 40-year-old Delbert Foster Blount III, in a deal with prosecutors, pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud, one count of wire fraud and five counts of income tax evasion.
Nashville native sued over Madoff role
Posted on April 1, 2009 at 12:20 pmMassachusetts’ securities regulator is taking on Walter Noel and his Fairfield Greenwich asset management business. Noel, a graduate of MBA and Vanderbilt, led an investment team that, over the course of two decades, placed more than $7 billion of client money with Bernie Madoff.
Fairfield kept a database of standard responses for investors who questioned how safe the Madoff funds were, according to the complaint. In one response, Fairfield told concerned investors that Citco, the main clearinghouse for hedge fund transactions, had not been charged with verifying Madoff’s assets, but reassured them that there was adequate due diligence on the Madoff funds…
SEE ALSO: Noel’s assets are now on ice.
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FDIC chief: We’re investigating thousands of mortgage fraudsters
Posted on March 3, 2009 at 9:30 pmSheila Bair tells the National Association of Attorneys General that her agency is going all out to take to task the bad guys in the financial system…
Our Professional Liability Group, which handles claims in connection with failed banks, is also gearing up for a surge in civil cases against mortgage brokers and other third parties that defrauded lenders. To date we’re pursuing well over a hundred home mortgage fraud cases, and investigating some 4,000 more.
…and says the much-maligned concept of loan modifications does work – if done right.
Far too many “mods” reported in the press were nothing but recapitalization of past due principal and interest and other short term “fixes” that frequently raised payments instead of lowering them.
These “modifications” have not performed well, creating the impression that all loan mods are doomed to failure. The jury is still out on redefault rates and to be sure, a worsening economy will mean even more mortgages will become delinquent. But studies to date have suggested much higher success rates when the modification results in a meaningful payment reduction to an affordable level.
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Two more local Madoff victims
Posted on February 5, 2009 at 2:32 pmBelle Meade resident Howard Levy and downtown accounting firm Jacobs Cohen are among the hundreds of investors listed in a document released yesterday by a New York court.
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