Tag Archives: Fraud

New York Mayor Eric Adams charged with bribery and wire fraud

Mayor-Adams-Indictment

Important Takeaways:

  • New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been hit with five federal charges – including wire fraud, bribery and solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national – according to a sprawling 57-page federal indictment unsealed Thursday.
  • Prosecutors from the Southern District of New York accuse Adams of seeking and accepting luxury international travel from a wealthy businessman and at least one Turkish government official for nearly a decade.
  • “As Adams’ prominence and power grew, his foreign-national benefactors sought to cash in on their corrupt relationships with him, particularly when, in 2021, it became clear that Adams would become New York City’s mayor,” the indictment says. “Adams agreed, providing favorable treatment in exchange for the illicit benefits he received.”
  • The details of the criminal case come at a time of extraordinary turmoil for the Adams administration. In the past two weeks alone, the city’s police commissioner, top lawyer and schools chancellor have announced their resignations.
  • The Adams administration has also been facing a public corruption investigation and another federal probe that resulted in a search of homes belonging to Adams’ former director of Asian affairs.
  • In a videotaped statement he released late Wednesday, Adams remained defiant, saying any charges against him would be “entirely false, based on lies.”

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Trump’s legal headaches continue as Judge rules he defrauded banks; but polling shows Americans still support him

Zillow-Wrong-Trump-Didnt-Sell-Mar-A-Lago-640x480

Important Takeaways:

  • Judge Rules Trump Defrauded Banks, Insurers While Building Real Estate Empire
  • A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House, and he ordered some of the former president’s companies removed from his control and dissolved.
  • Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans.
  • Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee Trump Organization operations.
  • If not successfully appealed, the order would strip Trump of his authority to make strategic and financial decisions over some of his key properties in the state.
  • Trump, in a series of statements, railed against the decision, calling it “un-American” and part of an ongoing plot to damage his campaign to return to the White House.
  • “My Civil rights have been violated, and some Appellate Court, whether federal or state, must reverse this horrible, un-American decision,” he wrote on his Truth Social site. He insisted his company had “done a magnificent job for New York State” and “done business perfectly,” calling it “A very sad Day for the New York State System of Justice!”
  • Under the ruling, limited liability companies that control some of Trump’s key properties, such as 40 Wall Street, will be dissolved and authority over how to run them handed over to a receiver. Trump would lose his authority over whom to hire or fire, whom to rent office space to, and other key decisions.
  • “The decision seeks to nationalize one of the most successful corporate empires in the United States and seize control of private property all while acknowledging there is zero evidence of any default, breach, late payment or any complaint of harm,” Kise said after the decision.

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AI Fraud could target America’s most vulnerable communities like Medicare and Social Security with criminals operating all over the world

Revelations 13:14 “…by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast it deceives those who dwell on earth…”

Important Takeaways:

  • AI-assisted fraud schemes could cost taxpayers $1 trillion in just 1 year, expert says
  • Artificial intelligence smashed the floodgates to unprecedented fraud that could cost taxpayers hundreds of billions, if not $1 trillion, over the next 12 months, an expert told Fox News Digital.
  • Haywood Talcove, CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ government division, which evaluates and predicts risk, said he’s already seeing criminals on the dark web using people’s faces to steal from government and state agencies.
  • Benefits to America’s most vulnerable communities, such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and unemployment, are ending up in the pockets of criminals and criminal enterprises that are operating all over the world.
  • “Being one of the wealthiest countries in the world makes us a huge target,” Talcove said. “The amount of money that we’re going to lose over the next 12 months, if we do nothing, is going to make the COVID pandemic look like child’s play.”

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Report shows ‘fraud and waste’ of Taxpayer money during Covid Aid; $420 billion missing

Luke 21:11 There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.

Important Takeaways:

  • The Great COVID Grift: $420 BILLION lost from coronavirus aid through ‘fraud and waste’: Staggering report reveals how billions of taxpayer cash from $4.2 trillion in bailout funds disappeared
  • More than $400 billion of COVID aid was lost to fraud or wasted spending under Donald Trump and Joe Biden, a new bombshell report claimed on Monday.
  • An analysis by the Associated Press said fraudsters and criminals plundered billions of taxpayer cash set aside to fend off economic collapse during the pandemic.
  • It estimated that $280 billion in COVID relief funding was lost to fraud, while another $123 billion was wasted or misspent.
  • Michael Horowitz, the U.S. Justice Department inspector general investigating Covid-related fraud, recently told Congress that it was ‘clearly in the tens of billions of dollars and may eventually exceed $100 billion.

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U.S. charges Ukrainian, Russian, over cyberattack, seizes $6 million in ransom payments

By Mark Hosenball and Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department has charged a suspect from Ukraine and a Russian national over a July ransomware attack on an American company, according to indictments made in court filings on Monday, with CNN reporting the United States has seized $6 million in ransom payments.

Yaroslav Vasinskyi, a Ukrainian national arrested in Poland last month, will face U.S. charges for deploying ransomware known as REvil, which has been used in hacks that have cost U.S. firms millions of dollars, the court filing showed.

Vasinskyi conducted a ransomware attack over the July 4 weekend on Florida-based software firm Kaseya that infected up to 1,500 businesses around the world, according to the charges filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

Vasinskyi and another alleged REvil operative, Russian national Yevgeniy Polyanin, were charged by the United States with conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, among other charges.

The Treasury Department also said the two operatives face sanctions for their role in ransomware incidents in the United States, as well as a virtual currency exchange called Chatex “for facilitating financial transactions for ransomware actors.”

The Treasury said the two individuals received more than $200 million in ransom payments paid in Bitcoin and Monero. It added that Latvian and Estonian government agencies were vital to the investigation.

Vasinskyi, 22, was being held in Poland pending U.S. extradition proceedings, while Polyanin, 28, remained at large.

The U.S. indictment of the Ukrainian hacker said he and other conspirators started deploying hacking software around April 2019 and “regularly” updated and refined it. The indictment also accused the hacker of laundering money obtained through a hacking extortion scheme.

Europol said earlier on Monday that Romanian authorities on Nov. 4 arrested two individuals suspected of cyber-attacks deploying the REvil ransomware. Since February, law enforcement authorities have arrested three other affiliates of REvil, Europol added.

Twelve suspects believed to have mounted ransomware attacks against companies or infrastructure in 71 countries were “targeted” in raids in Ukraine and Switzerland, Europol said on Friday.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Dan Grebler)

Michigan state court rejects request to block Detroit election certification results

By Tom Hals and Makini Brice

(Reuters) – A Michigan state court rejected on Friday a request by supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump to block the certification of votes and appoint an independent auditor in Detroit, which voted heavily in favor of Democratic President-elect Joe Biden.

The ruling is a setback for Trump and Republicans who have been trying to overturn Biden’s victory in the Nov. 3 election by preventing officials from certifying election results.

“It would be an unprecedented exercise of judicial activism for this Court to stop the certification process of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers,” wrote Timothy Kenny, chief judge of the Third Judicial Circuit Court of Michigan, referring to the county that includes Detroit.

The lawsuit alleged fraud and voting irregularities, which Wayne County has denied.

The judge rejected those allegations, writing: “Plaintiffs’ interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible.”

He noted that allegations, such as city workers encouraging voters to cast their ballot for Democrats, were not backed up by details, such as locations or times when such events allegedly took place.

The judge also said that one witness who had filed an affidavit had posted on Facebook before the election that he speculated that Democrats were using the pandemic as cover for election fraud, undermining his testimony and credibility.

On Wednesday, the Trump campaign filed a similar lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Michigan, alleging harassment of Republican poll challengers and a requirement they adhere to six-foot distancing rules that was not equally enforced against Democratic poll challengers.

Michigan is due to certify its election results on Nov. 23.

The campaign and Republicans have also sued in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin seeking to block the certification of election results.

Also on Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision before the election that a former Pennsylvania congressional candidate and four individual voters lacked standing to sue over the state’s decision to allow “no excuses” absentee ballots and to extend mail-ballot deadlines due to the coronavirus pandemic.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware and Makini Brice in Washington; Editing by Louise Heavens and Alistair Bell)

Pompeo voices confidence U.S. vote count will lead to ‘second Trump administration’

By Humeyra Pamuk

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday voiced confidence that once every “legal” vote was counted, it would lead to a “second Trump administration,” appearing to reject Democratic challenger Joe Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump.

He spoke as world leaders, including Washington’s close allies Britain and France, already have congratulated President-elect Biden. Trump, a Republican, has so far refused to concede and made baseless claims that fraud was marring the results.

“There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” Pompeo told a State Department news conference. He later sought to assure the world that America’s post-election transition would be successful.

“We’re going to count all the votes … The world should have every confidence that the transition necessary to make sure that the State Department is … successful today and successful when the president who’s in office on January 20, a minute after noon, will also be successful.”

Biden, due to take office on Jan. 20, 2021, risks a delayed transition as Trump has vowed to push ahead with longshot legal challenges to his election loss. Republican U.S. lawmakers have defended his right to do so.

Asked if Trump’s refusal to concede hampers State Department efforts to promote free and fair elections abroad, Pompeo, a close ally and appointee of Trump’s, said: “This department cares deeply to make sure that elections around the world are safe and secure and free and fair.”

The leading Republican in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has carefully backed Trump, saying that he was “100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities,” without citing any evidence.

And U.S. Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee who heads the Justice Department, on Monday told federal prosecutors to “pursue substantial allegations” of irregularities of voting and the counting of ballots.

In his first official travel after the Nov. 3 election, Pompeo is due to travel to France, Turkey, Georgia, Israel, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia between Nov. 13-23. The leaders of some of those countries have already congratulated Biden.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk Susan Heavey and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Howard Goller)

U.S. Supreme Court may not have final say in presidential election, despite Trump threat

By Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – While President Donald Trump has promised to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on a presidential race that is still too close to call, the nation’s top judicial body may not be the final arbiter in this election, legal experts said.

Election law experts said it is doubtful that courts would entertain a bid by Trump to stop the counting of ballots that were received before or on Election Day, or that any dispute a court might handle would change the trajectory of the race in closely fought states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.

With vote-counting still underway in many states in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Trump made an appearance at the White House and declared victory against Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

“This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop,” he said.

The Republican president did not provide any evidence to back up his claim of fraud or detail what litigation he would pursue at the Supreme Court.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the election still hung in the balance. A handful of closely contested states could decide the outcome in the coming hours or days, as a large number of mail-in ballots cast amid the coronavirus pandemic appears to have drawn out the process.

However, legal experts said that while there could be objections to particular ballots or voting and counting procedures, it was unclear if such disputes would determine the final outcome.

Ned Foley, an election law expert at Ohio State University, said on Twitter that the Supreme Court “would be involved only if there were votes of questionable validity that would make a difference, which might not be the case.”

Both Republicans and Democrats have amassed armies of lawyers ready to go to the mat in a close race. Biden’s team includes Marc Elias, a top election attorney at the firm Perkins Coie, and former Solicitors General Donald Verrilli and Walter Dellinger. Trump’s lawyers include Matt Morgan, the president’s campaign general counsel, Supreme Court litigator William Consovoy, and Justin Clark, senior counsel to the campaign.

Benjamin Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election lawyer, said on CNN that any attempt to toss out legally cast votes would likely “be viewed by any court including the Supreme Court as just a massive disenfranchisement that would be frowned upon.” Ginsberg represented George W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 2000 when the Supreme Court ended a recount in Bush’s favor against Democrat Al Gore.

Trump attorney Jenna Ellis on Wednesday defended Trump’s bid to challenge the vote count and evaluate his legal options. “If we have to go through these legal challenges, that’s not unprecedented,” Ellis told Fox Business Network in an interview. “He wants to make sure that the election is not stolen.”

Bringing a case to federal court immediately was one possibility, she added, without giving further details. “We have all legal options on the table.”

The case closest to being resolved by the Supreme Court is an appeal currently pending before the justices in which Republicans are challenging a September ruling by Pennsylvania’s top court allowing mail-in ballots that were postmarked by Election Day and received up to three days later to be counted.

The Supreme Court previously declined to fast-track an appeal by Republicans. But three conservative justices left open the possibility of taking up the case again after Election Day.

Even if the court were to take up the case and rule for Republicans, it may not determine the final vote in Pennsylvania, as the case only concerns mail-in ballots received after Nov. 3.

In a separate Pennsylvania case filed in federal court in Philadelphia, Republicans have accused officials in suburban Montgomery County of illegally counting mail-in ballots early and also giving voters who submitted defective ballots a chance to re-vote.

If Biden secures 270 electoral votes without needing Pennsylvania, the likelihood of a legal fight in that state diminishes in any case, legal experts said.

And any challenge would also need to make its way through the usual court hierarchy.

“I think the Court would summarily turn away any effort by the President or his campaign to short-circuit the ordinary legal process,” said Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.

“Even Bush v. Gore went through the Florida state courts first.”

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York, Lawrence Hurley in Washington, Karen Freifeld in New York and Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Rosalba O’Brien)

Thousands of small-business loans may have been fraudulent, U.S. House panel finds

By Susan Cornwell and David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of loans worth billions of dollars may have been subject to fraud, waste and abuse in the $659 billion taxpayer-funded Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) aimed at helping small U.S. businesses survive the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report released by Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday.

Over $1 billion went to companies that received multiple loans, in violation of the program’s rules, the House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis said.

At an afternoon hearing, the panel’s chairman, Democratic Representative James Clyburn, chided Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for saying previously that delivering aid quickly made it inevitable for Treasury to run into issues of waste.

“That is a false dichotomy. Taxpayers should not have to choose between quickly getting aid to those who need it and wasting federal funds. And there are simple steps that could have been taken to improve oversight and reduce fraud,” Clyburn said.

Democrats in Congress and the Trump administration have been at loggerheads since July over further steps to bolster the economy after Congress approved trillions of dollars in March to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

“We are sensitive to the fact that there is more work to be done and certain areas of the economy require additional relief,” Mnuchin told the committee.

The PPP provided more than 5.2 million forgivable loans through the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) by the time it ended on Aug. 8.

The SBA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Trump administration says the PPP has saved some 51 million jobs at a time when much of the U.S. economy has been shuttered due to the coronavirus.

Economists say the actual impact is far lower, likely between 1 million and 14 million jobs.

Republicans on the committee issued their own report saying the small business loan program had avoided fraud to the extent that is typical with other large government relief programs, such as those following Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina.

The Democratic-led panel found more than 600 loans went to companies that should have been ineligible because they had been barred from doing business with the government. Another 350 loans went to contractors with previous performance problems.

Nearly $3 billion went to businesses that were flagged as potentially problematic by a government-contracting database.

Staff found evidence that as few as 12 percent of Black and Hispanic business owners received the full funding they requested.

The SBA’s internal watchdog has also found “strong indicators” of potential PPP fraud.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell and David Morgan; Editing by Andy Sullivan, Chizu Nomiyama, Steve Orlofsky and Richard Chang)

Ballot drop boxes are latest battleground in U.S. election fight

By Andy Sullivan and Jarrett Renshaw

(Reuters) – Welcome to the latest partisan flash point in the U.S. presidential election: the ballot drop box.

As U.S. election officials gird for a dramatic expansion of mail voting in the Nov. 3 election, Democrats across the country are promoting drop boxes as a convenient and reliable option for voters who don’t want to entrust their ballots to the U.S. Postal Service.

President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, meanwhile, has sued to prevent their use in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state, alleging that the receptacles could enable voting fraud.

Republican officials in other states have prevented their use. Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett told a U.S. Senate committee in July that drop boxes could enable people to violate a state law against collecting ballots.

In Missouri, Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft decided not to distribute 80 drop boxes he had purchased because state law requires those ballots to be returned by mail.

“We didn’t want to cause confusion with voters,” spokeswoman Maura Browning said.

Drop boxes have taken on new urgency after cost-cutting measures at the U.S. Postal Service slowed mail delivery nationwide and Trump has repeatedly attacked the legitimacy of mail ballots. Polls show the Republican president trailing Democratic challenger Joe Biden in a race that some experts say could see half of all votes cast absentee.

Some say the drop box battle is a lot of fuss over a piece of civic furniture — typically a heavily constructed metal box placed in a public location, often monitored by video.

In Connecticut, Secretary of State Denise Merrill is recommending that voters return their ballots via drop box rather than through the mail for the November election, after receiving reports that some ballots mailed a week before the state’s Aug. 11 nominating contests arrived too late to be counted.

Three-quarters of ballots in that August primary were cast absentee, she said, up from roughly 4% in prior years. Merrill, a Democrat, said the state’s 200 newly installed drop boxes had proven a safe and popular option.

“I do not understand why people think they’re such a problem,” Merrill said. “They’re more secure than mailboxes.”

Republicans in Pennsylvania don’t share that sentiment. Trump won that competitive state by less than 1 percentage point in 2016. Winning there again could prove pivotal in his quest to secure a second term in office.

The Trump campaign is suing to force the state to pull all drop boxes used in the June primary. It argues that people could drop off multiple ballots in boxes that are unstaffed, which is an illegal practice in Pennsylvania. State officials “have exponentially enhanced the threat that fraudulent or otherwise ineligible ballots will be cast and counted,” the lawsuit states.

The Trump campaign said in a court filing on Saturday that it had complied with a judge’s order to provide evidence of alleged fraud to the defendants. That evidence has not been made public. Trump lawyers did not respond to a request by Reuters to see it.

Bruce Marks, a former Republican state senator in Pennsylvania, said drop boxes do not provide a clear chain of custody for the ballots deposited inside.

“There’s no one watching or tracking,” he said.

Proponents say stuffing a ballot into a locked drop box is no different from dropping one into a Postal Service letter box. Pennsylvania Republicans oppose drop boxes because Democrats have had much more success in getting their voters to sign up for mail ballots this year, greater than a two-to-on margin, said Brendan Welch, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.

“(Republicans) know the easier it is for everyday people to vote, the more likely it is that they will lose,” Welch said. “Maybe they should spend their energy trying to match Pennsylvania Democrats’ organizing efforts in the Keystone State instead.”

Democratic Governor Tom Wolf has defended Pennsylvania’s use of drop boxes, arguing they are legal and essential, particularly in the age of the coronavirus.

ONE BOX, 864,000 VOTERS

In neighboring Ohio, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose said last week that he did not want to risk a similar lawsuit as he announced that he would authorize one drop box for each of the state’s 88 counties. He said the Republican-controlled legislature had not given him the authority to provide more.

Democrats are pressing LaRose to revise his decision, pointing out that it leaves the 864,000 registered voters of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County, a Democratic stronghold, with the same number of drop boxes as the 8,400 registered voters of Republican Vinton County.

“You can’t have a one-size-fits-all approach with our counties,” said Kathleen Clyde, a senior adviser for the Biden campaign in Ohio. “One drop box doesn’t cut it.”

LaRose in the meantime is trying to secure prepaid postage for mail ballots, spokeswoman Maggie Sheehan said, “effectively making every mailbox its own drop box.”

Michigan, another battleground state, has added drop boxes this year.

Wisconsin’s five largest cities, including Milwaukee, are setting up drop boxes as part of a secure-voting plan funded by the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit group.

In hotly contested Florida, Democrats in Miami-Dade County, the state’s largest, are seeking to remove some procedural hurdles to make it easier for voters to use drop boxes.

Unlike other counties in the state, Miami-Dade voters must provide election officials with valid identification when dropping off a ballot at a drop box. Election workers also manually record a 14-digit number printed on the voter’s envelope into a log.

The whole process can take up to three minutes, the Democratic Party said in a letter to local election officials seeking to allow voters to drop their ballots quickly without the processing requirements.

“Trump has sabotaged the post office deliberately and we have to find ways around that. We think making it easier to use a drop box, and avoid the post office, is part of the solution,” said Steve Simeonidis, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party.

The White House has said Trump never told the Postal Service to change its operations.

NOT TENSE EVERYWHERE

Security measures required for ballot drop boxes vary by state. In Montana, these receptacles must be staffed by at least two election officials, while in New Mexico they must be monitored by video, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Before 2020, eight states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington — had laws detailing how and where drop boxes could be used.

Returning ballots this way proved popular: In Colorado, Oregon and Washington, more than half of mail ballots were returned either to a drop box or to an election office in the 2016 presidential election, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology survey.

Drop boxes haven’t been controversial in those states.

“Both parties use it at a really high rate, so a lot of those tensions don’t exist here,” said Murphy Bannerman of Election Protection Arizona, a nonpartisan voting-rights group.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan in Washington and Jarrett Renshaw in Philadelphia; Editing by Marla Dickerson)