Tag: fraud

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Prosecutor: Montvale businessman made “tens of millions” in fraud

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Prosecutor: Montvale businessman made “tens of millions” in fraud

APRIL 16, 2015    LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2015, 1:21 AM
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD

* Faces up to life in prison and $134.5M in fines for a scheme that bilked the federal government

“April 15, tax day, is a fitting date for Mr. Furando to accept responsibility for his crimes, which defrauded U.S. taxpayers of tens of millions of dollars.”

JOSH J. MINKER, U.S. ATTORNEY FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF INDIANA

A Montvale businessman earned tens of millions of dollars as part of one of the largest frauds in Indiana history, prosecutors said on Wednesday after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy, fraud and other charges.

Joseph Furando, 49, and two companies he owned, Cima Green LLC and the Caravan Trading Co., both in Park Ridge at the time of the crimes, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Indiana to participation in a scheme that prosecutors said fraudulently sold more than 35 million gallons of fuel that cost $145.5 million.

No date was set for Furando’s sentencing.

The pleas, following a guilty plea in August by a Ridgewood businesswoman who worked for Furando, Evelyn Katirina Pattison, also known as Katirina Tracy, leave three Indiana-based defendants to face trial in the case beginning on May 11 in Indianapolis.

“April 15, tax day, is a fitting date for Mr. Furando to accept responsibility for his crimes, which defrauded U.S. taxpayers of tens of millions of dollars that Congress appropriated for energy independence and a cleaner environment for all of us,” said Josh J. Minker, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Indiana.

Furando, who described the scheme to colleagues as “alchemy,” abused a federal program that offered companies a tax break for using environmentally friendly biodiesel, which contains recycled oil, prosecutors said.

Although the program awarded only one tax credit for each gallon used, Furando and his companies bought biodiesel that had already earned the tax credit and sold it to an Indiana company, E-biofuels, as newly produced fuel, prosecutors said.

E-biofuels then sold the fuel and claimed a new tax credit, selling the fuel at an inflated market price because it had the credit attached, prosecutors said.

The scheme realized “huge per gallon profits” for all the conspirators, sometimes more than $12,000 a truckload, prosecutors said.

https://www.northjersey.com/news/business/montvale-exec-pleads-guilty-in-biofuel-tax-fraud-1.1310536

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To combat fraud, Visa wants to track your smartphone

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To combat fraud, Visa wants to track your smartphone

FEBRUARY 16, 2015    LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2015, 1:21 AM
BY KEN SWEET
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS |
WIRE SERVICE

* Tracking could cut fraud, experts say

NEW YORK — Those days of calling your bank to let it know that, yes, you really are in Thailand and, yes, you really did use your credit card to buy $200 in sarongs may be coming to an end.

The payment processing company Visa is rolling out a feature this spring that will allow its cardholders to inform their banks where they are automatically — using the location function found in nearly every smartphone.

Having your bank and Visa know where you are at all times may sound a little like “Big Brother.” But privacy experts are actually applauding the feature, saying that, if used correctly, it could protect cardholders and cut down on credit card fraud.

Credit and debit card fraud costs consumers and banks billions of dollars each year, and that figure has been growing as data breaches have become more common. The banking industry had $1.57 billion in debit card fraud in 2013 and $4 billion in credit card fraud in 2012, the latest years for which data are available, according to the Federal Reserve.

Facing these high costs, banks and the payment processors have been stepping up their efforts to cut down on fraud, and Visa’s announcement is just one small piece of this drive. JPMorgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon has said repeatedly that his bank spends $250 million overall on cybersecurity every year, and plans to double that spending.

Here’s how it works: Starting in April, banks will update their smartphone apps to include Visa’s new location-tracking software. If the consumer opts in, the Visa software will, over a period of time, establish a customer’s home territory of roughly a 50-mile radius. If the person uses his or her Visa card at stores in that area, those transactions will be considered low risk for fraud.

https://www.northjersey.com/news/business/technology/new-apps-can-let-banks-know-it-s-really-you-1.1272256

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Fraud outbreak hits TurboTax

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Fraud outbreak hits TurboTax
By: Matt Krantz February 6, 2015 11:23 am

TurboTax has turned off the ability of its software to e-file state tax returns Thursday after the company found “an increase in suspicious filings,” the company said today.

The tax-preparation software company has found an increase in criminal activity where stolen personal data is used to file fake state returns with state authorities. This illegal act allows fraudsters to claim tax refunds from state governments.

An internal TurboTax investigation has found the breaches are not due to a problem with its own systems, but criminals digging up the personal information elsewhere. The company said the investigation is ongoing. Intuit says it’s working with state tax officials to get the e-filing security back to where it needs to be to turn it back on. TurboTax customers who already e-filed their state returns don’t have to do anything. The returns will be transmitted again when the problem is resolved, TurboTax says.

The e-filing halt only affect state returns. Federal tax returns can still be filed electronically.

https://americasmarkets.usatoday.com/2015/02/06/fraud-outbreak-hits-turbotax/

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Yes, Jonathan Gruber Is An Obamacare “Architect”

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Yes, Jonathan Gruber Is An Obamacare “Architect”

The health law’s allies are trying to distance themselves from the economist’s remarks about the deception involved in passing the law. But they’re only proving him right.

Peter Suderman | November 18, 2014

In the space of a week, Jonathan Gruber has become a non-person in Washington. Until last Monday, the MIT health economist was widely and uncontroversially cited as an “architect” of the Affordable Care Act, a go-toexpert regarding the law’s politics and mechanics. But after multiple videos surfaced in which Gruber said or implied that the bill’s backers relied on deception and an assumption of voter stupidity in order to pass it, Obamacare’s backers moved swiftly to distance themselves from Gruber and downplay his role in the creation of the law.

Asked about Gruber’s videotaped declaration that “lack of transparency” provided “a huge political advantage,” Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi responded dismissively. “I don’t know who he is,” she said. “He didn’t help write our bill.” A Wall Street Journal item by Neera Tanden, the president of the liberal Center for American Progress and a former administration staffer, opened by insisting that Gruber “did not make policy, nor did he work for the White House, HHS, or any congressional committee.” Jay Angoff, the former overseer of the health law’s implementation at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told Politico that Gruber was neither a legislator nor a staffer. “He’s like 300 million other Americans who can have their opinion.”

Even the president himself weighed in. Responding over the weekend to questions about Gruber’s statements, President Obama pushed back on Gruber’s role, labeling him “some adviser who was never on our staff.” Gruber’s remarks, Obama said, were “not a reflection on the actual process that was run” when crafting and passing Obamacare.

https://reason.com/archives/2014/11/18/yes-jonathan-gruber-is-an-obamacare-arch

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Health Care Law Recasts Insurers as Obama Allies

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Health Care Law Recasts Insurers as Obama Allies

By ROBERT PEARNOV. 17, 2014

WASHINGTON — As Americans shop in the health insurance marketplace for a second year, President Obama is depending more than ever on the insurance companies that five years ago he accused of padding profits and canceling coverage for the sick.

Those same insurers have long viewed government as an unreliable business partner that imposed taxes, fees and countless regulations and had the power to cut payment rates and cap profit margins.

But since the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, the relationship between the Obama administration and insurers has evolved into a powerful, mutually beneficial partnership that has been a boon to the nation’s largest private health plans and led to a profitable surge in theirMedicaid enrollment.

The insurers in turn have provided crucial support to Mr. Obama in court battles over the health care law, including a case now before the Supreme Court challenging the federal subsidies paid to insurance companies on behalf of low- and moderate-income consumers. Last fall, a unit of one of the nation’s largest insurers, UnitedHealth Group, helped the administration repair the HealthCare.gov website after it crashed in the opening days of enrollment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/us/politics/health-law-turns-obama-and-insurers-into-allies.html

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THE OBAMACARE SHOW, STARRING JOHNNY GRUBER – H-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E’S JOHNNY!

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THE OBAMACARE SHOW, STARRING JOHNNY GRUBER – H-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E’S JOHNNY!

NOVEMBER 18, 2014  LEAVE A COMMENT

By Scott St. Clair | The Save Jersey Blog

For a guy as smart as Jonathan Gruber, he sure is dumb. In the Internet age, where everything you say or do is recorded for posterity and available in three seconds via Google, did he really think he could call us names and get away with it – over and over again?



Last week, several videos were released that document Gruber’s blasé contempt for the American voter. In the first one of several discovered by a Philadelphia-area investment consultant who lost his health insurance because it didn’t meet Obamacare standards, Gruber blithely confesses that the president’s healthcare plan was conceived in secret double-shuffle trickery and dedicated to the proposition that the American people are too stupid to understand when they are being conned (the juicy part starts at the 20:25 mark and runs for one minute):

To hear that the funding scheme was deliberately made confusing to hide the fact that it’s a tax – “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage” – and that the geniuses who cooked it up figured it would be easy to put one over on those of us in the great unwashed – “stupidity of the American voter” – by itself should be sufficient to outrage the average voter.

But there’s more. Throughout the week on a daily basis, similar videos starring Gruber at a number of venues around the country spanning a couple of years surfaced. You can see them here (31:00 minute mark “too stupid to understand the Cadillac tax”), here (29:00 minute mark again on the Cadillac tax, former Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry called “a hero” and “lack of economic understanding on the part of the American people”), here (22:00 minute mark on the Obamacare taxation con game and phony “cost control” sales pitch) and here (1:26 clip where Gruber laughs at and mocks Obamacare concerns of a Vermonter as “adolescent”).

Lest you think he is a one-hit wonder, week two of Gruber releases started out with a slide presentation he prepared wherein he said America’s senior citizens “do a terrible job” selecting health care plans. What will tomorrow bring?

https://savejersey.com/2014/11/obamacare-gruber-video/

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MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber’s gaffes could derail Obamacare

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MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber’s gaffes could derail Obamacare

Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber — the MIT brainiac caught on video admitting the law’s “lack of transparency” was meant to dupe a gullible American public — could end up becoming Obamacare’s demolition man, with congressional Republicans threatening to hold hearings and experts saying his bombshell comments could impact the Supreme Court case challenging the Affordable Care Act.

“They can subpoena him and call him to testify about the way he used federal money because he got an awful lot of it,” said Dennis Hale, a Boston College political science professor, referring to reports yesterday that Gruber received hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants to help states implement Obamacare. “If he shows up to testify, it’s going to be pretty ugly.”

“This is the gift that keeps on giving,” Hale said. “If you’re selling a product that people don’t want to buy and then tell them they’re stupid because they don’t want to buy it, you get into trouble.”

Gleeful Republicans, who will dominate the House and Senate come January, have pounced on Gruber’s comments that the Obamacare law “passed because the American voters are too stupid to understand the difference.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post, “We may want to have hearings on this.” And Arizona Sen. John McCain said the controversy “gives us ammunition to make fundamental changes to the law.”

The Gruber firestorm comes just a week after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case challenging whether states enrolled in the federal HealthCare.gov portal — rather than creating their own exchanges — can dole out Obamacare subsidies.

https://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2014/11/mit_professor_jonathan_grubers_gaffes_could_derail_obamacare

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Rick Jensen: Could Obamacare architect be prosecuted?

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Rick Jensen: Could Obamacare architect be prosecuted?
MTN3:39 p.m. CST November 14, 2014

Victims are millions of Americans who lost their major medical insurance due to Obamacare

Deceit. Fraud. Premeditated felonious theft from millions of Americans.

Now that Jonathan Gruber, known as “The Architect” of Obamacare, has been publicly revealed as a joyful con artist in a YouTube video, are his actions prosecutable?

The victims are the millions of Americans who lost their major medical insurance policies due to Obamacare, lost their doctors, their children’s doctors, their family’s cancer specialists and coverage at children’s hospitals and cancer clinics because of a law that was sold to Americans as being just the opposite.

The victims are the millions of Americans whose premiums increased so dramatically that they are forced to drop their coverage.

A video recently posted of the MIT professor speaking in 2013 as an academic panelist is a criminal confession in which he gleefully bragged that the ironically-named “Affordable Care Act” was written in such a way as to obfuscate the true nature of the bill’s effects and hide from the American public and the Congressional Budget Office the fact that if they told the truth the bill would not pass.

In Gruber’s own words: “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in — you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed.

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass … Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”

Liberal elites nod their heads at this, agreeing that the American people are too stupid to know what’s good for them. The elites feel compelled to tell you and me how we should live. After all, it “was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”

https://www.baxterbulletin.com/story/opinion/2014/11/14/obamacare-architect-prosecuted/19027767/

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Government’s Free Phone Program Riddled With Abuse, Fraud

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Government’s Free Phone Program Riddled With Abuse, Fraud
November 6, 2014 11:15 PM

By Brian Maass
CBS4 Investigates

DENVER (CBS4) – A federally regulated program providing free cellphone service and phones to the poor and needy in Denver appears to be riddled with waste, fraud and abuse, according to an undercover CBS4 Investigation.

The $2 billion a year Lifeline program has handed out more than 13 million free cellphone plans across the country in the first six months of this year. In Colorado, the program handed out more than 117,000 free cellphone plans in the first half of this year, or about 20,000 cellphones every month.

The free phones and their wireless plans are paid for by a monthly tax on your cellphone, called the Universal Service Tax. Although the Lifeline wireless program has been around since 2005 and started under president George W. Bush, it has exploded under President Obama’s administration and the phones are often referred to as “Obamaphones.”

https://denver.cbslocal.com/2014/11/06/governments-free-phone-program-riddled-with-abuse-fraud/

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Ramsey luxury car dealer under probe after accusations of fraud

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Melissa Gorga Goes to Court to Fight Five Traffic Citations Received While Driving Her Bentley Borrowed from Emporio and Scammer Bobby Khan (Updated 9/26/2014)

Ramsey luxury car dealer under probe after accusations of fraud

OCTOBER 1, 2014, 11:44 PM    LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2014, 11:56 PM
BY JOAN VERDON
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

Bobby Khan spoke the language of luxury car lovers. He could discuss whether a Lamborghini Aventador could outrace a Ferrari F12berlinetta. He said he could tell a Bentley from a Rolls-Royce blindfolded, by the smell of the leather.

In his Ramsey auto showroom filled with gleaming models built for style and speed, Khan dressed in expensive suits and charmed his customers, who believed they were dealing with someone who loved cars as much as they did. He persuaded them to buy from him, or give him their cars to sell on consignment.

There were no apparent problems at the Route 17 dealership he opened in April 2013 until a month ago, when irate customers began posting on Yelp.com, the business review website, that they had not been paid for cars Khan sold on consignment, or had not received titles for purchased cars. In mid-September, Yelp posters began urging all victims to file complaints with the police, and customers began sharing information through text messages and emails.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/ramsey-luxury-car-dealer-under-probe-after-accusations-of-fraud-1.1100311#sthash.XYdFP2qw.dpuf

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A ‘terrifying’ day looms for N.J. ‘Real Housewives’ Teresa and Joe Giudice

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A ‘terrifying’ day looms for N.J. ‘Real Housewives’ Teresa and Joe Giudice

TMZ is reporting Teresa will claim the Real Housewives show is scripted and fake 

SEPTEMBER 30, 2014, 5:08 PM    LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2014, 3:05 PM
BY KAREN SUDOL
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

“I can’t believe that this is my life.”

It was a moment of introspection for Teresa Giudice, a volatile, free-spending and combative star of the reality TV show “The Real Housewives of New Jersey.” She and her husband, Joe, had admitted that they committed bank and mortgage fraud.

“I know who Joe and I are. We’re good people,” she said on an episode of the show that dealt with their visit to the federal courthouse in Newark to plead guilty in March.

On Thursday, the Giudices, of Montville in Morris County, are to be sentenced. Each could get a prison term, and Joe, a citizen of Italy, could be deported.

They hope that because they both agreed to plead guilty, Teresa, at least, will get probation.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/a-terrifying-day-looms-for-n-j-real-housewives-teresa-and-joe-giudice-1.1099474#sthash.MaM8d83z.dpuf

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Christie Embraces Irresponsible Spending says credit agencies are the ‘same group of folks who allowed the financial crisis to occur’

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Christie Embraces Irresponsible Spending says credit agencies are the ‘same group of folks who allowed the financial crisis to occur’

TRENTON – Don’t put too much stock in those Wall Street rating agency downgrades, says Gov. Chris Christie.

The governor, whose administration has been at the helm during six credit rating downgrades over the course of his tenure to date, says he’s not worried about additional downgrades. Christie said he finds it interesting they “continue to downgrade the people who try to act responsibly,” but added he doesn’t live in fear of rating agencies.

“No, I don’t fear it,” he said Wednesday during a Statehouse news conference.

“This is the same group of folks who allowed the financial crisis to occur,” he said, arguing they “sat on their hands collecting huge fees” from clients during the financial collapse and essentially got paid “to look the other way,” he said.

“I don’t know how much credibility these places have,” Christie said.  (Arco/PolitickerNJ)

Christie says credit agencies are the ‘same group of folks who allowed the financial crisis to occur’ | Politicker NJ

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Reader says Allowing people and companies to continue to deduct their donations allowed them to commit fraud for years without realizing it

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Reader says Allowing people and companies to continue to deduct their donations allowed them to commit fraud for years without realizing it

The IRS site says that as of March 15, 2011, it revoked the tax-exempt status of organizations that had not filed for AT LEAST 3 consecutive years. Since taxes are not due until April, that means 2010 didn’t count. The three years would have been 2007-09. But there is no way of knowing when they last filed properly. Even RBSA may not know, since the CPA who fled without warning was apparently the only accountant in the state.

This is worse than sloppiness. Allowing people and companies to continue to deduct their donations allowed them to commit fraud for years without realizing it. A group too busy “helping the kids have fun” to control its finances should not be sitting on giant nest eggs.

1-800-PetMeds Private Label

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‘Real Housewives’ stars Teresa and Joe Giudice plead guilty to fraud

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‘Real Housewives’ stars Teresa and Joe Giudice plead guilty to fraud

TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2014    LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY MARCH 4, 2014, 11:56 AM
BY  PETER J. SAMPSON
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

Teresa and Giuseppe “Joe” Giudice, who flaunted their lavish-spending over five seasons on “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy, mortgage and bankruptcy fraud charges that could send them both to prison.

The Montville couple, two of the stars of the hit Bravo reality TV show, admitted their guilt during a packed hearing in federal court in Newark.

Under their plea agreements, Joe Giudice, 43, could be sentenced to a minimum of three years but less than four years in prison, while Teresa Giudice, 41, would face a term within the range of 21 to 27 months.

Her attorney, Henry E. Klingeman, however, reserved the right to ask the judge for a sentence below the guidelines range based on family circumstances — the couple has four daughters — and her minimal role.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/arts_entertainment/Real_Housewives_Teresa_Joe_Giudice_plead_guilty.html#sthash.Hfm0DBbx.dpuf