Over the weekend, Yasuna Murakami, a Cambridge-Massachusetts based hedge fund manager, was arrested and charged with wire fraud. Murakami, who managed MC2 Capital Management LLC, is accused of misappropriating investors’ funds in a Ponzi-like scam. The arrest and criminal charges come a few months after the state’s regulator, Secretary of…
Eight years after Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for defrauding investors in a $65 billion Ponzi scam, thousands of his victims have still not seen any of the money that they lost. These investors’ claims are being handled by Madoff Victim Fund administrator Richard Breedon, whose…
At the yearly general meeting in Germany, Deutsche Bank AG (DB) told shareholders that the German lender is nearing an agreement with ex-executives in which they would have to help pay for the fines that the financial institution paid for their past misconduct. Deutsche Bank has been trying to determine…
Although many of the thousands of cases investors in Puerto Rico bonds and closed-end funds have brought over the last three years have focused on UBS Financial Services Incorporated of Puerto Rico (“UBS-PR”), other brokerage firms in the Commonwealth engaged in the same wrongful sales practices. One such firm that…
In federal court in Sherman, TX, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has filed an emergency action to halt a $22.7M mortgage investment scam involving Thurman P. Bryant, III and his Bryant United Capital Funding, Inc. According to the regulator’s complaint, Bryant and his firm raised about $22.7M from about…
Tamer Moumen, an ex-hedge fund manager, has pleaded guilty to wire fraud. He now faces up to 20 years in prison for a $9M investment. Moumen defrauded over 50 investors. Many of his investors were close to retirement age. He advised dozens of them to liquidate retirement accounts, among other…
The US Securities and Exchange Commission is charging two-ex Nomura (NMR) head traders with fraud. Kee Chan and James Im ran Nomura Securities International Inc.’s commercial mortgage-backed securities desk. The regulator claims that they purposely lied to customers to inflate profits for themselves and the firm. As a result, said…
In the wake of Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy filing, hedge funds are competing with the U.S. territory’s workers to get paid. The island has guaranteed retirees and workers $49 Billion in benefits. However, the federally appointed oversight board expects that it will have to cut pension costs by 10%. Even worse…
In Manhattan appeals court, a panel for the Appellate Division, First Department ruled that Ambac Assurance Corp. must prove all common law fraud elements in its mortgage-backed securities case against Countrywide Home Loans. The insurer, which underwrote 17 residential mortgage-backed securitizations, filed its RMBS fraud lawsuit against Bank of America’s…
A district court judge has sentenced Navin Shankar Subramaniam Xavier, formerly the CEO of Essex Holdings Inc., to 15 years behind bars because of his involvement in two fraud scams. Xavier pleaded guilty to two wire fraud counts in January. He ran Essex Holdings from 9/2010 through 5/2014, raising over…