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Some books that might be interesting:

The Criminal Elite Understanding White-Collar Crime (9780716787341) James William Coleman Books

James W. Coleman is a professor of sociology at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and past chair of the Social Sciences Department. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was a student of Donald R. Cressey who, until his death, was America's leading criminologist and the coauthor of this text.

Professor Coleman is an internationally recognized authority on white collar crime. In addition to numerous articles on the subject, he is the author of The Criminal Elite: Understanding White Collar Crime. He is also interested in the sociology of religion and has just published a new book on Western Buddhism called The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition.

Social Problems (9th Edition) James William Coleman, Harold R. Kerbo 9780131540538 Amazon.com Books

Profit Without Honor White Collar Crime and the Looting of America (6th Edition) Stephen M. Rosoff, Henry N. Pontell, Robert

Jaylia123 on December 18, 2014

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

"Profit Without Honor" is well written, informative, humorous and enlightening.

As regards, corporate fraud, you will learn a great deal on how and possibly why white-collar crime is committed. There are case studies that include Michael Milken, Martha Stewart and Ivan Frederick Boesky.

You will learn about insurance, government, consumer fraud, etc. This book made me laugh, gasp and shake my head. It is a really good book for anyone (student, youth, older people, housewives, husbands, executives, secretaries, etc.)

Reading this book could also help you spot and deter fraudsters.


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Old News ;-)

[Nov 19, 2018] Is Israel turning a blind eye as Israeli scammers swindle victims in France, US, elsewhere by Alison Weir

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... So if the US government is secretly releasing Federal prisoners, and if that is the case then American justice is on par with the Mexican penal system, where such occurrences are routine. ..."
Nov 19, 2018 | www.unz.com

The Israelis were extradited to the U.S., where the prosecutor described them as "a predatory group that targeted elderly people in the U.S., conning them into believing they were lottery winners. Preying on their victims' dreams of financial comfort, [they] bilked them out of substantial portions of their life savings." According to the U.S. Attorney's office :

"The defendants operated multiple boiler rooms that used the names of various sham law firms purportedly located in New York, including law firms named 'Abrahams Kline,' 'Bernstein Schwartz,' 'Steiner, Van Allen, and Colt,' 'Bloomberg and Associates," and 'Meyer Stevens.'

The defendants further used various aliases and call forwarding telephone numbers to mask the fact that the defendants were located in Israel. The defendants also possessed bank accounts in Israel, Cyprus, and Uganda, to which illegal proceeds were wired."

The ringleaders, Avi Ayache and Yaron Bar, were eventually convicted, and the U.S. prosecutor announced that they would "spend a substantial portion of their lives in prison." Ayache was sentenced in 2014 to 13 years in prison and Bar to 12. Yet, prison records indicate the two were released the next year. Other members of the ring also appear to have been released after extraordinarily little time. If these men did serve only a tiny portion of their U.S. sentences, as public records and phone calls and emails to the Bureau of Prisons indicate, this may be due to the fact that Israelis are allowed to be imprisoned in Israel instead of in the U.S. Their sentences then are determined by Israel and, as we will see below, are often far shorter than they would be in the U.S. Gery Shalon – hundreds of millions of dollars

In 2015 Gery Shalon and two other Israelis were charged with utilizing hacked data for 100 million people to spam them with "pump and dump" penny stocks, netting hundreds of millions of dollars.

The money was then laundered through an illegal bitcoin exchange allegedly owned by Shalon (more on bitcoin below). Shalon was considered the ringleader of what U.S. prosecutors called a " sprawling criminal enterprise. " He faced decades behind bars.

However, he was instead given a plea deal in which he escaped any prison sentence whatsoever. Worth $2 billion, Shalon was to pay a $403 million fine.

republic , says: November 19, 2018 at 6:05 pm GMT

...The ringleaders, Avi Ayache and Yaron Bar, were eventually convicted, and the U.S. prosecutor announced that they would "spend a substantial portion of their lives in prison." Ayache was sentenced in 2014 to 13 years in prison and Bar to 12. Yet, prison records indicate the two were released the next year. Other members of the ring also appear to have been released after extraordinarily little time.

So if the US government is secretly releasing Federal prisoners, and if that is the case then American justice is on par with the Mexican penal system, where such occurrences are routine.

Can anyone here verify if those two are in prison in Israel or free?

[Mar 22, 2017] Taibbi: Trump Pick Jay Clayton Will Be Most Conflicted SEC Chair Ever

Mar 22, 2017 | www.rollingstone.com

America's incoming top cop on finance is literally married to industry

Clayton is already an unusual choice, given that he's slated to be a primary regulator of Wall Street while a chunk of his family income will continue to come from Goldman Sachs, where his wife Gretchen works . Although he will have to recuse himself from enforcement cases involving Goldman, he will not have to sit out of a broad range of other regulatory decisions that affect the company. This is already notable.

But Public Citizen has stumbled onto some other oddities about Clayton's personal holdings.

In Clayton's absurdly baroque Form 278 financial disclosure – if you want to feel like your financial life is meager and uncomplicated, take a look at this staggeringly long list of income sources for the former Sullivan and Cromwell mainstay – he lists, under "other assets and income," a series of entries involving a company called WMB Holdings.

WMB Holdings, he explains in a verbose and unhelpful endnote, is a Delaware-based entity that provides "business, financial, and representational services."

According to Clayton, WMB secures business licenses, files UCC forms, creates special purpose vehicles (you might remember these little financial Frankensteins from the Enron story), engages in "compliance support services," secures data storage and helps with "anti-counterfeiting services," among other things.

This sounds harmless enough. But WMB, and a company called CSC – with which it appears to have a connection – is a company of a very particular type, known well to white-collar investigators.

"It's a corporate formation company," says Jack Blum , an expert on white-collar crime and money laundering who is best known for his investigation of the BCCI scandal. "You call them up, and 20 minutes later you've got a Delaware corporation. I'm exaggerating, of course, but that's what they do."

These firms can be used to create chains of legal entities, sometimes ending in offshore accounts, that make tracing financial transactions difficult, if not impossible. "They can make the ownership of anything completely impenetrable," says Blum, speaking generally and not necessarily about Clayton's firm. "If you want to launder money, evade tax or hide assets from a spouse, you can do it."

Clayton's family seems to have a serious interest in this firm. He lists a series of family trusts containing WMB holdings, most producing high annual dividends.

If you add up each of the dividends – some of which are listed as generating over $1 million a year, while others are listed at $100,000-$1,000,000, etc. – the total annual value of these holdings comes out to over $4 million annually, at least.

The endnote claims Clayton has no beneficial interest or control in these holdings, but that his wife and/or children have a "beneficial interest."

Given that the company would appear to be subject to SEC oversight, it's worth asking the nature of his family's involvement with WMB, and moreover to learn more about what his attitude is toward such companies in general.

Clayton has pledged to divest from WMB when his wife has "directly held financial interests" in the company, but not where his wife or his children are "solely a beneficiary."

Public Citizen for a variety of reasons believes that WMB "may also be the parent of Corporation Service Co. (CSC)," another large business services firm with offices in "Delaware, Australia, France, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sweden, and the United Kingdom."

Among other things, WMB was for some time listed as the parent of a company called CSC Trust Co., now called Delaware Trust Co.

CSC Global claims 2,500 employees as well as 180,000 corporate customers, while also representing 10,000 law firms. The company appears to do more or less the same things that Clayton says WMB does, dealing with creating legal business entities, management of licenses, upkeep of filings, dealing with service of process, etc.

Interestingly, and to Blum's point, Clayton's disclosure does not list any interest in CSC. So although he gives some information about what appears to be a holding company with little to no public profile, the company that boasts of its connections to 180,000 corporations is not mentioned in the disclosure form.

Neither CSC nor Clayton have responded to requests for comment.

The real issue with companies like these is the vast array of tools they can offer big companies and high-net-worth individuals to complicate their financial profiles. The worst-case scenario is a string of shell companies that end in an opaque offshore haven.

"That's when the trail becomes impossible to follow," says Blum. Investigators who try to follow money into offshore banking havens have almost no hope of getting answers there, he says.

"You need a formal mutual legal request that may or may not be honored in the lifetime of the investigator," says Blum.

Interestingly, when Public Citizen ran the names of WMB and CSC through the Panama Papers database, they found nothing. But when they ran the address common to both companies – 2711 Centerville Rd., Wilmington – through the database, they found it connected with numerous firms whose agent was the infamous Mossack Fonseca, many of them offshore companies.

In its letter to the Senate Banking Committee, Public Citizen asked the Senate to ask Clayton what this means. Did either WMB or CSC do business with Mossack Fonseca? Have either of those companies provided services to Mossack Fonseca clients?

Even if WMB and CSC are completely above-board, it's a strange sort of investment for the top cop on the financial beat. It will be interesting to see if he sheds some light on his holdings when he's questioned this week.