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$300M Ponzi scheme
TAMPA -
Lou Pearlman,
the gregarious mastermind behind boy bands such as 'N Sync and the
Backstreet Boys, is now admitting his role in a different kind of
choreography: a
Ponzi scheme.
(AP)
Doctor on trial
SAN LUIS OBISPO - A transplant surgeon
could face up to eight years in jail after being charged with trying to
hasten the death of a patient. (Telegraph UK)
Ex-minister sent to prison
MOSCOW - Former
Russian minister
Yevgeny Adamov
has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison for abusing his
office and embezzling more than $30m. (BBC)
MORE:
Adamov
sentenced
BC
government buys 5 hotels
VANCOUVER - Five of
six downtown Vancouver hotels bought by the BC government for low-rental
housing were bought from one man, developer Robert Wilson, who made a
profit of $10 million on the sales in less than two years. (Vancouver
Province)
’I
am just a doctor’
KATHMANDU -
"I am just a doctor, not a
kidney dealer," Amit Kumar told reporters as he was brought to Kathmandu
after being arrested Thursday in the southern Nepalese town of Chitwan.
(CBC) MORE:
Kumar denies role in harvesting ring
'Dr. Horror' nabbed
Sentence suspended
TORONTO - A man who
posed as a high-flying financial adviser and befriended small investors,
bilking some out of their life savings, has pleaded guilty to defrauding
six people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Toronto Star)
Let them eat mud
HAITI
- Impoverished Haitians are increasingly resorting to eating biscuits
made of mud as food prices soar in the Caribbean country. The discs are
made from dried yellow clay mixed with water, salt and vegetable
shortening or margarine. (Telegraph UK) PREVIOUS:
Poor Haitians resort to eating dirt
Genocide a la bonne femme
CIDA helping the people
of Haiti improve their living conditions
Nigeria graft boss strikes again
ABUJA -
Nigerian
anti-corruption agents have issued an arrest warrant for an eighth
former governor. Lucky Igbinedion of Edo State is accused of stealing
more than $24M through three front companies. (BBC)
PREVIOUS:
Nigeria corruption tsar sidelined
Nuhu Ribadu
Exec accused of stealing
VICTORIA - The Oak Bay
Marine Group's former vice-president of finance has been charged with
theft and fraud after more than half a million dollars was diverted from
the company's bank accounts. Graeme Bryson, 43, of Victoria, has been
charged with theft over $5,000 and fraud over $5,000. (Victoria Times
Colonist)
Kerik enters 'not guilty' plea
WHITE PLAINS -
Bernard Kerik,
former New York City police commissioner and failed nominee to head the
Department of Homeland Security, on Friday pleaded not guilty to federal
corruption and tax fraud charges, which were announced in an unsealed
indictment. (Fox)
MORE:
Bernard
Kerik indicted
Kootenay land up for sale
VICTORIA -
Financially troubled forest company Pope & Talbot has put more than
6,400 hectares of private land in the Kootenays up for sale, even though
much of it is part of a tree farm licence and can't legally be sold.
(Victoria Times Colonist)
PREVIOUS:
AG asked to probe land transfer
Developer has high hopes for Jordan
River community
A quick tour of the issues
Forests minister objects to sale of
timber lands
BC Ministry of Forests
and Range
Forces find illegal driftnet fishing
COMOX - A
multinational operation on the high seas involving a Canadian Forces
Aircraft from CFB Comox has turned up photographic evidence of 10
vessels involved in
driftnet fishing,
a practice banned by the United Nations. (Victoria Times Colonist)
MORE:
High seas stake-out
Yacht club accountant accused
VANCOUVER - In his
native Ukraine and for several years in Toronto, Walter Datsko was an
accountant and family man who drove his two daughters to movie nights in
a beat-up Oldsmobile. (Vancouver Sun)
Councillor's father charged with fraud
MONTREAL - A Montreal
man whose daughter is a city councillor from the Southwest borough is
accused of taking money from a real estate developer in return for
trying to obtain a zoning change. (Montreal Gazette)
Canadian con artists get 24 years
He was a Canadian who
seemed to be living the American dream on the sunny California coast - a
yacht and a 2006 Ferrari, country club and golf memberships, a
sprawling, multimillion-dollar mansion in a wealthy enclave at seaside
Monterey. To dozens of his friends and clients, Jay Zubick was a
popular and trusted investment adviser from Toronto. (Windsor Star)
Former Bangladeshi PM held
BANGLADESH
- Police in Bangladesh today arrested the former prime minister
Khaleda Zia
as part of the interim government's campaign against corruption. Ms
Zia is the second former prime minister to be detained in the
anti-corruption drive. Her arch-rival,
Sheikh Hasina
Wajed, has
been held since July on blackmail charges. (Guardian UK)
MORE:
Bangladesh crisis
$400K fraud targets Argos
TORONTO - Walter
Garrick, 37, is facing 16 charges of theft and fraud after he was
arrested on Thursday by Toronto police fraud investigators. (Toronto
Star)
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Deals 'wasted billions'
ABUJA
- Some $2B-worth of
Nigerian
energy contracts were awarded without a bidding process by the former
president and his energy minister, officials say. (BBC)
Abdulsalami Abubakar
Olusegun Obasanjo
Developer leaves buyers in limbo
KELOWNA -
The Willows condominium
development in the Okanagan town of Lake Country is in receivership,
leaving about 78 purchasers in limbo. The condos were being built by
Divergent Environments,
a Victoria-based company. (CBC)
ICBC win
VANCOUVER - A group of
former high school buddies has been ordered to pay $510,000 to the
Insurance Corporation of BC for staging a series of crashes as part of
an insurance fraud scheme. (Vancouver Sun)
Highway safety threatened
EDMONTON - Lax
security at Alberta's privatized registries has produced an embarrassing
export trade in fraudulent drivers' licences that is threatening highway
safety across the country. (Edmonton Journal)
Magic cheese con
PARIS - Gilbertte Van
Erpe, 67, was arrested last week in Nice after nearly two years on the
run. Police allege she made between C$21.7M and C$25.66M by persuading
5,000 Chileans and 25,000 Peruvians to invest savings into what they
believed was miraculous "cheese paste." (Star News)
Tanzanian PM to resign over graft
TANZANIA
– "Because I have been linked to this
scandal, I have decided to write to the president asking to be relieved
of my duties,"
Edward Lowassa
told MPs. (BBC)
Cost of doing business
TORONTO - A few years
ago Lushan Lu subdivided his large Scarborough home into an illegal
rooming house, creating 18 bedrooms and eight bathrooms. Now he's
returning it to its original form. That comes after he pleaded guilty
in court this summer to city zoning bylaw infractions. He and co-owner
Zhuan "May" Wang were each fined $5,000. If Lu and Wang had just one
person per room in their house they would collect more than $7,000 each
month. (Toronto Star)
CBC transfers reporter
OTTAWA - Krista
Erickson, an Ottawa-based CBC-TV reporter who CBC said fed questions to
a Liberal MP during the Mulroney-Schreiber hearings in December, has
been transferred to Toronto after the broadcaster found her actions
"inappropriate." (CP) PREVIOUS: CBC
releases response to complaint CBC
does right
Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez
Honore-Mercier (electoral
district)
Shipwreck, treasure, insider trading
WASHINGTON - The US
Securities and Exchange Commission said on Thursday that Ernesto Tapanes,
39, agreed to pay more than $216,000 to settle insider trading charges
in the case involving the 18th century shipwreck, code-named
Black Swan.
(Reuters) MORE:
Canadian
guilty of insider trading
Parking spots as condos
TORONTO - Five Toronto-area
residents face more than 100 fraud-related charges in a real estate scam
that sold parking lot spaces as condos, police say. Bank employees,
lawyers and real estate agents were all working together to defraud
Toronto Dominion of $3.8 million, Det. Craig Ellis explained. (Toronto
Star)
Record fraud draws jail
EDMONTON - A
61-year-old paralegal was sentenced Monday to more than five years in
prison after she "greased the wheel" of a $30-million mortgage fraud
believed to be the largest in Alberta history. (Edmonton Journal)
8
arrested in DVD ripoff
MONTREAL - The RCMP
have busted what they describe as a Montreal-based network that pirated
copies of DVDs, mostly of defunct U.S. television series, and sold them
over the Internet. (Montreal Gazette) PREVIOUS: Ripoff
Report: tvboxset.com
Videotape shows Sharpton
NEW YORK - With a
hidden FBI camera rolling inside a New York hotel suite in 2003, an
unsuspecting Rev.
Al Sharpton,
Democratic candidate for president, spoke candidly. (Philadelphia
Inquirer) PREVIOUS: :
Investigation of Sharpton an offshoot
Subpoenas for Al Sharpton's aides
Rev. under at-tax
Police raid Olmert's offices
JERUSALEM - More
than 100 police investigators raided government buildings and private
offices Sunday, searching for evidence in a series of criminal
investigations of Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert.
(AP)
Soccer club accuses ex-president
HAMILTON - The
near-bankrupt Dundas Girls' Soccer Club is suing its former president
for allegedly siphoning club cash into his own pocket. The club
launched a lawsuit last week against Wayne Potter, who ran the club for
the past five years, alleging he took more than $81,000 out of club
coffers for his own use. (Hamilton Spectator)
Server abuse is all the rage
An increasingly
hostile consumer climate is making Canadians who serve your drinks,
staff your flights and ring up your purchases feel like they've accepted
an invitation to their own hanging just by showing up for work. Across
the country, employee stress and incidents of customer conflict are
soaring, and physically and verbally abusive customers are making
headlines (CanWest)
Ex-President gets life for corruption
MANILA - Deposed
President
Joseph Estrada
was convicted and sentenced to life in prison Wednesday after a landmark
six-year trial on charges that he took bribes and kickbacks in office.
(AP)
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