Howard's Views | |
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MICHAEL MILKEN - 1990 | |
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IVAN BOESKY - 1990 "No one every accused Boesky of doing anything socially productive," said Alan Bromberg, Securities Law professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas (L.A. Times). | |
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MICHAEL FRANKEL, Financier - 2002 Frankel defrauded a string of Southern Insurance companies out of $200 million. His girlfriend, Sonia Howe, his confident while he was manipulating and defrauding these companies pled guilty to money laundering and racketeering in October of 2002. Michael Frankel had two mansions in Greenwich, Ct., a $2 million fleet of cars, and a houseful of girlfriends for his sexual pleasures and fantasies, it appears. The Wall Street Journal of 10/28/02 gives more of the details, but imagine, a $200 million dollar fraud. These amounts of money are child's play for educated crooks, like Frankel, Howe and their associates. Even a Prelate in the Catholic Church "with ties to the Vatican" pled guilty to aiding Frankel in his scheme, reported by Ellen Jane Pollack of the WST on Sept. 6, 2002, Msgr. Emilio Coliogiavanni, an 82 year old (my age) Italian, "to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and laundering money". | |
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WILLIAM T. MC CORMACK, JR., CEO CMS Energy. - 2002 Sham electricity trades in the amount of $5.2 billion in the years 2000 and 2001, bogus trades and accounting errors, according to the L.A. Times. "There may not be anything illegal here, but this practice does not fit with the high standards of this company," (Kenneth) Whipple, Board Member told investors at the annual meeting. I would hope not, as I would hope that the Board Members of these banks I have accused of participating in this international scheme of bribery in order to defraud merchants would step forth to say to their investors! | |
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SULTAN WARRIS KHAN, CEO NewCom, Inc. - 2002 It's collapse (NewCom) in 1999 wiped out $140 million in investors funds. Asif Mohammed Khan, VP, and Steven Conrad Veen, were named as defendants in a 36 page Fraud and Conspiracy indictment. | |
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STEVE MADDEN, CEO STEPHEN MADDEN, LTD. - "I was guilty of stupidity, arrogance and greed," Madden told the judge. "I just want the chance to get back my name." His company was doing $200 million a year, but the scheme netted him only $3.1 million while costing investors $100 million. In other words, he gained only 3.1% while they lost that $100 million. He was fined $3.1 million, but not asked to reimburse those losses of $100 million. He got 41 months in jail, or a month for each $2.5 million that investors in the Madden, Ltd., IPO lost. For some it could have been their life's savings or a good portion of them, but greed blinds people to the damage they're doing to others. (Bloomberg News) Steve Madden summed it all up in a few words and it's just what I have been saying for years, that the CEOs of these many corporations are guilty of the same thing, stupidity, arrogance and greed, and so they blatantly have conspired to defraud others of their profits with a scheme that basically is nothing more than bribery. It is simple, it is effective, it is accepted, but it is criminal in nature, criminal in concept, and criminal in action no matter how many people are led, unwittingly, to particiapte in it. The media is guilty of assisting the continuing perpetration of this scam upon the public, deceiving them, instead of investigating and unveiling the hoax, and revealing the extent of the damage to the business community. | |
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J.P. MORGAN CHASE CO. & FLEET.BOSTON FINANCIAL 4/26/2002 "notified that they may be charged with demanding excess fees" and the National Assn. of Securities Dealers had been investigating them for two years, suspecting them of possibly taking kickbacks from investors. In other words, BRIBES. Get wise, if they've paid big bribes, then do you think that credit card bribery is beyond their mental agility? | |
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MARTIN L. GRASS, CEO, RITE AID "Bogus accounting maneuvers to inflate the company's earnings," and it resulted in redoing the financial statement to the tune of $1.6 billion, the biggest in U.S. History, according to Kathy Kristoff of the L.A. Times. Grass, along with two other senior officers was charged on a 37 count indictment, but how many others in the company had to become involved in manufacturing all the phony figures? Were they too stupid to understand what was going on or living in fear that to expose the wrong-doers would also mean the loss of their jobs? | |
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MERRILL LYNCH & COMPANY Misleading Research Reports resulting in a $100 million dollar fine! Imagine what these deceptions must have cost investors, not only in financial losses, but in their confidence that they could invest safely in the market. Large investors have the ability to sue to recover their losses, but small investors, working from home, must simply accept those losses, swallow them, and go on from there. | |
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NAASA ESTIMATES $40 BILLION DOLLAR FRAUD Yes, the North American Association of Securities Administrators estimates that scams result in $40 billion in losses to Am,ericans annually. It seems that every other guy in the investment business must be a crook from those figures, but after you examine the work and ingenuity that have gone into many of these frauds, it is evident that people with so much knowledge, skill and determination could have been successful in the business world (well, they were in the business world, weren't they?) and avoided going to jail. | |
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39 CHARGED IN FRAUD ON FHA BACKED LOANS Headline in Los Angeles Times. | |
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4 ACCUSED OF BILKING BANKS OF $1 BILLION. This is one that was most difficult for me to understand, how some of the world's largest banks, its' most astute financial loan officers, the number of them involved and not one was alerted that this matals trading firm was a fraud from the beginning. It was called a Global Ponzi scheme, all run out of a small office with a door with a peep-hole in it. | |
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All this demonstrates that power, position and wealth do not assure us that the men and women who head these major companies, or even hold high government office, will not fail the trust that we have in them. All have the capacity to abuse the trust and faith placeed in them. Their moral rectitude is always on the line, and there are those who drive down the center-line of that highway, veering across it now and then when they believe that they can do so without getting caught, or even recklessly driving down the oncoming lane at high speed, until the meet another car head-on. Eliot Switzer, the Attorney General of New York for several years was the driver of the truck that Bank of America and Wells Fargo met head-on several years ago. | |
| JOHN RIGAS, CEO, ADELPHIA | |
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PATRICK BENNETT - 6/11/99 $700 Million Ponzi scheme 22,000 investors in New York.loose money, in a scheme Bennett & wife engineered. | |
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GARY A. EISENBERG - CEO ADVANCE FINANCE 9/20/02 $21 PONZI SCHEME, from 1994 to 2001. More than 200 victimes, including half-brother, in-laws, friends, acquaintances and business associates. Mr. Eisenberg accepts responsibility for his mistakes . . . (David Rozensweig, Times Staff Writer) | |
| JOHN C. JEFFERS & JOHN MUNDERHOUT - 9/11/02 $25 mIlion Ponzi scheme. | |
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STEVEN P. HOWELL 4/21/01 $10 PONZI SCHEME 400 victims swindled out of money in Newport Beach, CA. Howell sold investors stock in companies that had no products, as per information given. | |
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REED SLATKIN 9/06/02 $590 MILLION PONZI SCHEME One of co-founders of Earthlink, took money from banks and friends, in a scheme that involved Unionbancal and Comerica, and $254 million in losses. Who can explain the deviousness of some people, how these schemes grow and grow and grow? Lawsuits filed against Santa Barbara Bank & Trust in this case, as with several other banks. | |
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MICHAEL SMUSHKEVICH - 1991 - $1 BILLION HEALTH INS. FRAUD Sentenced in 1994 to 21 years in prison, a member of Russian orgqanized crime, now heavily entrenched in southern California, in all manner of activities | |
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DEAN L. BUNTROCK, CEO, WASTE MANAGEMENT, Inc. 3/27/02 (LAT). "set up a culture of fraudulent accounting that eliminated $490 million in current period oprating expenses" and moving "tens of millions of dollars on various line items on the company's income statement" and SEC alleges that "the defendants conduct was driven by greed and a desire to retain their corporate postions and status in the business and social community." It cannot be more clearly stated than that! | |
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LAWRENCE K. POULSON, CEO, | |
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HOUSEHOLD INTERNATIONAL, 10/12/02 - $484 MILLION SETTLEMENT In 2001,they reported a profit of $1.9 billion, but they were accused of exhorbitant prepayment charges for loans, high interest rates, hidden heavy fees and pressuing consumers to refinance their homes. With a fine that large, $384 million, imagine the discomfort, the misery, the sweat and worry they caused to tens of thousands of clients. Imagine too, the number of sales personnel involved in these practices, knowingly helping to cheat, willingly participating in this fraud, the entrapment of families in a web of debt. | |
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JACK GRUBMAN, STOCK ANALYST 4/24/01 Grubman was earning $20 million a year and was accused of "greed and influence peddling." However, one report sayts he claimed not to be corrupt, but "just a liar and a braggart." Did he need to become involved in anything unsavory? Yet, his goal was to get his twins into a 90th Street Preschool (where they had been turned down), and he would do anything to further his children's education, it seems. Preschool? Preschool? | |
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SANDY WEILL, CEO CITIBANK 4/24/01 (BILLIONAIRE) Donated a million dollars to the Preschool, not personally, but through Citibank. This seemed to be directed towards making the Grubman twins more acceptable to the school. Yet, a billionaire has more than 1000 millions, and if he had donated his personal money, he would have had at least 999 of those millions left, a considerable sum to most people.
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