Charles G. Martin, 43, of Glencoe, Ill., and Malibu, Calif., was arrested Tuesday night in the Los Angeles area, and John E. Walsh, 60, of Lake Forest was picked up Wednesday morning on a criminal complaint charging them with wire fraud.

A court order closed their One World Capital Group LLC in December 2007 and froze its last $636,815 of assets. The two men operated a "Ponzi-like" scheme diverting money out of customer accounts and into their pockets, prosecutors said.

The criminal complaint was filed in U.S. District Court on Tuesday.

One World was formed in 2005 and had offices in Winnetka and New York, prosecutors said. Martin and Walsh misled customers and federal regulators to conceal the fact that they siphoned off money customers thought was being used for currency trades.

Credit card and bank records show Martin spent more than $1 million at a strip club and restaurants, nearly $1 million at hotels and $1 million renting private jets, prosecutors said. He also purchased a fleet of luxury vehicles, donated hundreds of thousands to celebrity charity events and hired bodyguards, they said.

A court in Hangzhou, a prosperous city in eastern Zhejiang province, sentenced Wang Rongqing on Wednesday on charges of subverting state power for organizing the banned China Democracy Party, according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

Wang was detained in June, two months before the Olympic Games started, the group said. Wang's brother, Wang Rongyao, confirmed the sentence. The Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court could not be immediately be reached for comment.

Wang has been repeatedly harassed and detained by police during his years of activism, which started in the late 1970s as China's hard-line Maoist era came to a close and some started calling for democracy. He was detained for two months in 1999.

"He was not in good physical condition and he stood in court with the assistance of the police, but he was in good spirits," said Zou Wei, a friend and fellow dissident of Wang who was in court Wednesday.

Founded by dissidents in mid-1998, the China Democracy Party was quashed just six months later by the Communist Party, which allows no challenge to its political monopoly. Dozens of activists were arrested and sentenced to up to 13 years in prison, most on charges of subverting state power.

Burris would be relying on a constitutional provision listing just three, easily met qualifications for the job and a 1969 Supreme Court decision rebuking the House for excluding an elected, though scandal-tarred, lawmaker.

So far, Senate leaders are unwilling to seat Burris because he was named by Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, ensnared by allegations of corruption, to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the Senate.

Democrats and Obama have said the federal corruption charges against Blagojevich would strip credibility from anyone he appointed to the seat, although they do not question the integrity of Burris, a former Illinois attorney general. Blagojevich denies federal accusations that he tried to sell Obama's seat.

Senate Democrats are relying for the moment on a technicality — the refusal of the Illinois secretary of state to sign paperwork making Burris' appointment official. Burris' lawyers first are asking the state Supreme Court to take care of that problem.

But it is far from clear that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., would then relent and welcome Burris as a new colleague.

Kent was set to be arraigned Wednesday, a day after a federal grand jury in Houston added three new charges to the indictment it issued in August that accuses him of making unwanted sexual advances toward his former court case manager.

The new charges — aggravated sexual abuse, abusive sexual contact and obstruction of justice — allege Kent engaged in unwanted sexual contact with a second former court employee and later lied about it to investigators.

"There is a gag order in the case which prohibits the parties from making any sort of comment with the exception of stating without elaboration what the defense is to these new charges," said Dick DeGuerin, Kent's attorney. "They are untrue and we believe the product of intense pressure and threats brought against the complainant."

In a press release, the Justice Department only gave a brief description of the additional charges against Kent.

Kent, who was released on his own recognizance after last year's indictment, is still on the bench.

Jury selection in Kent's trial on the initial charges against him was set to begin Jan. 26. It was not immediately known if the new charges would delay the trial.

If convicted, Kent faces up to life in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. He is the first federal judge to be indicted in the last 18 years.

Kent initially faced two counts of abusive sexual contact and one count of attempted aggravated sexual abuse following a U.S. Justice Department investigation into complaints by case manager Cathy McBroom.

The House impeachment panel is racing to complete its job, possibly by the end of this week. But the efforts of federal prosecutors to give the panel some of the FBI tapes face a potential obstacle course in court that could take up several weeks.

"These tapes are relevant evidence; we'd like to have them," said David Ellis, a lawyer for the impeachment panel. But he said the panel could wrap up its work as early as this week, and "we have already gathered a large volume of evidence."

Blagojevich, 52, a two-term Democrat, is charged along with former Chief of Staff John Harris with a scheme to sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by Barack Obama's election as president.

Blagojevich is also charged with illegally plotting to use his power as governor to squeeze roadbuilders, a harness racing executive and the head of a children's hospital, among others, for hefty campaign contributions.

Prosecutors propose to provide the impeachment panel with a few minutes of the extensive recordings the FBI made of the governor talking with aides and others.