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E*TRADE hit with class action
Court Feed News |
2007/10/05 10:02
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Coughlin Stoia LLP yesterday filed a class-action suit against E*TRADE Financial Corp., accusing the company of violating the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The firm is filing suit on behalf of E*TRADE’s investors who purchased common stock in the firm between Dec. 14, 2006 and Sept. 25, 2007. E*TRADE’s CEO Mitchell H. Caplan and Robert J. Simmons, CFO and principal accounting officer, were also named as individual defendants in the suit. In its complaint, San Diego-based Coughlin Stoia alleged that E*TRADE failed to disclose that it was experiencing high delinquency rates in its mortgage and home equity portfolios. Instead, the suit alleges that E*TRADE had an overvalued securities portfolio with mortgage-backed assets. They also allege that the firm kept investors in the dark about the falling mortgage market, which made the value of E*TRADE’s shares plummet. Furthermore, throughout August, while the credit markets crashed and E*TRADE’s stock price dropped, the company continued insisting that was financially sound and that concerns on its market capitalization were unfounded, the suit said. The financial services company, which originated mortgages and subprime loans, pulled from its wholesale mortgage business on Sept. 17. Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP was founded by William S. Lerach, the famed class-action lawyer. A spokeswoman from E*TRADE said that the company does not comment on pending litigation. |
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Brothers plead guilty to mortgage fraud
Court Feed News |
2007/10/04 15:04
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Two brothers whose convictions for running a mortgage scheme in suburban Rochester were recently overturned pleaded guilty Wednesday to mortgage fraud to avoid a new trial. Robert Amico, 45, and his 36-year-old brother, Richard Amico, were convicted in 2003 of defrauding mortgage lenders out of $58.5 million for homes built in Monroe, Ontario and Wayne counties from 1994 to 2000. Prosecutors called it the largest case of mortgage fraud ever prosecuted in western New York.
A federal appeals court in May overturned the Amicos' convictions, ruling that the judge who presided over their trial should have recused himself when a prosecution witness claimed he had once helped the judge fraudulently obtain a mortgage.
In exchange for their guilty pleas, the Amicos will avoid a new trial and receive lighter sentences than the ones they received after they were convicted.
Robert Amico, who originally was ordered to prison for 17 1/2 years, will be sentenced to at least 10 years under the plea agreement. He has served more than four years already.
Richard Amico, who received an original prison term of nine years, will get a maximum of five years. He has already served more than three years.
The brothers will receive credit for the time they've already served and remain free until they are sentenced in January. |
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Friedman appeals to reverse sex abuse guilty plea
Court Feed News |
2007/10/04 13:03
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Jesse Friedman's last chance to clear his name of child molestation charges now rests in the hands of a federal judge who heard evidence on his case at a hearing yesterday. Friedman, 38, is trying to reverse his 1988 guilty plea to sexually abusing children as a teenager with his father in Great Neck, a case that was notorious at the time and gained national attention again in 2003 with the Oscar-nominated documentary, "Capturing the Friedmans."
In court papers, Friedman's attorneys argue that Nassau prosecutors withheld evidence revealed later in the movie - a child who accused Friedman made statements to police after hypnosis.
Magistrate Judge Joanna Seybert heard evidence yesterday on a technical issue - whether Friedman filed his federal appeal in time to beat the statute of limitations. She did not say when she would rule.
Nassau County prosecutors and police have stood by Friedman's arrest and conviction. Joseph Onorato, a prosecutor on the 1988 case, refused to shake Friedman's extended hand yesterday outside the courtroom.
State courts have twice rejected Friedman's appeals in the past three years. If Seybert rejects his case, the plea stands.
With his wife, Elisabeth, 28, standing at his side, Friedman said he was "very optimistic."
"I'm not a child molester and I'm not ever going to rest until I prove to the courts and to the world that I'm not a child molester," said Friedman, who in 2001 was released from prison on parole.
In 1987, Friedman, then 18, and his father, Arnold, then 56, were charged with sodomizing 17 children who attended computer classes at their home. They both pleaded guilty, and the father was sentenced to 10 to 30 years; the son 6 to 18 years. Arnold Friedman committed suicide in 1995. The Friedmans proclaimed their innocence from prison but never appealed their guilty pleas.
At issue in yesterday's hearing was when Jesse Friedman learned of the victims' hypnosis and whether his federal case was filed in the next year, as the law requires.
Assistant District Attorney Judith Sternberg argued that Friedman learned of the hypnosis on Jan. 10, 2003, the night he first saw "Capturing the Friedmans." Because his state appeal was filed 362 days later on Jan. 7, 2004, and rejected on March 10, 2006, Sternberg said Friedman had to file his federal appeal within three days of the rejection. The federal case was filed June 23, 2006.
Friedman's attorney, Ron Kuby of Manhattan, contended that the statute of limitations did not begin until July 2003, when Friedman received access to transcripts of the documentary's interviews with anonymous accusers and confirmed their identity.
If Seybert rules in Friedman's favor, she will then hear evidence on whether the hypnotizing of the victim was proper and should have been revealed to Friedman's attorneys. |
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Vick not expected to attend court hearing
Court Feed News |
2007/10/03 16:10
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| Michael Vick’s lawyers will make their first Surry County, Va. court appearance Wednesday for state dogfighting charges against the suspended Atlanta Falcons quarterback. Vick, already scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 10 on a federal dogfighting charge, is not expected to attend the Circuit Court hearing, prosecutor Gerald G. Poindexter said. Wednesday’s hearing is to determine whether Vick and three co-defendants have secured legal counsel or need the court to provide lawyers. “It’s just going to be a routine day,” Poindexter said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. Trial dates for Vick and the others on the state charges will be set Nov. 27, he said. Vick was indicted last week in the rural county where he built a massive home on 15 acres that had been home to a dogfighting enterprise since 2001. He’s charged with beating or killing or causing dogs to fight other dogs and engaging in or promoting dogfighting. Each felony is punishable by up to five years in prison. Lawyers for Vick have indicated they will fight the state charges on the grounds that he can’t be convicted twice of the same crime. In pleading guilty to the federal charge on Aug. 27, Vick admitted helping kill six to eight dogs, among other things. He faces up to five years in prison. Co-defendants Tony Taylor, Purnell Peace and Quanis Phillips also pleaded guilty to the same federal charge. On Tuesday, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals announced Vick completed an eight-hour class in empathy and animal protection Sept. 18 at the group’s Norfolk headquarters. The organization said Vick took the course during his second visit to their headquarters and returned a third time to take a written test. PETA did not reveal his score on the test, which spokesman Dan Shannon said includes an essay and long-answer questions. Vick, suspended indefinitely by the NFL without pay, did himself no favors last month when he tested positive for marijuana, a violation of U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson’s order that he stay clean in exchange for being allowed to be free. After that positive test, Hudson ordered Vick confined to his home address between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., with electronic monitoring and random drug testing. |
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Wyatt pleads guilty in Iraq oil case
Court Feed News |
2007/10/02 14:18
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Texas oil billionaire Oscar Wyatt, who in the mid-1990s was involved in a land dispute with a group of agencies in Utah, faces up to two years in prison after pleading guilty to paying an illegal kickback to the regime of late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in exchange for the right to purchase oil. The surprise plea, coming in the third week of a trial related to the United Nations oil-for-food program, ends a case that threatened to send the oil man to prison for the rest of his life. He faces 18 to 24 months when he's sentenced Nov. 27.
"I didn't want to waste any more time at 83-years-old fooling with this," Wyatt said after the hearing in Manhattan federal court.
Wyatt was accused of paying millions of dollars to Iraq outside of the 1996 U.N. program, created to allow Iraq to use oil revenue to buy food and medicine, easing the impact of sanctions imposed after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The Iraqis were permitted to select the companies that would receive oil.
Wyatt, indicted on five counts, pleaded guilty to one, conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He also agreed to forfeit $11 million.
The U.N. oil-for-food program became corrupted in 2000 when Iraqi officials began demanding illegal surcharges in return for contracts to buy Iraqi oil. The program ran from 1996 to 2003.
During the trial, prosecutors demonstrated that Wyatt had such a close relationship with Iraq that he was able to meet with Hussein in December 1990 to argue for the release of Americans being held as potential shields in the event of a U.S.-Iraq war. The government insisted that Wyatt later took advantage of that relationship to secure the first contract under the oil-for-food program and to continue to receive oil deals after other American companies were denied access. Wyatt's defense lawyers argued that their client was an American hero who never knowingly paid surcharges to the Iraqi government to win oil deals. Wyatt made his early fortune in oil and eventually built a system to collect natural gas burned off in Texas oil wells, enabling him to sell the fuel to homeowners as far away as Utah, Michigan and New England. Wyatt's ties to Utah run deeper than just selling natural gas. In the mid-1990s, he opposed an initiative put together by competing federal, state and private interests that called for conservation groups to purchase ranches in the Book Cliffs area of eastern Utah. Those groups - in an effort to improve wildlife habitat and protect land from overgrazing - planned to turn the properties over to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the state's Division of Wildlife Resources. The agencies would then agree to convert federal grazing permits to allow elk rather than cattle on the property. Wyatt owned some of the ranchland and believed elk were eating forage that should have been feeding his 2,100 head of cattle. He challenged the initiative in court in an effort to outbid the DWR for the grazing permits. He eventually dropped his lawsuit, and the groups put together 500,000 acres for conservation.
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High Court Rejects Pfizer Appeal On Norvasc Generic
Court Feed News |
2007/10/01 13:56
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| The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Pfizer Inc. (PFE) that had sought to bar Apotex Inc. (AOX.YY) from selling a generic version of Norvasc, a popular hypertension drug. The dispute began in April 2003 when Apotex, a maker of generic drugs based in Canada, challenged the validity of Pfizer's patent on Norvasc and applied at the Food and Drug Administration to sell its own version. A federal trial was held in 2006, leading to a ruling in favor of Pfizer. The Washington-based U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, a special patent appeals court, reversed the trial court ruling and opened the door for Apotex. However, Pfizer's ability to sell Norvasc without competition from other companies expired on Sept. 25, 2007. |
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