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Nigerian who allegedly scammed 80 law firms, lawyers out of $31M extradited to US
Headline News |
2011/08/15 16:10
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A Nigerian man who fled to his homeland after being accused of defrauding dozens of lawyers and law firms of more than $31 million dollars has been extradited to the U.S., Nigeria’s anti-graft agency said Friday.
Emmanuel Ekhator was arrested in Nigeria’s Benin City by the country’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in August. He was handed over to U.S. marshals in New York on Thursday, said Femi Babafemi, the anti-graft body’s spokesman.
“With the latest extradition, ... the message should be clear to anyone who travels abroad to commit crime and run back home to hide that Nigeria is no longer safe for them,” Farida Waziri, the anti-graft body’s chief, said in a statement. “We will get them and hand them over to face the law.”
Court records show Ekhator has yet to be assigned a lawyer. He remained in custody on Friday.
Charging documents from the U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Pennsylvania show that Ekhator and others are accused of mail and wire fraud after using bank accounts in South Korea, Singapore, China and Japan to collect the stolen money.
Federal prosecutors say the complicated scam involved multiple players, with a fraudster calling a U.S. or Canadian law firm posing as someone usually in Asia who needed to collect a debt from a person or organization based in North America. Another scammer poses as the debtor and agrees to pay off the debt — using a fake check, authorities say.
The law firms or lawyers collect the fake check, which gets validated by a third scammer posing as a bank employee over the telephone. Before the victims realize the check is fake, they’ve already used their own money to pay the fake settlement amount to their supposedly Asia-based client. |
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Appeals court strikes health insurance requirement
Headline News |
2011/08/13 16:15
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A federal appeals court panel on Friday struck down the requirement in President Barack Obama's health care overhaul package that virtually all Americans must carry health insurance or face penalties.
The divided three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the so-called individual mandate, siding with 26 states that had sued to block the law. But the panel didn't go as far as a lower court that had invalidated the entire overhaul as unconstitutional.
The states and other critics argued the law violates people's rights, while the Justice Department countered that the legislative branch was exercising a "quintessential" power.
The decision, penned by Chief Judge Joel Dubina and Circuit Judge Frank Hull, found that "the individual mandate contained in the Act exceeds Congress's enumerated commerce power."
"What Congress cannot do under the Commerce Clause is mandate that individuals enter into contracts with private insurance companies for the purchase of an expensive product from the time they are born until the time they die," the opinion said. |
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Lawyer: NJ student didn't mean to spy on roommate
Headline News |
2011/08/12 17:17
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A lawyer for a former Rutgers University student accused of using a webcam to spy on his roommate's intimate encounter with another man says in newly filed legal papers that prosecutors got it all wrong and that the case should be dropped. Nineteen-year-old Dharun Ravi faces charges, including bias intimidation and invasion of privacy, in the case that's been linked to roommate Tyler Clementi's death last September when he jumped off the George Washington Bridge. Clementi's suicide sparked a national discussion about bullying and gay youth that prompted celebrities, senators and President Barack Obama to speak out. But defense lawyer Steven Altman said in a brief filed Wednesday that his client was not spying on Clementi. Altman said Ravi initially turned on his webcam from a friend's computer to see what was going on in the dorm room because he was concerned about whether the man Clementi had over might steal Ravi's iPad. He stopped watching "two seconds" after seeing the men kissing, Altman said. Altman provided text messages that he said Ravi sent Clementi on Sept. 22 - about the time the 18-year-old violinist from Ridgewood was on the suspension bridge crossing the Hudson River. "I turned on my camera and saw you in the corner of the screen and I immediately closed it. I felt uncomfortable and guilty of what happened," the message said. "Obviously I told people what occurred so they could give me advice. Then Tuesday when you requested the room again I wanted to make sure what happened Sunday wouldn't happen again ... I turned my camera away and put my computer to sleep so even if anyone tried it wouldn't work. I wanted to make amends for Sunday night. I'm sorry if you heard something distorted and disturbing but I assure you all my actions were good natured." Another said, in part: "I've known you were gay and I have no problem with it." Altman argued in the brief that prosecutors did not present evidence that Ravi would have broken the law by using a webcam to monitor what was happening in the dorm room he shared with Clementi, that he actually viewed any sexual images from his webcam, that he copied or distributed them, or that he deleted Twitter posts about what was on the webcam to hide evidence from investigators. |
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Bank of America starts overdraft rebate outreach
Headline News |
2011/08/09 16:09
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If you had a Bank of America account with a debit card between January 2001 and May of this year, you may be due some cash.
The nation's largest bank has started contacting customers who may be entitled to a refund. It recently reached a class-action settlement over the way it charged overdraft fees. Most of the other suits are continuing to work their way through federal court in Florida.
Bank of America agreed to set up a $410 million fund to settle the lawsuit. The money will be used to pay back customers who were charged overdraft fees as a result of the company's policy of processing debit card transactions based on the size of the transaction, rather than when the purchases occurred.
The bank is one of about three dozen named in a series of class-action lawsuits over the practice of "reordering." A policy that became widespread in the 2000s, reordering involves deducting purchases from an account starting with the largest dollar amount first. That means a customer may end up paying additional overdraft fees.
For instance, someone with an account balance of $95 and who made three purchases in one day, the first for $5, the next for $25 and the last for $75, would be charged two overdraft fees, rather than one.
The suits claim that reordering was done to intentionally increase the number of overdraft fees collected. Banks took in about $39 billion in overdraft fees annually before the Federal Reserve put new rules in place last year. Now banks are required to obtain a customer's written permission before providing overdraft protection.
To inform customers that they may be eligible for a refund of some overdraft fees, Bank of America is sending postcards to customers with a brief explanation of the settlement and the address of a website where more information is available. |
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Nevada federal judge to hear Reno billboard law challenge
Headline News |
2011/08/08 15:32
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A Nevada federal judge is set to hear arguments in a lawsuit challenging the city of Reno's billboard law.
The Reno Gazette Journal reports the lawsuit contends the ordinance is unconstitutional because it caps the number of billboards at about 275. A voter-approved initiative set the cap in 2000.
Jeffrey Herson sued the city in June after he was denied a billboard permit. Herson wanted the billboard so he could promote a recall of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Judge Larry R. Hicks set a hearing for Wednesday in Reno's U.S. District Court.
In court papers Herson's attorneys contend the law favors commercial speech because it allows new signs for businesses, but bars new signs along city freeways — known as off-premise signs — for non-commercial purposes.
"It is unconstitutional for Reno to require only some non-commercial speakers to obtain permits, while others have carte blanche to post signs as they please," Reno attorney Frank Gilmore, who represents Herson, wrote in court papers. "This fundamental flaw in Reno's permitting process dooms the entire sign ordinance."
City attorneys say the rules only regulate the physical nature of the signs, not the message. They contend Herson could ask a business owner to post a non-commercial message and that there is no special treatment for commercial speech over another. |
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Phone hack lawsuits loom, foam attack sentence cut
Headline News |
2011/08/05 16:04
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Several alleged victims of tabloid phone hacking in Britain will soon file lawsuits against a second newspaper group, Piers Morgan's former employer Trinity Mirror PLC, their lawyer said Friday.
Mark Lewis said the claims would be filed in "a few weeks," but would not disclose identities of his clients or say precisely when the papers would be presented at court.
Lewis represents the family of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl abducted and murdered by a pedophile in 2002. The revelation a month ago that her voicemail messages had been accessed by the News of the World tabloid while she was still missing outraged British opinion, and triggered a crisis for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
The phone hacking scandal centers on allegations that journalists eavesdropped on private phone messages, bribed police for information and hacked email accounts.
So far the crisis has centered on Murdoch's media empire, leading him to shut down the News of the World and abandon a bid to take over British Sky Broadcasting. Several former executives of the newspaper have been arrested by police investigating the eavesdropping.
But there have also been allegations of hacking by other newspapers. This week Paul McCartney's ex-wife, Heather Mills, claimed in a BBC interview that she was hacked by a Trinity Mirror journalist in 2001. |
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