#Loan Fraud Case

[thetaxguyin]

ED Provisions: Immovable Properties Worth ₹43.84 Crore Attached in PMLA Cas

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) in Mumbai recently made a significant announcement regarding the provisional attachment of immovable properties, including several floors of Hotel One Continent in Hyderabad. Valued at ₹43.84 crore, these properties have been provisionally attached under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, in connection with a loan fraud case…

[badolmen]

I’m really frustrated my card got locked on Friday - I’ve been going through donating $5 to roughly 12-14 campaigns for weeks now but this week it gets flagged as potential fraud? Not only that the company is closed on the weekends so I have to wait until Monday to unlock my card (if I was still living alone and had to buy my own groceries/pay for gas I would be in trouble).

[todayworldnews2k21]

Court relief for Deepak Kochhar over questioning in ICICI-Videocon loan case

In a relief to former ICICI Bank Managing Director Chanda Kochhar’s husband and businessman Deepak Kochhar, the Bombay High Court on Friday ruled that no coercive action should be taken against him by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) and that he be questioned only during working hours on any day. The bench of Justices Revati Mohite-Dere and Rohit Wasudeo Joshi passed this order while…

[scamsupdateindia]

ED Arrests Himansh Verma in Rs 1,257 Crore Syndicate Bank Fraud Case

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has apprehended a significant conspirator involved in the Rs 1,257 crore Syndicate Bank loan fraud. On October 15, Himanshu Verma, also known as Himansh Verma, a resident of Chandigarh, was arrested and subsequently presented before a special court in Jaipur. The judge has remanded Verma to ED custody for 10 days, until October 25.

ED Initiates Money Laundering Investigation

The ED initiated a money laundering investigation under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, against officials of the former Syndicate Bank (now Canara Bank) and other suspects. This investigation was based on First Information Reports (FIRs) and a charge sheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Details of the Syndicate Bank Fraud

According to the ED's Jaipur-based Zonal Office, from 2011 to 2016, the main fraudster Bharat Bomb, a Chartered Accountant from Udaipur, Rajasthan, colluded with bank officials to defraud the Syndicate Bank of Rs 1,257 crore through fraudulent loans and fake cheque discounting.

Himansh Verma's Role in the Fraud

The ED's investigation revealed that Himanshu Verma was a key associate of Bharat Bomb, receiving approximately Rs 85 crore in proceeds from the crime. Properties worth Rs 14.88 crore belonging to Verma and his family have been attached by the ED.

"Himanshu Verma received proceeds of crime in various bank accounts he operated and controlled, using complex transactions to place, layer, and integrate the tainted funds," stated the ED.

Verma's Criminal Background and Evasion Tactics

The agency also highlighted that Verma is a hardcore criminal with multiple FIRs registered against him and his family members in various police stations across Punjab and Chandigarh. He is wanted by both the Punjab Police and the CBI.

In an attempt to evade authorities, Verma changed his name to Himansh Verma, obtained a fraudulent police verification report, and secured a new passport under his new name. He traveled abroad via Nepal before the passport authorities canceled his passport upon discovering his criminal background.

Lack of Cooperation with ED Investigation

Despite multiple summonses from the ED, Verma remained uncooperative throughout the investigation, appearing only once.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Smith at The Guardian:

Losing an election for the highest office is a crushing blow that no candidate forgets. But when the American electorate delivers its verdict next week, the personal stakes for Donald Trump will be uniquely high. His fate will hover between the presidency and the threat of prison.

If he claims victory, Trump will be the first convicted criminal to win the White House and gain access to the nuclear codes. If he falls short, the 78-year-old faces more humiliating courtroom trials and potentially even time behind bars. It would be the end of a charmed life in which he has somehow always managed to outrun the law and duck accountability. For Trump, Tuesday is judgment day. “He branded himself as the guy who gets away with it,” said Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer, adding that, should he lose, “he is facing a lot of moments of reckoning. He could go to jail. He could end up considerably less wealthy than he is. No matter what happens, and no matter whether he wins or loses, there will be a reckoning over his health. Death, ill health, dementia – those are things even he can’t escape.” The property developer and reality TV star has spent his career pushing ethical and legal boundaries to the limit, facing countless investigations, court battles and hefty fines. Worthy of a novel, his has been a life of scandal on a gargantuan scale.

In the 1970s Trump and his father were sued by the justice department for racial discrimination after refusing to rent apartments to Black people in predominantly white buildings. His property and casino businesses, including the Taj Mahal and Trump Plaza, filed for bankruptcy several times in the 1990s and early 2000s. Trump University, a business offering property training courses, faced multiple lawsuits for fraud, misleading marketing and false claims about the quality of its programmes. In 2016 Trump settled for $25m without admitting wrongdoing.

The Donald J Trump Foundation, a charitable organisation, was investigated and sued for allegedly using charitable funds for personal and business expenses. Trump eventually agreed to dissolve the foundation with remaining funds going to charity. Trump and his company were ordered to pay more than $350m in a New York civil fraud trial for artificially inflating his net worth to secure favourable loan terms. He is also known to have paid little to no federal income taxes in specific years which, although technically legal, was seen by some as bordering on unethical.

[...] He became the first president to be impeached twice, first for withholding military aid to pressure Ukraine’s government to investigate his political opponents, then for instigating a coup on 6 January 2021 following his defeat. He also became the subject of not one but four criminal cases, any one of which would have been enough to scuttle the chances of any other White House hopeful. In May Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to a hush-money payment to the adult film performer Stormy Daniels, making him the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes. Sentencing is scheduled for 26 November (the judge delayed it from 18 September after the Republican nominee asked that it wait until after the election). What was billed as the trial of the century has already begun to fade from public consciousness and played a relatively modest role in the election campaign. Jonathan Alter, a presidential biographer who was in court for every day of the trial, recalled: “I’ve covered some big stories over the years but there was nothing like the drama of watching the jury foreperson say, ‘Guilty, guilty, guilty’ 34 times and Donald Trump looking like he was punched in the gut.” Alter, who describes the experience in his new book, American Reckoning, reflects on how Trump has been able to act with impunity for so long. “It’s a combination of luck, galvanised defiance and the credulousness of a large chunk of the American people,” he said. “Demagoguery works. Playing on people’s fears works. It doesn’t work all the time but we can look throughout human history to political figures and how demagoguery and scapegoating ‘the other’ works.”

Alter, who covered the trial for Washington Monthly magazine, added: “We’ve had plenty of demagogues, scoundrels and conmen in politics below the level of president. Trump has been lucky to escape accountability but the United States has been lucky that we haven’t had something like this before. The founders were very worried about it. They felt we would face something like this for sure.” The US’s system of checks and balances has been racing to keep up. Trump was charged by the special counsel Jack Smith with conspiring to overturn the results of his election loss to Joe Biden in the run-up to the January 6 riot at the US Capitol. The former president and 18 others were also charged by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, with taking part in a scheme to overturn his narrow loss in Georgia. Trump was charged again by Smith with illegally retaining classified documents that included nuclear secrets, taken with him from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after he left office in January 2021, and then obstructing government demands to give them back.

With a such a caseload, it was widely assumed that Trump would spend this election shuttling between rallies one day and trials the next. But the courtroom campaign never really happened since, true to past form, he found ways to throw sand in the gears of the legal system and put off his moment of reckoning.

Or he simply got lucky. In Georgia, it emerged that Willis had a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor Nathan Wade, prompting demands that she be removed. Smith’s federal election case was thrown off track for months by a supreme court ruling that presidents have immunity for official actions taken in office. The classified documents case was thrown out by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, although Smith is appealing and the charges could be reinstated. Such delays have made it easier to forget just how much of an outlier Trump is. Past presidential brushes with the law consisted of Ulysses S Grant being fined for speeding his horse-drawn carriage in Washington and Harry Truman receiving a ticket for driving his car too slowly on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 1953. Richard Nixon resigned before he could be impeached over the Watergate scandal and was subsequently pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. Meanwhile the standard for presidential aspirants has been high. Joe Biden’s first run for the White House fell apart amid allegations that he had plagiarised a speech by Britain’s Labour leader Neil Kinnock. During the 2000 campaign, a last-minute revelation that Republican candidate George W Bush had a drunk driving conviction that he concealed for 24 years generated huge headlines and was seen as a possible gamechanger. Hillary Clinton still blames her 2016 defeat on an FBI investigation into her email server that produced no charges.

For Donald Trump, his run for the “Presidency” is all about avoiding any possible jail time for his indictments and felonies. If he loses, then Trump could be facing more trials and potentially jail time and/or massive fines.

Send Trump to prison, not the White House!

#TrumpForPrison #HarrisWalz2024

[alex51324]

Please note that the civil fraud case is about him misrepresenting how wealthy he is, in order to get better rates on loans and insurance.

He is appealing, because of course he is, but he needs to put up the amount of the judgement in order to appeal; he would get it back if the appeal succeeded. The amount--it's called "disgorgement"--is based on what he is estimated to have fraudulently obtained.

In other words, the amount of money he got, by claiming to be wealthy, is an amount that he now can neither cough up, nor get anybody to lend to him. It's not just that he doesn't have the full $464 million in cash/liquid assets: he doesn't have enough to put up to get the loan*.

According to his own attorneys, he has approached 30 underwriters in an effort to secure a loan. None of them are interested in securing this loan with real estate or other non-liquid assets**.

So now he's asking the court to cut him a break, so that he can appeal the ruling. You know, the ruling saying that he lied about being rich, in order to fraudulently obtain loans. Because he doesn't have the money, and can't find anyone willing to believe him when he says he's good for it.

He's asking them to let him appeal without putting up the bond, so he can go back to court and prove that he really is rich and has no need to defraud anyone to get a loan.

(*No idea what they're asking in terms of collateral, but for reference, if you are a common criminal putting up a bond to get out of jail before trial, the bail bondsman usually asks 10% of the bond amount.)

(**Gee, I wonder why?)

[mariacallous]

As digital scamming explodes in Southeast Asia, including so called “pig butchering” investment scams, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) issued a comprehensive report this week with a dire warning about the rapid growth of this criminal ecosystem. Many digital scams have traditionally relied on social engineering, or tricking victims into giving away their money willingly, rather than leaning on malware or other highly technical methods. But researchers have increasingly sounded the alarm that scammers are incorporating generative AI content and deepfakes to expand the scale and effectiveness of their operations. And the UN report offers the clearest evidence yet that these high tech tools are turning an already urgent situation into a crisis.

In addition to buying written scripts to use with potential victims or relying on templates for malicious websites, attackers have increasingly been leaning on generative AI platforms to create communication content in multiple languages and deepfake generators that can create photos or even video of nonexistent people to show victims and enhance verisimilitude. Scammers have also been expanding their use of tools that can drain a victim’s cryptocurrency wallets, have been manipulating transaction records to trick targets into sending cryptocurrency to the wrong places, and are compromising smart contracts to steal cryptocurrency. And in some cases, they’ve been purchasing Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet systems to help power their efforts.

“Agile criminal networks are integrating these new technologies faster than anticipated, driven by new online marketplaces and service providers which have supercharged the illicit service economy,” John Wojcik, a UNODC regional analyst, tells WIRED. “These developments have not only expanded the scope and efficiency of cyber-enabled fraud and cybercrime, but they have also lowered the barriers to entry for criminal networks that previously lacked the technical skills to exploit more sophisticated and profitable methods.”

For years, China-linked criminals have trafficked people into gigantic compounds in Southeast Asia, where they are often forced to run scams, held against their will, and beaten if they refuse instructions. Around 200,000 people, from at least 60 countries, have been trafficked to compounds largely in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos over the last five years. However, as WIRED reporting has shown, these operations are spreading globally—with scamming infrastructure emerging in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and West Africa.

Most prominently, these organized crime operations have run pig butchering scams, where they build intimate relationships with victims before introducing an “investment opportunity” and asking for money. Criminal organizations may have conned people out of around $75 billion through pig butchering scams. Aside from pig butchering, according to the UN report, criminals across Southeast Asia are also running job scams, law enforcement impersonation, asset recovery scams, virtual kidnappings, sextortion, loan scams, business email compromise, and other illicit schemes. Criminal networks in the region earned up to $37 billion last year, UN officials estimate. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all of this revenue is allowing scammers to expand their operations and diversify, incorporating new infrastructure and technology into their systems in the hope of making them more efficient and brutally effective.

For example, scammers are often constrained by their language skills and ability to keep up conversations with potentially hundreds of victims at a time in numerous languages and dialects. However, generative AI developments within the last two years—including the launch of writing tools such as ChatGPT—are making it easier for criminals to break down language barriers and create the content needed for scamming.

The UN’s report says AI can be used for automating phishing attacks that ensnare victims, the creation of fake identities and online profiles, and the crafting of personalized scripts to trick victims while messaging them in different languages. “These developments have not only expanded the scope and efficiency of cyber-enabled fraud and cybercrime, but they have also lowered the barriers to entry for criminal networks that previously lacked the technical skills to exploit sophisticated and profitable methods,” the report says.

Stephanie Baroud, a criminal intelligence analyst in Interpol’s human trafficking unit, says the impact of AI needs to be considered as part of a pig butchering scammer’s tactics going forward. Baroud, who spoke with WIRED in an interview before the publication of the UN report, says the criminal’s recruitment ads that lure people into being trafficked to scamming compounds used to be “very generic” and full of grammatical errors. However, AI is now making them appear more polished and compelling, Baroud says. “It is really making it easier to create a very realistic job offer,” she says. “Unfortunately, this will make it much more difficult to identify which is the real and which is the fake ads.”

Perhaps the biggest AI paradigm shift in such digital attacks comes from deepfakes. Scammers are increasingly using machine-learning systems to allow for real-time face-swapping. This technology, which has also been used by romance scammers in West Africa, allows criminals to change their appearance on calls with their victims, making them realistically appear to be a different person. The technology is allowing “one-click” face swaps and high-resolution video feeds, the UN’s report states. Such services are a game changer for scammers, because they allow attackers to “prove” to victims in photos or real-time video calls that they are who they claim to be.

Using these setups, however, can require stable internet connections, which can be harder to maintain within some regions where pig butchering compounds and other scamming have flourished. There has been a “notable” increase in cops seizing Starlink satellite dishes in recent months in Southeast Asia, the UN says—80 units were seized between April and June this year. In one such operation carried out in June, Thai police confiscated 58 Starlink devices. In another instance, law enforcement seized 10 Starlink devices and 4,998 preregistered SIM cards while criminals were in the process of moving their operations from Myanmar to Laos. Starlink did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

“Obviously using real people has been working for them very well, but using the tech could be cheaper after they have the required computers” and connectivity, says Troy Gochenour, a volunteer with the Global Anti-Scam Organization (GASO), a US-based nonprofit that fights human-trafficking and cybercrime operations in Southeast Asia.

Gochenour’s research involves tracking trends on Chinese-language Telegram channels related to carrying out pig butchering scams. And he says that it is increasingly common to see people applying to be AI models for scam content.

In addition to AI services, attackers have increasingly leaned on other technical solutions as well. One tool that has been increasingly common in digital scamming is so-called “crypto drainers,” a type of malware that has particularly been deployed against victims in Southeast Asia. Drainers can be more or less technically sophisticated, but their common goal is to “drain” funds from a target’s cryptocurrency wallets and redirect the currency to wallets controlled by attackers. Rather than stealing the credentials to access the target wallet directly, drainers are typically designed to look like a legitimate service—either by impersonating an actual platform or creating a plausible brand. Once a victim has been tricked into connecting their wallet to the drainer, they are then manipulated into approving one or a few transactions that grant attackers unintended access to all the funds in the wallet.

Drainers can be used in many contexts and with many fronts. They can be a component of pig butchering investment scams, or promoted to potential victims through compromised social media accounts, phishing campaigns, and malvertizing. Researchers from the firm ScamSniffer, for example, published findings in December about sponsored social media and search engine ads linked to malicious websites that contained a cryptocurrency drainer. The campaign, which ran from March to December 2023 reportedly stole about $59 million from more than 63,000 victims around the world.

Far from the low-tech days of doing everything through social engineering by building a rapport with potential victims and crafting tricky emails and text messages, today’s scammers are taking a hybrid approach to make their operations as efficient and lucrative as possible, UN researchers say. And even if they aren’t developing sophisticated malware themselves in most cases, scammers are increasingly in the market to use these malicious tools, prompting malware authors to adapt or create hacking tools for scams like pig butchering.

Researchers say that scammers have been seen using infostealers and even remote access trojans that essentially create a backdoor in a victim’s system that can be utilized in other types of attacks. And scammers are also expanding their use of malicious smart contracts that appear to programmatically establish a certain agreed-upon transaction or set of transactions, but actually does much more. “Infostealer logs and underground data markets have also been critical to ongoing market expansion, with access to unprecedented amounts of sensitive data serving as a major catalyst,” Wojcik, from the UNODC, says.

The changing tactics are significant as global law enforcement scrambles to deter digital scamming. But they are just one piece of the larger picture, which is increasingly urgent and bleak for forced laborers and victims of these crimes.

“It is now increasingly clear that a potentially irreversible displacement and spillover has taken place in which organized crime are able to pick, choose, and move value and jurisdictions as needed, with the resulting situation rapidly outpacing the capacity of governments to contain it,” UN officials wrote in the report. “Failure to address this ecosystem will have consequences for Southeast Asia and other regions.”

[simply-ivanka]

O'Leary Ventures chief and "Shark Tank's" "Mr. Wonderful" Kevin O'Leary warned real estate investors against developing in New York following a state judge's ruling that former President Trump must pay $355 million in punitive damages in his civil fraud case.

O'Leary told "Fox & Friends Weekend" to take the "Trump factor" out of the equation and look at the case as if it were any real estate developer with a marked presence in New York State.

"Forget about the Trump factor," he said. "It's not about that. What does this say to everybody that wants to do work in New York and wants to risk capital? … this judge arbitrarily decide[d] that this is the right amount. I don't understand it. No developer does."

He added, "It's an atrocity. It's an embarrassment, but it's an assault on real estate."

O'Leary echoed his comments Monday on "Cavuto: Coast to Coast" on FOX Business.

'New York was already a loser state, like California is a loser state. There are many loser states because of policy, high taxes on competitive regulation,' he said. 'I would never invest in New York now. And I'm not the only person saying that.' 

O'Leary said very few business sectors create the amount of cash flow that real estate does. What Trump was found liable for doing, he argued, is not too different from the typical "haggling" that goes on between a prospective debtor and a bank.

"You go to a bank and you say, 'Look, I want to borrow $200 million to build a building’. And they say, ‘What assets do you have that we can secure this loan against?’ And you point to a building you built before, and you haggle, and you argue about the value of that building."

With New York appearing to categorize some instances of that process as potentially fraudulent, O'Leary said New York has supplanted California as the top name on his list of "loser states" for business.

[copperbadge]

sam, as someone who professionally stalks rich people for fun and profit and therefore have long term observational data on them as a class, how likely is it that the mess that is twitter is musk trying to get out of the loans that are pulling tesla down via bankruptcy, and relatedly, considering that he's obviously doing all the value tanking on his own either through incompetence or malice, how likely is it that it'd end up a bankruptcy fraud case?

The problem is that by the time people get to where Elon Musk is now, most nonprofits have "disqualified" them. It's not that we won't take meetings with them or take their money, but we won't go out of our way to solicit it unless we are willing to take that PR hit. So I haven't researched many people who are malignant supervillains in quite the public way Elon Musk is. War criminals, yes; incredibly unethical finance guys, tons; active public fuckups like Elon Musk? Not as much. So I'm actually less well-educated in this kind of situation than one might think.

I have researched numerous finance guys who were convicted of financial misconduct. They fight it every step up to a point, they do everything possible to seem conventional and innocent...and they take their medicine quietly when it becomes obvious they're going to have to, so that they don't create a three-ring circus and endanger future investments by making too much noise. They get banned for three or five or eight years, and then they either get a shell to do their work for them or they take a three year vacation and then come back and quietly start up again.

As opposed to Elon Musk, who’s just like “I’m not afraid of the FTC. Come at me bro” and then shrieks like a child when they do.  

It's actually really difficult to tell what Musk is doing deliberately and what is just overwhelming incompetence. Like, how the fuck do you get where Twitter is this morning without doing it deliberately? But there’s no overestimating human stupidity, its well is bottomless. 

I don't subscribe to the Four Dimensional Chess theory that this was planned from the beginning. Musk tried too hard to squirm out of the deal, and he's much, much too sensitive about the way people have seen his actions, for me to think this is part of some master plan. He's also kind of a dumbass. But I'm not sure he's the extreme dumbass he's coming across as, either. It’s hard to know. The second he was forced to buy Twitter, I suspect either he realized, or someone close to him casually said, "You know, you can buy an asset, load it with debt, and dump it, especially if society values it highly enough to want it back from you." So what he's doing now might be deliberate even if it didn’t start out that way. 

On the other hand, I have my doubts, because every time he fucks Twitter up he does seem to be demanding someone else fix it. Tanking the value of an asset deliberately generally goes smoother than this to be honest. And I don't credit him as being canny enough to seem this random in order to fool the authorities that he's not committing fraud. So I lean, slightly, towards “Oh he’s just a real dumbass who’s not used to things not going his way.” but I can’t say with confidence that this is the case. 

I am also not following this as closely and breathlessly as some, so what I know of the situation is generally osmoted from daily headline reading and whatever crosses my dash on tumblr. I'm not buried in the specifics, so this is coming from a very distant view of what's happening. If he does declare bankruptcy for Twitter, I think there will be a fraud case regardless, because it's such a huge asset and he took it down so fast -- and he himself was so mired in debt -- that there has to be. You can’t just accept it. But I don't think he'll get convicted, if push comes to shove. I think probably there is a large bailout somewhere in his future, because that's just how life seems to roll these days.

I suppose we'll see. Sorry, this is a very ambiguous answer, but I'm working on like 3/4 of the knowledge I'd have if I was asked to do this for work, and I'd do more research but I'm real tired of seeing his incredibly punchable face.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil Police find fraud evidence against Jair Bolsonaro Jr

Jair Renan Bolsonaro, the youngest son of former Brazilian President Jair Messias Bolsonaro, is suspected together with a friend (and shooting instructor, Maciel Alves) of fraudulent misrepresentation, use of false documents, and money laundering in connection with an application for a bank loan, the Federal District Civil Police (PCDF) said in a statement Thursday. No further details were released, given the case's seal of secrecy.

Jair Bolsonaro Jr denied having committed anything illegal since a police raid in August last year during which some of his electronic devices were seized. According to the PCDF, it is now up to the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Federal District and Territories (MPDFT) to analyze the case and decide whether to file charges against both men.

Earlier this week, police searched the homes and offices of top aides to the former president as part of an investigation accusing them of plotting a coup to oust Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Jan. 8, 2023. Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, and Carlos Bolsonaro, a Rio de Janeiro councilman - all sons of the former president - are also under investigation in separate cases.

Continue reading.

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

X

 New York appeals court on Monday gave former president Donald Trump ten more days to post a $175 million bond in his civil-fraud case. If he pays the reduced amount by the deadline, he won’t need to satisfy the original $464 million judgment and will avoid having has assets seized.

Last month, Manhattan supreme court judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump and his co-defendants, including his two adult sons and former Trump Organization executives, to pay more than $460 million in damages and interest for fraudulently inflating the value of his business assets.

The appellate ruling temporarily prevents New York attorney general Letitia James from seizing the real-estate mogul’s properties to enforce the judgment, which she previously indicated she would do if he didn’t post a bond by Monday. The collection deadline is now delayed to early next month.

The order also allows Trump and his sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, to run the family’s New York businesses and obtain loans from New York banks, both of which were previously banned for the next three years under Engoron’s order. The Manhattan judge’s court-ordered monitor and the appointment of a compliance director for Trump’s company is still in effect, though.

[justforbooks]

Mike Lynch

British tech entrepreneur who sold his Autonomy software group to Hewlett-Packard and was later cleared after a long-running US fraud case

Mike Lynch, who has died aged 59 in the wreck of his yacht, was sometimes described as “Britain’s Bill Gates”. It was a huge exaggeration, but Lynch could claim two parallels with Gates: he developed world-leading technology (in his case in machine learning or AI) and, unlike so many UK scientists, he learned how to turn it into commercial success.

Such was this success that his company, Autonomy, was valued at $11bn when he sold it to Hewlett-Packard in 2011, but the fall-out from the sale would come to overshadow his technological achievements, and lead to a national debate about the circumstances in which UK citizens may be extradited to the US.

Lynch founded Autonomy with two partners in 1996. Its software enabled a computer to search huge quantities of diverse information, including phone calls, emails and videos, and recognise words. He told the Independent in 1999: “The way our technology works is to look at words and understand the relationships because it has seen a lot of content before. When it sees the word ‘star’ in the context of film, it knows it has nothing to do with the word moon. Because it works from text, it can deal with slang and with different languages.”

Autonomy became a leading company in Cambridge’s Silicon Fen cluster and established a base in San Francisco. “We knew we had to be successful in America. It was a question of ‘Go West young man, go to San Francisco and be ignored.’ They found it hard to believe that anyone from England could have anything powerful.” Lynch found what he called the “cold-hearted schmooze” to secure funding tough.

But Autonomy’s software, enabling computers to identify and match themes and ideas, and sort mammoth amounts of data, was licensed to more than 500 customers, including the US State Department and the BBC. It was listed on Nasdaq in 1998 and on the FTSE 100 in November 2000, although its value of £5.1bn would be halved within a few months in the collapse of the technology boom and accusations of over-promotion. In 2005 it bought a major US rival, Verity, for $500m.

Lynch’s profile rose with it. In 2006 he was appointed OBE for services to enterprise and the following year joined the board of the BBC. In 2011 he became a member of the government’s Council for Science and Technology, and was named the most influential person in UK IT by Computer Weekly. In 2014 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.

Though quietly spoken, he had a reputation for toughness, coloured by a liking for James Bond, which led to Autonomy conference rooms being named after Bond villains, and a tank of piranha fish in reception. (Lynch claimed it belonged to one of his business partners.) Challenged about a company culture where people were “a little fanatical”, he replied: “This is not the place for you if you want to work 9 to 5 and don’t love your work.”

Born in Ilford, east London, to Michael, a firefighter, and Dolores, a nurse, and brought up in Chelmsford, Lynch won a scholarship to the independent Bancroft’s school in Woodford Green, before taking a natural sciences degree at Cambridge, where his PhD in artificial neural networks, a form of machine learning, has been widely studied since.

A saxophone player and jazz lover, he set up his first business, Lynett Systems, while still a student, to produce electronic equipment for the music industry. Later he would attribute some loss of hearing to adjusting synthesisers for bands. He quoted his own experience to highlight the difficulties of finding funding for startup businesses in Britain. He finally negotiated a £2,000 loan from one of the managers of Genesis in a Soho bar.

Lynch’s next venture came out of his research. In 1991 he founded Cambridge Neurodynamics, specialising in computer-based fingerprint recognition. Then he established Autonomy.

The pinnacle of his success appeared to come in October 2011 when Autonomy was purchased by Hewlett-Packard for $11bn and Lynch made an estimated $800m. Shortly afterwards he established a new company, Invoke Capital, for investment in tech companies, and he and his wife, Angela Bacares, whom he had married in 2001, invested about £200m in Darktrace, a cybersecurity company.

But just 13 months after the Autonomy sale, HP announced an $8.8bn writedown of the assets “due to serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations” which it claimed had artificially inflated the company’s value. The authorities investigated, and while the UK Serious Fraud Office found insufficient evidence, in 2018 the US authorities indicted Lynch for fraud. Soon after, Autonomy’s chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to five years in prison.

In March 2019 HP followed up with a civil action for fraud in London. Lynch spent days in the witness box as the civil action stretched over nine months. It ended in January 2022 with the judge ruling that HP had substantially succeeded, but that damages would be much less than the $5bn they had claimed.

Meanwhile the US authorities sought Lynch’s extradition on criminal charges of conspiracy and fraud. In spite of representations by senior politicians and accusations that the US authorities were attempting to exercise “extraterritorial jurisdiction”, a district judge ruled in favour of extradition.

An application for judicial review and a further appeal failed, and in May 2023 Lynch was flown to the US to be held under house arrest in San Francisco, with the prospect of a 25-year sentence.

Charged with wire fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy, on 18 March this year Lynch pleaded not guilty, alongside his former vice-president of finance, Stephen Chamberlain. On 6 June, they were found not guilty of all charges. Chamberlain died after being hit by a car on 17 August.

Lynch declared that he wanted to get back to what he loved doing – innovating. But he had little opportunity to do so. He soon embarked on a voyage to celebrate his acquittal, with family, colleagues and business associates. It ended with the sinking of his yacht, Bayesian – named after the 18th-century mathematician, Thomas Bayes, whose work on probability had informed much of his thinking – in a violent storm off the coast of Sicily.

Lynch is survived by his wife and elder daughter, Esme. Their other daughter, Hannah, was also on board the Bayesian.

🔔 Michael Richard Lynch, technology entrepreneur, born 16 June 1965; died 19 August 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[beardedmrbean]

A Utah woman who authorities say fatally poisoned her husband then published a children’s book about coping with grief is set to appear in court Monday for the start of a multiday hearing that will determine whether prosecutors have enough evidence against her to proceed with a trial.

Kouri Richins, 34, faces several felony charges for allegedly killing her husband with a lethal dose of fentanyl in March 2022 at their home in a small mountain town near Park City. Prosecutors say she slipped five times the lethal dose of the synthetic opioid into a Moscow mule cocktail that Eric Richins, 39, drank.

Additional charges filed in March accuse her of an earlier attempt to kill him with a spiked sandwich on Valentine’s Day. She has been adamant in maintaining her innocence.

Utah state Judge Richard Mrazik had delayed the hearing in May after prosecutors said they would need three consecutive days to present their evidence. The case was further slowed when Kouri Richins’ team of private attorneys withdrew from representing her. Mrazik determined she was unable to continue paying for private representation, and he appointed public defenders Wendy Lewis and Kathy Nester to take over her case.

In the months leading up to her arrest in May 2023, the mother of three self-published the children’s book “Are You with Me?” about a father with angel wings watching over his young son after passing away. The book could play a key role for prosecutors in framing Eric Richins’ death as a calculated killing with an elaborate cover-up attempt. Prosecutors have accused Kouri Richins of making secret financial arrangements and buying the illegal drug as her husband began to harbor suspicions about her.

Both the defense and prosecution plan to call on witnesses and introduce evidence to help shape their narratives in the case. Mrazik is expected to decide after the hearing whether the state has presented sufficient evidence to go forward with a trial.

Among the witnesses who could be called are relatives of the defendant and her late husband, a housekeeper who claims to have sold Kouri Richins the drugs, and friends of Eric Richins who have recounted phone conversations from the day prosecutors say he was first poisoned by his wife of nine years.

Kouri Richins’ former lead defense attorney, Skye Lazaro, had argued the housekeeper had motivation to lie as she sought leniency in the face of drug charges, and that Eric Richins’ sisters had a clear bias against her client amid a battle over his estate and a concurrent assault case.

A petition filed by his sister, Katie Richins, alleges Kouri Richins had financial motives for killing her husband as prosecutors say she had opened life insurance policies totaling nearly $2 million without his knowledge and mistakenly believed she would inherit his estate under terms of their prenuptial agreement.

In May, Kouri Richins was found guilty on misdemeanor charges of assaulting her other sister-in-law shortly after her husband’s death. Amy Richins told the judge that Kouri Richins had punched her in the face during an argument over access to her brother’s safe.

In addition to aggravated murder, assault and drug charges, Kouri Richins has been charged with mortgage fraud, forgery and insurance fraud for allegedly forging loan applications and fraudulently claiming insurance benefits after her husband’s death.

[follow-up-news]

A federal judge on Wednesday resentenced Julie Chrisley to seven years in prison for her conviction on bank fraud and tax evasion charges, declining the reality TV star’s request for less time in prison than was originally imposed. Chrisley and her husband, Todd Chrisley, gained fame on their show, “Chrisley Knows Best,” which followed their tight-knit family and extravagant lifestyle. A jury in 2022 found them guilty of conspiring to defraud community banks out of more than $30 million in fraudulent loans. The Chrisleys were also found guilty of tax evasion by hiding their earnings. A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in June upheld the Chrisleys’ convictions but found a legal error in how the trial judge had calculated Julie Chrisley’s sentence by holding her accountable for the entire bank fraud scheme. The appellate panel sent her case back to the lower court for resentencing. Julie Chrisley’s attorney, Alex Little, asked the judge to reduce his client’s sentence to no more than five years.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

A few stories about the Tangerine Tyrant caught my eye today, and they all point to his increasing desperation - so I figured I’d go around the horn and celebrate his continuing dissipation.

First: Criminal Defendant and Adjudicated Rapist Donald Trump yesterday predicted a “bloodbath” if he didn’t get reelected, and the media quickly devolved into outlets condemning his use of violent rhetoric and others - Fox and Newsmax - concern trolling over how he was talking specifically about the automobile industry. So, whatever. If you’re interested in parsing the event along those lines, have at it - but I think there’s a more interesting, deeply indicative phenomenon just below the surface that speaks not just to Trump’s mentality but that of his whole bonkers cult.

If you’re looking for the atavistic pull of Donald Trump on his followers, it’s in his power to do whatever the hell he wants and face no consequences. NO ONE can tell him what to do. NO ONE can keep him from attacking whomever he wants. NO ONE can prevent him from sating his desires. NO ONE.

Now, we know that’s not true - as evidenced by his exile to Mar-a-Lago for the past three years, but it’s part of the mystique. In a lot of ways, it makes sense if you look at his cult following - people who are, by and large, deeply disempowered and enraged at a culture that is stripping away their traditional privileges and social entitlements. They WANT Trump to keep shitting the punch bowl as a sort of wish fulfillment of their own stifled rage. Maybe they can’t rape the woman they want to rape or kill the immigrants they hate for speaking Spanish or Hindi at the Gas-n-Sip – but they sure as hell can dream about it when Trump gives a cross-burner of a speech. That’s all standard form.

But what we saw last night - and in the fascist outrage-trolling today - was something new. It’s been creeping into the 2024 election cycle here and there, but yesterday, it entirely broke through, and it’s this: NOT EVEN TRUMP’S BRAIN IS ALLOWED TO CENSOR TRUMP’S MOUTH WHEN IT COMES TO RAGE AND ANGER.

Look, Trump KNOWS that using words like “bloodbath” is going to cost him non-MAGA voters. He knows that calling people “vermin” is going to hurt his chances of navigating the very narrow path ahead if he hopes to return to the White House. Yet, he can’t stop himself. Trump is unable to act in his own easily achieved best interest if it means not being a monster, and while it’s lamentable that he’s bringing such hatred to our national debate, I encourage him to keep it up.

You be you, Donald!

Every single time you let your id out of its box, it’s like sending America an unsolicited, mushroom-shaped dick-pic. Sure, your fans are going to love it, but the rest of us grossed the fuck out.

So, please! Rage on!

-----

Second:

Trump’s lawyers in the NYS civil fraud case settlement submitted a filing today that it is “a practical impossibility” for Trump to post a bond for the half-billion dollars he needs to cough up in order to appeal the decision. According to reports, he approached 30 different surety companies, and they all turned him down. Why they would do that might indicate what’s got him tuned to “bloodbath” and “vermin” levels of rage.

It might be a simple point, but it bears a paragraph of explanation.

Most folks who don’t work in the NYC real estate market – or any real estate market – might think, “Hey, he’s a rich guy. Why not just sell a few of those buildings he owns? They’ve gotta be worth a pretty penny.”

Or, alternatively, “Why won’t anyone take Trump Tower as collateral for a loan?”

The simple answer is he doesn’t really OWN any of that shit outright. It’s ALL mortgaged to the hilt. To get a clearer picture of this, let’s look at 40 Wall Street – one of Trump’s “prestige” properties.

The numbers are a bit hard to come by, but an hour of reading suggests that the building is presently worth about $200 million. Mind you, part of the fraud charges – now proven – included his valuation of the building in 2015 at over $750 million, but it’s just not worth that at all.

So, take the $200 million as a starting point and note that Trump’s mortgage on the property, according to a Bloomberg report in November of 2023, stands at $122 million. So, if Trump were to liquidate his stake in the property fully, he’d only net about $78 million – and that is BEFORE the capital gains taxes, NYS taxes, and NYC taxes on the sale. According to a few articles I’ve scanned this evening, that would be up to about 40% of his earnings. That means, even if he drops one of his most precious assets, he would only raise about $50 million.

He owes TEN TIMES that number by next week.

Play that out another round, and realize that if Trump tried to sell ten or twenty office buildings in NYC all at once, the price of ALL of them would plummet to fire-sale prices.

He’s fucked. Moreover, he knows it and is desperate to find a way out.

-----

This brings us to news item number three: The Return of Paul Manafort.

News leaked today that Trump is considering bringing convicted felon and former campaign manager Paul Manafort back into his 2024 bid for the White House. Manafort, primarily due to his complete lack of a moral center, would be a tremendous asset for Trump. He’s a solid political operative, but what he REALLY brings to the table is a direct line back to the Russian oligarchy and their money. That, obviously, is an enormous threat to national security, and I’ve got to hope that the intelligence services in DC and around the world will be on heightened alert for any covert – or overt – entreaties to Putin or his cronies for a loan. I’ve got to hope there are ways of making such entreaties known to the public through selective leaks if nothing else.

But that brings us back to observation number one.

Trump knows that going to Putin for help with his financial difficulties if it becomes known, would be a dagger to the heart for his chances of returning to the White House. Yet, if I’m right, he will be unable to stop himself when it comes to finding a fix for his hemorrhaging empire. His brain will tell him this is a terrible idea, but it won’t matter. NO ONE is allowed to stop Donald Trump from doing whatever the hell he wants to do – not even Donald Trump.

In 1776, James Otis, a thoughtful supporter of the Revolutionary War, noted about politics, “When the pot boils, the scum will rise.”

Trump is proving that to be true, even when there’s only one evil, arrogant, rapist bastard in the soup. He’s so screwed.

Love to you all.

Michael J. Tallon

[longwindedbore]

No! Legislators should know better. The job of the county assessor is to assign a reasonable valuation for a property. Assessment is not to be used to punish people.

DJT has paid a reasonable amount of property tax on the property given the independent valuations which took into account the covenants restricting its use and occupancy as an Historical Landmark as well as those additional restrictions allowing Donald to use it as a private club or whatever.

DJT’s fraud in the New York case is that he and his organization deliberately misrepresented the nature of the covenants and restrictions when validating the property for purposes of obtaining a loan. Repeatedly. For 20+ properties.

DJT lost the Summary Jusgment because Statute and Case Law were the basis of rejecting each and every counter argument of caveat emptor his attorneys presented. Counter arguments were also denied on appeal. Twice.

Jeff Bezos could decide tomorrow that he can’t live without owning Mar-A-Lago or other Trump property and buys one for $2 billion.

It would not affect that the Trump organization committed fraud each and every time it knowingly FAILED TO DISCLOSE material facts.

If such a purchase occurred, Trump would walk away with a lot of cash but would not be able to do business in New York State.

Trump’s stupidity is that he kept ALL his properties in one New York based umbrella trust instead of incorporating separately in Delaware or in a bunch of different States. Which is how it’s the NY AG who is seizing his assets worldwide.

Not that he would have escaped litigation. All 50 States and the Federal government have these ‘blue sky laws’ like the one Trump is fighting and States/Federal are constantly prosecuting businesses for violating them.

We never hear about these cases because they just aren’t the kind of Infotainment that the Media covers…unless it’s infotainment celebrity like Trump.