18 posts tagged “crime” (page 2)
Mon Feb 11, 2008
PARIS (Reuters) - Scandal-hit Societe Generale shares the plight of people who take out an insurance policy to cover the remotest eventuality only to find it pays out a pittance, the French bank disclosed on Monday.
The bank, which last month announced rogue trading losses of €4.9 billion (£3.5 billion) and blamed a lone junior trader, was insured against fraud but the amount it can receive is negligible.
"There is an insurance in the case of fraud but its amounts are capped and completely marginal compared with the amount of the fraud," finance director Frederic Oudea told analysts.
He was speaking in a conference call on a €5.5 billion rights issue designed to plug a hole in the bank's finances after 31-year-old trader Jerome Kerviel built up unauthorised stock futures bets which had to be sold off at a loss.
SocGen has accused the trader of fraud and said he acted alone to defeat the bank's control systems. Bank of France Christian Noyer called Kerviel a "genius of fraud" when the world's biggest rogue trading scandal erupted on January 24.
However, investigating judges dismissed fraud accusations and placed Kerviel under formal investigation for breach of trust, manipulation of computer records and falsifying documents.
A Paris financial broker was questioned by police last week over his links with Kerviel but freed by judges who dismissed prosecutors' conspiracy accusations against him on Saturday.
Woman Faces DUI, Other Charges
February 5, 2008
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. -- A St. Augustine woman pulled over when a deputy saw her run a red light had a case of beer belted in her front seat, but a young child unrestrained in the back, according to the arrest report.
The deputy who pulled over Tina Williams Sunday reported smelling a strong odor of alcohol coming from the car. When he asked Williams for a driver's license, she replied, "I never had one," Jacksonville television station WJXT reported.
According to the police report, a 24-pack of beer in the front passenger seat of her car was restrained by a seat belt but a 16-month-old girl was not in a child seat or safety belt. A 19-year-old woman was also in the back seat.
Police said Williams had bloodshot and watery eyes and staggered when she got out of the vehicle. Asked if she'd been drinking, she told the deputy, "I had a few."
Williams failed a field sobriety test but refused to take a Breathalyzer.
After Williams was taken into custody, two metal pipes were found in her purse.
Williams was charged with DUI, child endangerment, driving without a license, running a red light and failure to use a child restraint. The suspected drug paraphernalia was placed into evidence.
January 30, 2008
HARO, Spain (CNN) -- A Spanish businessman withdrew a controversial lawsuit Wednesday against the family of a teenage boy he struck and killed while driving a luxury car.
Tomas Delgado had filed a suit asking the dead boy's parents to pay him €20,000 ($29,400) on the grounds that the collision that killed their teenage son also damaged his Audi A-8.
News of the case sparked outrage in Spain and generated deep sympathy for the parents of 17-year-old Enaitz Iriondo Trinidad. He was riding his bicycle home to a campground when Delgado's car hit and killed him in August 2004.
Hundreds of people descended on a courthouse in northern Spain in a show of support for the boy's parents Wednesday. They broke into applause when word came that Delgado had dropped the suit.
The businessman had insisted in a recent television interview that he was a victim, too. He was not present for a court hearing Wednesday. His lawyer told the court that Delgado felt that the extensive publicity amounted to a public lynching.
Outside the courthouse, the boy's father -- Antonio Iriondo -- told CNN he was content with the decision. Yet he also said his family will explore the possibility of criminal charges against the man.
"This is just the beginning," the father said.
His son was killed as he cycled back from a nearby village to a campground where his family was vacationing.
Iriondo Trinidad's father told CNN he heard the screeching of the car from the campgrounds. The teen was struck from behind and dragged 106 meters (347 feet) along the rural highway, the father said.
A traffic report said Delgado was traveling 113 km per hour (70 mph) in an area where the speed limit is 90 km (55 mph). An independent expert hired by Trinidad's family said Delgado was going 173 km per hour (107 mph).
Shortly after the collision, a judge dismissed criminal charges against Delgado after concluding that he had committed no criminal infraction, the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported.
The teen's mother, Rosa, told the newspaper that the family was given three days to appeal the judge's ruling, but they were too distraught to pursue it. She also told the newspaper that her family's lawyer advised her and her husband not to pursue criminal charges.
After the collision, Delgado's insurance company paid the family €33,000 ($48,500).
Two years after the wreck, Delgado sued the family for damages to his car and for car rental costs.
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The boy's mother told CNN before the hearing that she was indignant that the driver would seek damages after killing her son.
A local prosecutor told reporters that he would take a second look at the case to see whether authorities can file fresh charges against Delgado.
February 1, 2008
MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. (AP) -- It looks like a couple of suburban St. Louis purse snatchers picked the wrong women to attack. The victims fought back - with a snow shovel.
Police in Maryland Heights released details of the Sunday incident outside a Schnucks grocery store. The women were unloading groceries when the thieves tried to steal two purses from their cart.
One of the women grabbed a shovel from the suspects' pickup and smacked one of the men upside the head. The other woman jumped into the cab and attacked the other suspect, then grabbed the keys so he couldn't drive away.
Police tracked the men to a hotel. The man struck with the shovel required staples to close the gash in his head.
Both are jailed and charged with robbery.
Telegraph dot co dot Uk
By Lucy Cockcroft
Last Updated: 2:11am GMT 28/01/2008
Criminal gangs are using dwarves in a ruse to steal from the luggage holds of long-distance coaches, by hiding them inside suitcases, according to police.
The bizarre crime is on the rise in Sweden and officers say thieves have got away with thousands of pounds in cash, jewellery and other valuables in recent months.
Gangs are said to sneak the dwarves into the luggage hold, hidden inside baggage.
Then, once the journey has begun, the stowaways are free to rifle through the bags of other passengers without fear of being apprehended.
Before the coach arrives at its destination the dwarves take their loot back into their suitcase, zip themselves inside and wait to be collected by their partners in crime.
Swebus, which takes thousands of British tourists on holiday across Sweden, is among the coach firms targeted.
A spokesman said: “We have had reports about several thefts by dwarves on the stretch between Vasteras and Stockholm.
“We’re thinking of installing video cameras.”
Police in Stockholm have warned the scam is becoming a problem.
A spokesman said: “We are looking at our records to identify criminals of limited stature.”
Thursday, January 24, 2008
SANDY SPRINGS, Ga. (AP) -- A bank robbery suspect was arrested while waiting at a bus stop to make her getaway, police said. Channel Monae Gaskin, 22, was arrested Wednesday after a police officer saw her waiting for a bus and matched her to the description of the robbery suspect. She has been charged with robbery.
"That just wasn't too bright," Sandy Springs police Lt. Steve Rose said of the escape plan.
A woman went into a bank shortly after 1 p.m. Wednesday and demanded money, police said. She did not show a weapon.
After being given a bag of cash, she ran across a parking lot to a restaurant, where a dye bomb exploded and sprayed orange-colored ink on her and the money, police said.
She left the restaurant and then tried to stash the dye-stained clothes and money in a bathroom at a nearby grocery store, Rose said.
The woman apparently changed clothes and went to a bus stop behind the grocery store, Rose said.
But what made Gaskin think she could escape on public transportation? Police say she told them she had done it before.
Gaskin admitted that on Jan. 15, she robbed a bank in DeKalb County and then got on a bus, police said.
The woman was taken Wednesday to the Fulton County Jail and likely will be turned over to DeKalb County authorities and charged with the Jan. 15 robbery, police said.
I guess no one told Channel Monae Gaskin's mom it's actually spelt 'Chanel.'
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- A gang of Swedish criminals was seconds away from completing a digital bank heist when an alert employee literally pulled the plug on their brazen scam, investigators said Wednesday.
The would be bank robbers had placed "advanced technical equipment" under the employee's desk that allowed them to take control of his computer remotely, prosecutor Thomas Balter Nordenman said in a statement.
The employee discovered the device shortly after he realized his computer had started an operation to transfer "millions" from the bank into another account, Nordenman said.
"By pulling out the cable to the device, the employee managed to stop the intended transfer at the last second," he said.
The foiled heist happened in August at a bank in Uppland county, north of Stockholm, police said. They announced it only Wednesday after seven suspects, all from the Stockholm region, were arrested this week while allegedly preparing another heist.
Police did not name the suspects, but said many of them have prior fraud and theft convictions. Investigators did not give other details on the device, or how it was placed under the desk.
That's simple - a dwarf was stashed in a hockey-gear bag and smuggled into the bank; the dwarf sneaked out, crawled under the desk and placed the device.
That, or a charwoman or "security" guard done it, but I much prefer the dwarf-in-a-hockey-gear-bag trick.
Guardian Unlimited
Luke Harding in Moscow
Friday January 25, 2008
Detectives in Moscow yesterday confirmed they have arrested Russia's most notorious mafia boss, who is wanted by both the US and British authorities for his alleged involvement in decades of major international crime.
Police swooped on Semyon Mogilevich when he emerged from a business meeting at Moscow's World Trade Centre. They formally arrested him on Thursday, together with his business partner Vladimir Nekrasov, a millionaire Russian businessman. Mogilevich's arrest appears to bring to an end one of the most colourful and picaresque criminal careers of modern times - involving money-laundering, trading in drugs, prostitution, smuggling uranium and stolen icons, and international banking fraud.
FBI officials claim the 61-year-old Ukrainian-born Russian citizen is a major figure in the international mafia world. He is wanted in the US on numerous charges, including racketeering, securities and mail fraud.
Yesterday Russian police said Mogilevich had been detained under one of his many aliases, Sergei Schneider. The mafia boss uses 17 other names and holds passports from several different countries, they added, including Ukraine, Russia and Israel. Russia's interior ministry told the Guardian: "We have been pursuing him for 15 years. We arrested him as Sergei Schneider in connection with tax evasion. It was only after his arrest that we realised who he was. He has many different personalities and aliases."
Photos in yesterday's Russian papers reveal Mogilevich to be a thick-set man in late middle age. A photo in Vremya Novosti newspaper shows him fiddling with a pen, a giant waistcoat encasing his considerable girth.
A Moscow court approved his formal arrest on Thursday. Police launched their operation as part of an investigation into alleged tax evasion by the owners of Arbat Prestige, a lucrative chain of Russian cosmetic stores.
Around 50 balaclava-wearing police commandos grabbed Mogilevich on the street near a supermarket along with Nekrasov, Arbat Prestige's majority owner. The two men, who were accompanied by bodyguards, surrendered without a fight.
Mogilevich's alleged criminal CV is a lengthy one. According to international investigators he is believed to control the world's largest Russian mafia syndicate.
Born in Ukraine, and nicknamed The Brainy Don - he has an economics degree - he apparently joined a Moscow crime gang in the early 1970s, and was jailed twice for petty theft and fraud.
In the 1980s Mogilevich allegedly bought up the properties of Russian Jews emigrating to Israel, promising to send on the funds. The money, however, never arrived.
He lived and worked in Britain, the US and Canada. In the 1990s he apparently transferred the base of his criminal operations to Hungary. Here, Mogilevich was allegedly involved in a network of prostitution and smuggling, living in a fortified villa outside Budapest.
His syndicate was also allegedly involved in trading art and antiques taken from museums and churches across the former Soviet bloc. He apparently even bought a factory producing anti-aircraft guns.
Much of his money was allegedly laundered via London. In 1995 the British authorities closed down his UK operation - describing him in one classified report as "one of the world's top criminals", with an estimated £50m fortune.
Mogilevich's most sophisticated alleged fraud took place in Russia in 1994 when he took control of Inkombank, one of Russia's largest private banks. It collapsed in 1998 under suspicions of money-laundering. The FBI put him on its most-wanted list in 2003. The US charges stem from a 2003 indictment in Philadelphia in which he is accused of manipulating the stock of a Pennsylvania-based company, YBM Magnex Inc.
In an interview with a Russian paper in 1999, Mogilevich denied the FBI's claims, describing them as "delirious ravings".
Yesterday a spokeswoman for the Moscow bureau of Interpol, Tatiana Trunayeva, said that Mogilevich had been arrested - but not in connection with the US charges.
"This arrest was not made at Interpol's request," she told the Guardian.
The alleged mafia boss is now sitting in Moscow's Matroskaya Tishina prison. TV footage yesterday showed him apparently unsurprised by his arrest. He climbed meekly into the back of a police van and calmly lit a cigarette.
In recent years Mogilevich appears to have lived a semi-open life in Moscow. It is not clear why Russian authorities failed to arrest him earlier.
Yesterday's Russian papers say he has been living in the Ukraine hotel - a vast Stalin-era edifice visible from across the Russian capital. Russian TV said until 2005 he lived in a suburban Moscow villa.
