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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged fraud

1. March 9, 2012 02:42 PM

   200 Years of Citi

   An alternate history

   By Ryan Chittum

   Bloomberg's Christine Harper, on Twitter, notes that Citigroup's corporate timeline, launched in a must-have new iPad app called Citi News, has an odd sense of news judgment: Citi `timeline' of its 200-year history has ``launches mobile phone banking service'' as the key 2008 event I guess they forgot about that $45 billion taxpayer bailout to stave off the catastrophic bankruptcy...

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2. April 24, 2012 07:19 PM

   60 Minutes Revisits Lehman, Valukas, and Repo 105

   By Ryan Chittum

   Remember the Valukas Report? That court-appointed bankruptcy examiner'sinvestigation into the collapse of Lehman Brothers found a number of colorable claims (prosecutable) against Lehman executives, including CEO Dick Fuld. The Repo 105 scam was designed to mislead investors about the state of Lehman's balance sheet, making it look healthier than it really was. But two years later, nothing has come of...

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3. December 6, 2011 07:31 PM

   60 Minutes’ Tough Piece on Crisis Prosecutions

   Kroft on the lack thereof

   By Ryan Chittum

   A tip of the cap to 60 Minutes for an excellent report Sunday asking about the lack of criminal prosecutions on Wall Street in the wake of the financial crisis. Steve Kroft gets a half hour of TV time primarily to talk to two whistleblowers from Countrywide and Citigroup who say they witnessed crimes by management at their respective firms....

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4. February 10, 2011 02:50 PM

   NYT Reports Bear Stearns Wasn’t Alone on Putbacks

   Plus, Wall Street saw fraud signs, demanded money back, then kept buying loans

   By Ryan Chittum

   The New York Times has a very good look today at what the Ambac lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase could mean in continuing to unravel the sordid CDO story. Remember that suit was unsealed two weeks ago and revealed that Bear Stearns had demanded repayment for shoddy mortgages it had bought to bundle, slice up, and sell—while denying repayment to the...

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5. February 3, 2012 02:41 PM

   NYT With More on the SEC’s Soft Touch With Big Banks

   By Ryan Chittum

   The New York Times has an excellent investigation today that shows in a new light how the SEC lets Wall Street off the hook despite repeated fraud. Edward Wyatt reports that the SEC has given banks waivers 350 times in the last ten years that allow it to avoid "the full force of the law" supposed to govern what happens...

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6. June 1, 2011 01:16 PM

   NYT: Fabulous Fab Pointed Fingers at Goldman

   By Ryan Chittum

   Louise Story and Gretchen Morgenson raise a good question in their agenda-setting piece in The New York Times this morning: Why was Fabrice Tourre the only Goldman Sachs employee charged with defrauding investors in the Abacus deal, and why was Abacus the only deal it prosecuted filed suit over? (Adding: A reader emails to say "prosecuted" implies criminal charges, so...

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7. July 6, 2012 02:08 PM

   The Economist on the Libor scandal

   What happened and why it matters

   By Ryan Chittum

   If you haven't paid much attention yet to the Libor scandal, this Economist piece will get you caught up quickly. Long story short, the British bank Barclays paid nearly half a billion dollars to regulators after it was caught manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate. Libor is supposed to measure what banks are paying to borrow from each other and...

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8. April 14, 2011 01:44 PM

   A Damning NYT Investigation Into Justice Wall Street Style

   Bankers skate as regulators and prosecutors protect financial interests above all else

   By Ryan Chittum

   The New York Times has the story of the week, a superb investigation into why there haven't been prosecutions on Wall Street. They find a clear pattern of government protecting financial interests over bringing people to justice. Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story get several big scoops here, all of which are eye-opening on why there has been no push to...

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9. May 19, 2011 07:43 PM

   A HuffPost Scoop, Overlooked By the Mainstream Press

   HUD finds big banks defrauded taxpayers, but few follow the story

   By Ryan Chittum

   Shahien Nasiripour scored a foreclosure-fraud scandal scoop for The Huffington Post on Monday, reporting that audits of the mortgage industry conducted by HUD's inspector general found five giant banks—Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial—defrauded taxpayers and violated the False Claims Act. HUD sent the findings to the Justice Department, which will now have to decide...

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10. December 8, 2010 09:19 AM

    Andrew Ross Sorkin: Fraud Triggered the Financial Crisis

    A more important statement than you might think from the NYT's Wall Street guy

    By Ryan Chittum

    There was a tough column in The New York Times yesterday on how the feds' are going after the minnows and avoiding the sharks over the financial crisis. That the piece comes from Andrew Ross Sorkin, who's about as inside as they come on Wall Street (for better or for worse), I think is significant. First, Sorkin punctures Attorney General...

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11. July 20, 2012 12:57 AM

    Audit Notes: Bloomberg on Libor, “can’t find workers” in the WSJ

    At least 34 traders are under investigation in the widening scandal

    By Ryan Chittum

    Bloomberg names names in the Libor investigation, reporting that at least 34 traders from more than a dozen banks are being examined: Regulators are examining the possible roles of Michael Zrihen at Credit Agricole, Didier Sander at HSBC and Christian Bittar at Deutsche Bank, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the probe is continuing. Investigators are...

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12. February 3, 2012 12:29 AM

    Audit Notes: CDO Charges, Facebook’s Board, Deficits

    By Ryan Chittum

    Sure enough, the Justice Department charged former Credit Suisse CDO executive Kareem Serageldin with fraud for allegedly artificially inflating CDO values. Two of his underlings pleaded guilty and say Serageldin orchestrated the scheme. The NYT: The government’s case against the former Credit Suisse traders depicts a brazen scheme to artificially increase the price of bonds on their books to create...

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13. February 1, 2012 01:30 AM

    Audit Notes: Finally, Fraud Charges; Gee Whiz Wired; Freddie

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Wall Street Journal reports, and as far as I can tell, scoops that the Justice Department is preparing to file criminal charges against mortgage-bond traders at Credit Suisse for fraud. The WSJ says two traders will plead guilty, which would be the first such convictions of the crisis. That's a big deal, even if I suppose we shouldn't be...

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14. April 21, 2011 12:03 AM

    Audit Notes: Financial Fraud and the Economy, TBTF Debts, Health Care

    By Ryan Chittum

    Mike Konczal has some good thoughts on the Levin-Coburn Report, financial fraud, and ProPublica's Pulitzer win for their Wall Street reporting: Why is fraud important? The first is obviously the ideal of justice, that those who have been rewarded at another’s expense ought to pay a price. The second is a regulatory issue, to provide disincentives against wrong acts. The...

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15. October 11, 2012 12:21 PM

    Audit Notes: fraud without fraudsters edition

    Wells Fargo and JPMorgan shareholders, not executives, held accountable

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Wall Street Journal fronts news that the feds are suing Wells Fargo for a decade of mortgage fraud that bilked the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars. The New York Times stuffs it on B3. The WSJ: The complaint alleges nearly a decade of misconduct dating back to May 2001. The suit contends that San Francisco-based Wells...

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16. January 6, 2012 08:04 PM

    Audit Notes: GE and Subprime, WaPo on Recess, Fed Fumes on Housing

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Center for Public Integrity’s Michael Hudson continues one of the most important series of the last year, on how the mortgage industry ignored or crushed whistleblowers who tried to point out systemic fraud during the bubble. Today, Hudson turns his focus to blue-chip General Electric, which was one of the biggest and worst subprime lenders during the bubble through...

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17. November 19, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: hustled, Brauchli fallout, NYT’s Walmart impact

    ProPublica connects the dots on a former Countrywide executive named in a DOJ lawsuit

    By Ryan Chittum

    ProPublica's Paul Kiel reports (with an assist from TheStreet) that the JPMorgan Chase executive in charge of its program to pay foreclosure-scandal victims was implicated by the feds last month in their fraud case against Countrywide. The executive, Rebecca Mairone, worked at Countrywide and Bank of America from 2006 until earlier this year, when she left for JPMorgan Chase, according...

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18. July 19, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: Ignoring Libor, Barron’s, rich kids and TV news

    ABC and NBC evening newscasts ignore the huge scandal in its first two weeks

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Washington Post's Erik Wemple points to Media Matters research that shows ABC's and NBC's nightly newscasts completely ignored the enormous Libor scandal unfolding here and in the UK during the first two weeks of the story. CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC have only spent about 12 minutes combined covering the story during their evening newscasts and...

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19. May 23, 2011 08:19 PM

    Audit Notes: Investigators Eye the Wall Street Mortgage Machine

    By Ryan Chittum

    After years of going nowhere, the investigation of the Wall Street securitization machine behind the financial crisis is finally showing some promise, with probes in New York and California ramping up and even the federales getting into the act. The Department of Justice preparing to hit Goldman Sachs with subpoenas, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The Journal reports...

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20. January 20, 2012 09:43 PM

    Audit Notes: Justice’s Revolving Door, GE Probed, iBooks Author

    By Ryan Chittum

    Reuters's Scot J. Paltrow reports that Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder and the head of his criminal division worked for a law firm that represented a "Who's Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud" (emphasis mine): The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington's biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and...

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