The Highland News is reporting that a fraudster called Andre Rostas (from Thornton Heath, Croydon) has been fine at Inverness Sheriff Court for an attempted fraud and a further successful fraud at the Nairn branches of Bank of Scotland and The Royal Bank of Scotland respectively.
The fraud involved trying to confuse bank cashiers ('tellers') when asking for largie sums of money to be changed into different note denominations, then changing his mind and asking for another denomination, abstracting some of the notes in the process by sleight of hand. The report mentions that this individual had a conviction for a similar offence last February, although it does not mention where that offence took place.
The court warned Rostas that if he came before a Scottish court again the matter would be dealt with very severely. One does wonder whether this man, clearly a serial and habitual offender, has not been dealt with too leniently this time with only a fine (of GBP2,000-) being imposed.
Blogging from the Highlands of Scotland
'From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step' - Diderot
Showing posts with label Fraud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fraud. Show all posts
Thursday, 7 July 2011
Monday, 15 December 2008
USD50bn hedge fund fraud - the clue is possibly in the name
Yes, Bernard Mad[e]off (sic) seems to have made off [geddit?], or lost, or mislaid, a great deal of other people's money through what is now being described by the man himself, according to comments he is reported, in the US Attorney's criminal complaint filed in court, to have made to three employees during last week describing it as a giant Ponzi scheme.
It almost makes one wish for the halcyon days when it seemed that Enron was a one-off exceptional case. It now seems clear that financial regulation in the US, seemingly so detailed and exhaustive, specially after the improvements supposedly put in place in the wake of the flaws revealed by the Enron scandal of 6 or 7 years ago, is still in practice worth very little.
What fresh blows to confidence will be revealed in coming months? I'm afraid even to contemplate what might be in store - almost certainly it is not good. Just one more sign that the 8-year Presidency of George W Bush will not be remembered by historians as one of the more glorious phases of US or western capitalist history.
It almost makes one wish for the halcyon days when it seemed that Enron was a one-off exceptional case. It now seems clear that financial regulation in the US, seemingly so detailed and exhaustive, specially after the improvements supposedly put in place in the wake of the flaws revealed by the Enron scandal of 6 or 7 years ago, is still in practice worth very little.
What fresh blows to confidence will be revealed in coming months? I'm afraid even to contemplate what might be in store - almost certainly it is not good. Just one more sign that the 8-year Presidency of George W Bush will not be remembered by historians as one of the more glorious phases of US or western capitalist history.
Thursday, 24 January 2008
"Red, Black and Rising"
Or should that be "in the Red"! (The title has been used as an advertising slogan by the bank for some years.)
French Bank Société Générale (link is to the main French website) has just announced a double-whammy - an internal fraud by a 'rogue trader' which has lost it EUR4.9bn (USD7.1bn; GBP3.7bn) and write-downs of EUR2.05bn (USD2.97bn; GBP1.55bn) worth of lending relating to the sub-prime market in the US. Although the bank states it will still make a profit of EUR600mn to EUR800mn for 2007, it needs to raise new capital of about EUR5.5bn to offset the losses. It's not clear if the latest write-downs in loans are are in addition to or part of the rescue package announced in December 2007, when it had to rescue an investment vehicle in the US.
Société Générale is one of France's oldest banks (founded 1864), it was nationalised in 1945, then in 1987 the government decided to choose it, of the three major French state-owned banks, for privatisation. It has always, until now, had a pretty good reputation for prudence and for careful credit-control, before, during and after the period when it was under direct state control. I knew a few people in Société Générale both when I lived in Paris and then some years later when I lived in Vietnam, where that's bank's person in Hanoi was a good friend.
It is however mind-bloggling to learn that a person described as 'mid-level' has been able to commit the bank to contracts of the scale required to produce a loss of EUR4.9bn - Robert Peston, the BBC's business editor, has his views on what's been going on. Worth a read. From the details that are emerging so far it seems that the bank's own internal control mechanisms of what its trading desks have been up to have been sadly deficient! No doubt a lot of internal checking (I hope) will be going on today in other banks to see just what may be lurking under the surface.
French Bank Société Générale (link is to the main French website) has just announced a double-whammy - an internal fraud by a 'rogue trader' which has lost it EUR4.9bn (USD7.1bn; GBP3.7bn) and write-downs of EUR2.05bn (USD2.97bn; GBP1.55bn) worth of lending relating to the sub-prime market in the US. Although the bank states it will still make a profit of EUR600mn to EUR800mn for 2007, it needs to raise new capital of about EUR5.5bn to offset the losses. It's not clear if the latest write-downs in loans are are in addition to or part of the rescue package announced in December 2007, when it had to rescue an investment vehicle in the US.
Société Générale is one of France's oldest banks (founded 1864), it was nationalised in 1945, then in 1987 the government decided to choose it, of the three major French state-owned banks, for privatisation. It has always, until now, had a pretty good reputation for prudence and for careful credit-control, before, during and after the period when it was under direct state control. I knew a few people in Société Générale both when I lived in Paris and then some years later when I lived in Vietnam, where that's bank's person in Hanoi was a good friend.
It is however mind-bloggling to learn that a person described as 'mid-level' has been able to commit the bank to contracts of the scale required to produce a loss of EUR4.9bn - Robert Peston, the BBC's business editor, has his views on what's been going on. Worth a read. From the details that are emerging so far it seems that the bank's own internal control mechanisms of what its trading desks have been up to have been sadly deficient! No doubt a lot of internal checking (I hope) will be going on today in other banks to see just what may be lurking under the surface.
Tuesday, 27 November 2007
Labour general secretary resigns over donations scandal
Labour general secretary Peter Watt has resigned in the wake of the 'proxy donations' scandal. He admitted he was aware of the arrangements used by David Abrahams to 'launder' money into the Labour Party under the names of others.
Now we learn that David Abrahams also uses the name 'David Martin', specially when planning applications are being applied for. The whole affair begins to stink to high heaven. Read a little more about this enigmatic character here.
Listening to the Labour stooge on the 'Today' programme this morning (a woman - I don't recall her name, I'm afraid) say how 'shocked' she was by the revelations of their law-breaking was quite funny. She insisted they thought they had a system in place to vet thoroughly all donations - checking that the person donating actually lived at the address given and appeared on the electoral register. The fact that the donor lived in a type of property and in an area of a city where the ability of the resident to provide regular donations of the level and frequency of those ostensibly given by Ray Ruddick ("I can't stand Labour - I can't stand any politicians") and Janet Kidd was unlikely, unless they had other sources of funds. I'd have thought that significant, regular donations from such sources perhaps required some further clarification just to be sure that the money was 'clean' and not just 'laundered' (quite a good joke -eh?!) as it turns out to be, by someone who claims to be a 'very private person', but uses another name to apply for planning permissions where Labour Party people have a say in granting permissions or not. The truth is that the Labour Party's so-called system of checking the source of large donations it receives is so full of holes as to be hardly worth the name! I think the whole reason for this lackadaisical attitude to compliance with laws they have enacted themselves is ideological - any socialists I have ever met seem to beleive the 'justice' of their cause is so obvious to any person of good will that any possibility of cheating by one of their members is so unthinkable to them that they do not actually do any proper checking at all. For example in the organisation I worked for I had to certify, in writing, on a regular basis that certain things had been done or had happened as a normal routine part of my professional activity. Fair enough. What if I hadn't actually done what I'd said I'd done, though? Simple - every so often there were both internal audits and external audits of our activities in great detail; it is fair to say that the internal audits were a great deal more 'forensic' than the external audits, because the consequences of things being discovered later in an external audit would be extremely serious for the organisation itself as either laws might have been broken or shareholders deceived. No system is ever absolutely foofproof, but it needs to be sufficiently robust so that more than a casual scrutiny does not reveal it to be completely illusory. Labour's problem is that it seems to 'assume' its people act honestly, openly and conscientiously, but does not actually do any checking to see that this is the case, nor (it seems) are the people who act on its behalf required to certify, in writing, that they have carried out its own internal rules.
PS/ In an amusing aside I note that the visitor stats for my post on this matter yesterday show I received a visit from someone using the Electoral Commission server - let's hope their in-depth investigation of this sleaze goes a good deal further than looking at what random bloggers are writing. Can I suggest an independent audit of the Labour Party's accounts? Maybe if I'm visited by the Electoral Commission again they'll see this comment and follow it up, or am I being naive and over-optimistic?
Now we learn that David Abrahams also uses the name 'David Martin', specially when planning applications are being applied for. The whole affair begins to stink to high heaven. Read a little more about this enigmatic character here.
Listening to the Labour stooge on the 'Today' programme this morning (a woman - I don't recall her name, I'm afraid) say how 'shocked' she was by the revelations of their law-breaking was quite funny. She insisted they thought they had a system in place to vet thoroughly all donations - checking that the person donating actually lived at the address given and appeared on the electoral register. The fact that the donor lived in a type of property and in an area of a city where the ability of the resident to provide regular donations of the level and frequency of those ostensibly given by Ray Ruddick ("I can't stand Labour - I can't stand any politicians") and Janet Kidd was unlikely, unless they had other sources of funds. I'd have thought that significant, regular donations from such sources perhaps required some further clarification just to be sure that the money was 'clean' and not just 'laundered' (quite a good joke -eh?!) as it turns out to be, by someone who claims to be a 'very private person', but uses another name to apply for planning permissions where Labour Party people have a say in granting permissions or not. The truth is that the Labour Party's so-called system of checking the source of large donations it receives is so full of holes as to be hardly worth the name! I think the whole reason for this lackadaisical attitude to compliance with laws they have enacted themselves is ideological - any socialists I have ever met seem to beleive the 'justice' of their cause is so obvious to any person of good will that any possibility of cheating by one of their members is so unthinkable to them that they do not actually do any proper checking at all. For example in the organisation I worked for I had to certify, in writing, on a regular basis that certain things had been done or had happened as a normal routine part of my professional activity. Fair enough. What if I hadn't actually done what I'd said I'd done, though? Simple - every so often there were both internal audits and external audits of our activities in great detail; it is fair to say that the internal audits were a great deal more 'forensic' than the external audits, because the consequences of things being discovered later in an external audit would be extremely serious for the organisation itself as either laws might have been broken or shareholders deceived. No system is ever absolutely foofproof, but it needs to be sufficiently robust so that more than a casual scrutiny does not reveal it to be completely illusory. Labour's problem is that it seems to 'assume' its people act honestly, openly and conscientiously, but does not actually do any checking to see that this is the case, nor (it seems) are the people who act on its behalf required to certify, in writing, that they have carried out its own internal rules.
PS/ In an amusing aside I note that the visitor stats for my post on this matter yesterday show I received a visit from someone using the Electoral Commission server - let's hope their in-depth investigation of this sleaze goes a good deal further than looking at what random bloggers are writing. Can I suggest an independent audit of the Labour Party's accounts? Maybe if I'm visited by the Electoral Commission again they'll see this comment and follow it up, or am I being naive and over-optimistic?
Monday, 26 November 2007
"We're Labour - the law is for others"
Yet another case of the Labour Party and its supporters blatantly breaking the law. I heard the good David Abrahams waffling on the radio this morning, later repeated on BBC News 24, that he wanted to keep his identity secret to avoid the press hounding him and he didn't carry a 'rule book' around with him - fair enough, but the law is the law, even for a Labour supporter. It is no defence to claim ignorance of the law. We still don't know whether anyone within the Labour Party, locally or nationally, deliberately encouraged Mr Abrahams to provide his donations in this manner.
Incidentally, how easy would it have been for the two supposed donors (one his secretary and the other a 'friend and colleague' of the secretary) to say no to Mr Abrahams, had they wished to do so, and not suffer repercussions in their employment or work prospects? Sounds like undue influence to me. The reports I saw yesterday indicated that one of the donors, described as a 'jobbing builder', hated the Labour Party, indeed all politicians, and would never give money to it - if true this sounds as if his name has been used without his agreement. How will the Labour Party squirm out of that one?
The Labour Party begins to sound more and more like the late Mrs Leona Helmsley, a property tycoon in New York who thought taxes were for the 'little people'. I thought it was the 'little people' that the Labour Party was set up to support, but like a lot of what socialists believe in, this is just another example of their self-serving habits of deception and misinformation.
Incidentally, how easy would it have been for the two supposed donors (one his secretary and the other a 'friend and colleague' of the secretary) to say no to Mr Abrahams, had they wished to do so, and not suffer repercussions in their employment or work prospects? Sounds like undue influence to me. The reports I saw yesterday indicated that one of the donors, described as a 'jobbing builder', hated the Labour Party, indeed all politicians, and would never give money to it - if true this sounds as if his name has been used without his agreement. How will the Labour Party squirm out of that one?
The Labour Party begins to sound more and more like the late Mrs Leona Helmsley, a property tycoon in New York who thought taxes were for the 'little people'. I thought it was the 'little people' that the Labour Party was set up to support, but like a lot of what socialists believe in, this is just another example of their self-serving habits of deception and misinformation.
Thursday, 19 July 2007
BBC in phone-in competition scandal
It is all very well for the BBC to apologise for having misled the public by doctoring phone-in competition results as a "breach of [our] editorial standards", but what appears to have occurred in the BBC Scotland case used as the 'peg' for this report is much more than that; not only did the BBC conjure up fictitious 'winners', genuine telephone callers' entries were not taken into account. Such telephone calls are generally made to 'premium rate' telephone numbers and the BBC receives a proportion of the revenue received. So it has received a pecuniary advantage without having provided a service, whilst not disclosing this to the callers. It sounds like fraud to me; I hope the police will start to investigate.
It so happens I have never called one of these competitions, but I am a licence fee payer. I have believed for some time that the case for continuation of this compuslory 'viewing tax' (whether one ever watches the BBC or not) is weak; it now seems non-existent. End the licence fee now!
It so happens I have never called one of these competitions, but I am a licence fee payer. I have believed for some time that the case for continuation of this compuslory 'viewing tax' (whether one ever watches the BBC or not) is weak; it now seems non-existent. End the licence fee now!
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