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Transit worker stole $375,000
CALGARY - A former
Calgary Transit worker has admitted stealing more than $375,000 from the
city over seven years by palming coins off a conveyor belt, stashing the
money in his locker and packing it into a knapsack before he left work
each day. David John Hamilton, 56, pleaded guilty Thursday in
provincial court to theft over $5,000. (Calgary Herald)
Officials admit taxi gifts
TOKYO - Almost 450
government bureaucrats in Japan have admitted receiving cash or other
gifts and favours from taxi drivers used for official journeys. It
has been dubbed the "pub taxi scandal" because often cooler boxes with
cold beers were provided in the back of cabs for the bureaucrats.
(BBC) PREVIOUS:
Life in the
limo lane for Ottawa's driven
Cash stuffed envelopes
JERUSALEM - An
American businessman told prosecutors Tuesday that he handed
cash-stuffed envelopes to Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert
and suspected that some of the money went to funding Olmert's fondness
for fine hotels and first-class flights. (AP)
25
Years
ORLANDO - A federal
judge sent
Lou Pearlman
off to prison for 25 years Wednesday, then offered him what he called
the "keys'' to his jail cell. For every $1-million Pearlman recovers
for the investors he scammed, he'll get a month trimmed off his
sentence. (Tampa Bay Times) MORE:
Pearlman
sentenced to 25 years
Guilty of 46 fraud counts
MONTREAL - The judge
didn't buy Josie Cioffi's story that she was under her co-accused's
spell when she defrauded her employer of $4.3 million. (Montreal
Gazette)
Road to ruin
It
was supposed to be a stress-free investment for Florence and Jim
Langford. After all, the retired Saskatchewan couple was only looking
for a little extra income to supplement their retirement savings. It
all started when Florence decided to take an investment course with a
company called Whitney Canada. (W-Five)
US
Army suspends contract
MIAMI - AEY, Inc., the weapons company headed by
22-year-old
Efraim E. Diveroli,
had their $300 million weapons contract suspended by the federal
government on Friday. (Trans World News) PREVIOUS:
Supplier under scrutiny
Afghans sent obsolete
ammunition
Law firm worker guilty
CALGARY - Penny Marcy
Myslichuk, who handled accounts for wills and estates, dependent adults,
family trusts and a large mixed account for Bennett Jones, pleaded
guilty to seven counts of fraud over $5,000 and one count of forgery.
(Calgary Herald)
$300M Ponzi scheme
TAMPA -
Lou Pearlman,
the gregarious mastermind behind boy bands such as 'N Sync and the
Backstreet Boys, is now admitting his role in a different kind of
choreography: a
Ponzi scheme.
(AP)
Doctor on trial
SAN LUIS OBISPO - A transplant surgeon
could face up to eight years in jail after being charged with trying to
hasten the death of a patient. (Telegraph UK)
Ex-minister sent to prison
MOSCOW - Former
Russian minister
Yevgeny Adamov
has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison for abusing his
office and embezzling more than $30m. (BBC)
MORE:
Adamov
sentenced
BC
government buys 5 hotels
VANCOUVER - Five of
six downtown Vancouver hotels bought by the BC government for low-rental
housing were bought from one man, developer Robert Wilson, who made a
profit of $10 million on the sales in less than two years. (Vancouver
Province) RELATED:
Rat hotel faces hefty fines
Highway safety threatened
EDMONTON - Lax
security at Alberta's privatized registries has produced an embarrassing
export trade in fraudulent drivers' licences that is threatening highway
safety across the country. (Edmonton Journal)
’I
am just a doctor’
KATHMANDU -
"I am just a doctor, not a
kidney dealer," Amit Kumar told reporters as he was brought to Kathmandu
after being arrested Thursday in the southern Nepalese town of Chitwan.
(CBC) MORE:
Kumar denies role in harvesting ring
'Dr. Horror' nabbed
Sentence suspended
TORONTO - A man who
posed as a high-flying financial adviser and befriended small investors,
bilking some out of their life savings, has pleaded guilty to defrauding
six people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Toronto Star)
Nigeria graft boss strikes again
ABUJA -
Nigerian
anti-corruption agents have issued an arrest warrant for an eighth
former governor. Lucky Igbinedion of Edo State is accused of stealing
more than $24M through three front companies. (BBC)
PREVIOUS:
Nigeria corruption tsar sidelined
Nuhu Ribadu
Forces find illegal driftnet fishing
COMOX - A
multinational operation on the high seas involving a Canadian Forces
Aircraft from CFB Comox has turned up photographic evidence of 10
vessels involved in
driftnet fishing,
a practice banned by the United Nations. (Victoria Times Colonist)
MORE:
High seas stake-out
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Builder off the hook
CALGARY - The builder
of a northwest condo complex whose "systematic failure" in construction
led to a $10-million repair bill likely won't face any lawsuits related
to the building. (Calgary Herald)
'Rags to riches'
MIAMI - All it took to
bilk the federal government out of $105 million was a laptop computer.
From her Mediterranean-style townhouse, a high school dropout named Rita
Campos Ramirez orchestrated what prosecutors call the largest
health-care fraud by one person. (Washington Post)
Doctors arrested
ROME - Police have
arrested 13 doctors from a clinic in Milan who investigators suspect
performed needless and sometimes fatal operations to make more money.
(AP)
Charged with defrauding ICBC
VANCOUVER - A
Vancouver physiotherapist is facing a charge of defrauding ICBC of
thousands of dollars after an investigation alleged she was billing the
insurance company, as well as WorkSafe BC, for patient treatments she
never performed. (Vancouver Sun)
Ethiopian court sentences Mengistu
ADDIS ABABA -
Ethiopia’s
Supreme Court sentenced former dictator
Mengistu Haile Mariam
to death, along with 17 senior officials of his regime. The sentence was
handed down in his absence because he is living in Zimbabwe. (AFP)
MORE:
Court sentences Mengistu to death
'Red Emperor' sentenced
to death
Gambler admits to fraud
CALGARY - Lindsey
Elizabeth Alexander, 54, wrote 107 cheques to either herself or
MasterCard during the first half of 2004, defrauding Centaur Import
Motors of $512,200, including penalties and interest paid by the owners
to the Canada Revenue Agency. (Calgary Herald)
Inefficient tax system
OTTAWA - Canada is
laden so thick with business taxes it requires the average major company
11 employees working full-time, year-round simply to comply with them,
says a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. (CanWest) REPORT:
Total tax contribution survey
Fake hockey school
MISSISSAUGA - A
41-year-old man has been arrested in connection with an Internet fraud
involving a phoney hockey school and league, scamming as much as
$100,000 from international junior hockey players, Peel regional police
say. (CanWest) MORE:
Ex-owner of Junior A team arrested
Former Derbys owner out
on bail
Vintage-car fraud
CALGARY - A Vernon man
and woman have been charged with bilking 11 vintage car fans in the US
and Sweden out of $400,000 in an international Internet scam, police
say. "They used Internet auction sites like EBay, Craigslist and an
auction site called Hemmings Auto News," said Calgary police Const. Dean
Nichol. (Vancouver Province) MORE:
Vintage car scam
Ticket scandal
TORONTO - A senior
executive at Maple Leafs' parent company
Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment
has resigned and five other employees have been fired after the company
learned of ticket irregularities. (Toronto Star)
Don't mess with the taxman
NEWMARKET - In his
financial heyday, strip club owner Riccardo DiGiuseppe drove a Ferrari
and captained a 60-foot luxury yacht called My Way. Yesterday,
DiGiuseppe, 61, heard himself sentenced in Newmarket court to a six-year
term in prison and ordered to pay a $2 million fine, at the conclusion
of one of the Greater Toronto Area's longest and most complicated tax
evasion prosecutions. (Toronto Star)
Developer leaves buyers in limbo
KELOWNA -
The Willows condominium
development in the Okanagan town of Lake Country is in receivership,
leaving about 78 purchasers in limbo. The condos were being built by
Divergent Environments,
a Victoria-based company. (CBC)
ICBC win
VANCOUVER - A group of
former high school buddies has been ordered to pay $510,000 to the
Insurance Corporation of BC for staging a series of crashes as part of
an insurance fraud scheme. (Vancouver Sun)
Magic cheese con
PARIS - Gilbertte Van
Erpe, 67, was arrested last week in Nice after nearly two years on the
run. Police allege she made between C$21.7M and C$25.66M by persuading
5,000 Chileans and 25,000 Peruvians to invest savings into what they
believed was miraculous "cheese paste." (Star News)
Cost of doing business
TORONTO - A few years
ago Lushan Lu subdivided his large Scarborough home into an illegal
rooming house, creating 18 bedrooms and eight bathrooms. Now he's
returning it to its original form. That comes after he pleaded guilty
in court this summer to city zoning bylaw infractions. He and co-owner
Zhuan "May" Wang were each fined $5,000. If Lu and Wang had just one
person per room in their house they would collect more than $7,000 each
month. (Toronto Star)
$400K fraud targets Argos
TORONTO - Walter
Garrick, 37, is facing 16 charges of theft and fraud after he was
arrested on Thursday by Toronto police fraud investigators. (Toronto
Star)
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