Latest news with #whitecollarcrime
Free Malaysia Today
4 days ago
- Business
- Free Malaysia Today
‘Lenient' Leissner jail term may send wrong message, says Johari
Johari Ghani, chairman of the 1MDB asset recovery task force, said Tim Leissner's sentence is too lenient given the scale and gravity of the crime. PETALING JAYA : The light two-year prison sentence given to former Goldman Sachs banker Tim Leissner for his role in the 1MDB scandal risks sending the wrong message to global financial institutions, says 1MDB asset recovery task force chairman Johari Ghani. He said institutions such as Goldman Sachs are entrusted with safeguarding the interests of sovereign nations. 'Yet, instead of preventing wrongdoing, they enabled the misconduct that left Malaysia to bear both financial and reputational damage,' Johari said. He said Leissner's sentencing 'was an opportunity to send a clear and strong global message that white-collar crime will be met with serious consequences. Unfortunately, that opportunity has been missed'. Leissner, a former Southeast Asia chairman for Goldman Sachs, pleaded guilty in 2018 to a conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of the US, and participating in a money laundering conspiracy, all tied to his role in the 1MDB scandal. During his sentencing on Thursday, he said he sincerely apologised to Malaysians, saying he had lost his freedom, family and financial independence in the wake of the scandal. However, Johari said Leissner's light sentence, despite the offence carrying a potential maximum sentence of 25 years, is too lenient given the scale and gravity of the crime. 'Leissner was one of the masterminds in one of the world's most serious financial scandals, which resulted in the misappropriation of billions of dollars from 1MDB. 'He played a central role in facilitating this fraud, abusing both his position and the reputation of one of the world's most prominent financial institutions to carry out this scheme,' he said. Johari also pointed out that the Malaysian government still has an unresolved dispute with Goldman Sachs over the US$1.4 billion (RM6 billion) asset recovery guarantee arising from the settlement agreement signed in 2020. 'This matter is still under arbitration. (Leissner's light sentence) adds to the public's frustration and reinforces the perception that powerful individuals can escape with minimal consequences,' he said. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim demanded in November last year that Goldman Sachs honour its settlement with Putrajaya. Johari also said previously that a lack of clarity in the settlement agreement during the Muhyiddin Yassin administration had allowed the bank to evade the full extent of its responsibilities to Malaysia. He said the New York-based investment bank had taken advantage of ambiguities in the document to sidestep the asset recovery guarantee given to the government under the agreement.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Chris Christie says Trump is giving free rein to white-collar criminals
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Sunday that President Donald Trump's pardons are "eliminating" the idea that there is such a thing as white-collar crime. "He's saying it doesn't exist, anything goes," Christie said to host George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week." Christie spoke in particular about the recent pardon of Paul Walczak, a former nursing home executive who had been convicted of stealing millions from his employees. "Paul Walczak is an entrepreneur targeted by the Biden administration over his family's conservative politics," White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement to Axios about the pardon. Christie said Sunday that Walczak's mother "was a million-dollar donor/fundraiser for Trump. And this guy stole, George, 10 million dollars in payroll taxes. The money that his employees give to him to pay their payroll taxes, he stole that money." The former New Jersey governor is certainly not a fan of Trump, having run against him in the Republican presidential primaries in 2016 and 2024. But before he was elected governor in 2009, Christie served as a U.S. attorney. Among those he prosecuted during that time was Charles Kushner, father of Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and now Trump's ambassador to France. Many but by no means all of Trump's recent pardons and commutations have been in cases of fraud. Speaking on ABC alongside "The Haves and Have-Yachts" author Evan Osnos, Christie divvied up Trump's pardons into subgroups. "You know, he's got categories of pardons," he said. "You know, you got the pay-to-play pardons. You've got the reality-TV-stars-turned-supporters. And then you've got the folks out there who are just victims of what he calls weaponization of the Justice Department. "But all of them," Christie added "have one thing in common, which is you've got to be whole hog for Donald Trump. Never before we have — have we seen a president who makes it a gate to getting to a pardon to be a political supporter of his, a vocal current political supporter." Trump's other recent pardons and commutations include Todd and Julie Chrisley, whose daughter spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2024; Jason Galanis and Devon Archer, who had testified in House GOP inquiries into the conduct of Hunter Biden; former Virginia sheriff Scott Jenkins; former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland; former Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.); and Larry Hoover, a Chicago drug kingpin who founded the Gangster Disciples.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Yahoo
Stanislaus County woman gets 10-year prison sentence in embezzlement case
A Hughson resident who embezzled money from an Oakdale nonprofit organization will be sentenced to a prison term of 10 years and four months, Stanislaus County District Attorney Jeff Laugero announced Wednesday. Lana Casey, 63, entered an agreement in which she pleaded guilty to 12 felony counts involving grand theft, tax evasion and money laundering, according to a news release. She also admitted to an aggravated white-collar crime enhancement that involved planning and sophistication. The Hughson resident fraudulently obtained $214,456 from nonprofit organizations that worked with Oak Valley District Hospital in Oakdale. The news release says Casey was a signer of the nonprofit organizations' checking accounts. The news release stated that it's alleged that after Casey took the nonprofit organizations' money, she also took money from trusts associated with Carolyn W. Reynolds. Casey will be sentenced June 13 and taken to San Joaquin County to face additional charges related to embezzlement and theft. In September 2024, Casey was indicted by the Stanislaus County Grand Jury on 79 felony counts. A forensic audit done by the California Franchise Tax Board determined that she had $1.45 million in unreported income from 2018 to 2021, with $1.21 million of that being embezzled. This was the largest white-collar indictment pursued by the county DA's Office. The case was investigated by Stanislaus County District Attorney's Bureau of Investigation, California Franchise Tax Board, Oakdale Police Department and San Joaquin County District Attorney's Bureau of Investigation. 'This case is an unfortunate reminder that there are people who obtain a position of trust within an organization for the purpose of stealing the precious donations made by a generous community,' Laugero said in a statement. 'To embezzle these funds for personal gain is the ultimate betrayal of that position of trust, and the severity of the consequences in this case demonstrate the seriousness of this crime.'
WIRED
20-05-2025
- Business
- WIRED
What to Expect When You're Convicted
May 20, 2025 6:00 AM When a formerly incarcerated 'troubleshooter for the mafia' looked for a second career, he chose the thing he knew best. He became a prison consultant for white-collar criminals. PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: JOHANNA GOODMAN; GETTY IMAGES From Sam Bankman-Fried's fraud-ridden crypto empire to Elizabeth Holmes' sham biotech company to deepfakers on the internet bilking grandmas of their retirement savings, white-collar crime seems to touch every last corner of tech. For the business titan who may one day end up in custody and can't count on a presidential pardon, it never hurts to know a guy. WIRED spoke with a self-described former 'troubleshooter for the mafia' who was incarcerated in US penitentiaries for a decade and found a new role for himself on the outside: He became a prison consultant. Now he works with an array of white-collar offenders. He berates and curses the ears off his clients—but it's all part of the no-bullshit approach he says he uses to help them reduce and optimize their time inside. Once when I was in prison and we were walking out of the dining hall, I stopped and I looked out the window. I said, 'Do you see it?' And the other inmates are like, 'What?' I go, 'It's right there.' And they're stopping and gazing into the sky. Then more people come out of the dining hall and start looking too, and before you know it, so do the correctional officers. Finally, I said: 'Gee, see how easy it is to take control of stupid people?' I had a prison psychiatrist say that I treated the prison system like it was my own personal amusement park. I was just having too good of a time in there. I would get on the telephone, calling home or whoever, and I'd go, 'Well, if the staff hates me right now, they're going to despise me by this weekend. I have something special planned. I really can't say. The staff's listening in on the phone calls.' So the weekend rolls around, they put extra staff members on duty, wondering, 'All right, what's the dude going to do?' I'm lying in my fucking bunk reading a book. I ain't going to do shit. But I fucking manipulated these people. I also spent my time helping people. I would help people who were over-sentenced on their charges get into RDAP, the Residential Drug Abuse Program, or an extra halfway house called the Second Chance Act program. I would go through their legal paperwork and say, 'You know what? Let's file in court on this,' and boom, all of a sudden somebody gets resentenced. That made me a folk hero. I thought, 'Well shit, I could turn this into a business.' When I first got out of custody, there was nobody doing this. My primary clients were people that had financial fraud. Some drug clients, but it was people who ripped people off. Your white-collar offenders. It's people who are scared, angry, and confused. If they reach out to me before they've gone in, I can get them prepared. Between people on the outside and people on the inside, I may have like 50 clients, maybe 100, at a time. Sometimes my services are free, sometimes they're $3,500, $5,000, $10,000. I even had one guy pay me $50,000. It just depends on the person, their circumstance, what they can afford. I've got four other people who work with me, two women and two men. When my clients come to me, I tell them: 'OK, so shut the fuck up and listen to what I have to say. You're in deep shit. I'm going to pull your head out of your ass, because your lawyer probably screwed you, made you false fucking promises that they can't keep. First let's take a look at your charges, your federal indictment. What are you charged with? Is it drugs? Is it some type of wire fraud?' And we'll just break your case down. I'm not a lawyer. I can't give you legal advice. But what I can do is explain the law to you, and I can help you determine whether or not you should go to trial or take a plea agreement. I also teach my clients how to lie on the witness stand effectively, how to beat the polygraph machine. So I'm a full-service kind of business. I got hit with narcotics trafficking, securities fraud, racketeering, obstruction of justice, and possession of machine guns. I'm not here to fucking judge anybody. I know within five minutes of seeing the indictment whether this person's going to prison. There's no question about it, unless they're ratting people out. So a dumbass gets sentenced. I have a chemical dependency assessment done on them to determine whether they have a substance abuse issue. If I have a report generated for them and it gets put into their probation report at sentencing and they submit it to the prison, it creates eligibility for them to get into a program to get out up to one year early. I explain to them it's not what they've seen on TV. I hold their hand and their family's hand, because their families are busy watching prison shows and they're all freaked out. I calm them down. Prison is boring. It's Groundhog Day. Every day is the last day, unless people get into a fight or something. I explain to them the different types of prisons. A majority of my clients go to minimum security institutions, known as federal prison camps. Many have no fences, no walls. They often don't lock the doors. I'm teaching my clients the politics of prison life—how to deal with staff, how to deal with other inmates. You don't want to hang out with informants or child molesters. And some of the staff members are fucking cuckoo. They're unprofessional. They're not well trained. They have their own emotional and personal issues. I give people that psychological peace of mind. I have a lot of clients that are family members of people in custody. I'm like a cross between a marriage counselor, a psychologist, a life coach, and a priest. So that calms the people. My wife said that I need to be nicer to the clients. I think maybe I'm desensitized because I've been doing this shit for so long. I get frustrated. I sometimes go off on people. I say, 'I don't know who's dumber, you or a fucking lawyer, listen the fuck up.' I mean, my ex-wife said I didn't have one ounce of human kindness. She knew me the best. —As told to Elana Klein
CNA
15-05-2025
- CNA
A Gambler's Bluff
Xander, a true crime podcast host, is intrigued with the story of Chia Teck Leng - a finance manager at Asia Pacific Breweries who swindled over $100 million from banks to fuel his gambling addiction. With help from his producer Priya, Xander digs into the case by speaking to key people in Chia's life: his conflicted best friend, a casino agent who enabled his addiction, and the determined inspector who arrested him. Chia ultimately received the highest sentence for a white-collar crime in Singapore's history; a 42-year prison sentence. A Gambler's Bluff is a gripping journey into addiction, ambition, and the price of deception. Was Chia playing the game of his life, or did he simply miscalculate the stakes?
