U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

SEC Wins Injunction Against Orange County Businessmen For 60% Investment Return Claim

A federal judge has issued a permanent injunction banning three Southern California businessmen from operating future scams to dupe investors with false claims of extraordinary returns as high as "60 percent or better."Officials at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claim Michael ... More >>

William Ruehle, Ex-Broadcom CFO, Shares His Amazing Government Persecution Story at UCI

"Something happened," William J. Ruehle matter-of-factly tells UC Irvine law students, who spent Wednesday's lunch hour being mesmerized by the former Broadcom chief financial officer's dissection of his virtual lynching by overzealous federal prosecutors. That something was a 2006 report by a Unive ... More >>

Assemblywoman Diane Harkey's Husband Dan Harkey Due in Court as Fraud Lawsuit Begins

Lawyers for disgruntled investors in Point Center Financial, the Aliso Viejo company owned by Dan Harkey, husband of Assemblywoman Diane Harkey (R-Dana Point), have told their clients the trial is a go this morning.The investors essentially allege that Dan Harkey lied to them when he sold them on fu ... More >>

Doug DeCinces, Former Angel Who Paid $2.5 Million to Settle Insider Trading Suit, Now Faces Possible Prison Time After Indictment

Los Angeles Dodger and Baltimore Oriole Hall of Fame first baseman Eddie Murray agreed in August to pay $358,151 to settle a federal lawsuit tied to an insider-trading tip he received from his buddy and former teammate Doug DeCinces.On Wednesday, the former Oriole and California Angel third baseman, ... More >>

Diane Harkey, State Assemblywoman, Sees Return of Point Center Financial Scandal

When Diane Harkey ran for state Senate (unsuccessfully) and Assembly (successfully), she claimed she financed her campaigns with her own money, earned during her "six-figure" banking career.But later came disclosures that some of the Dana Point Republican's campaign funds--$16,000 worth--came from t ... More >>

Eddie Murray Pays $350k SEC Fine Tied to Tip from Ex-Orioles Teammate Doug DeCinces

Securities and Exchange Commission heat came to the Baltimore Orioles' second-hottest hot corner (sorry, runner-ups to Boog Powell and Brooks Robinson), and now Hall of Fame first baseman Eddie Murray is paying $358,151 to extricate himself from a federal action that resulted from a tip he got from ... More >>

Chad Peter Smanjak Cops to Scam with Sports Drink Named After Notre Dame's Famous Rudy

A former Long Beach resident who fled to South Africa as a fugitive pleaded guilty to orchestrating a scam involving a sports drink named after Notre Dame's most famous football benchwarmer.Chad Peter Smanjak, 38, copped in U.S. District Court to one count of conspiring to commit securities fraud ... More >>

Irvine Investment Operator Penalized For Scam Claiming 1,000 Percent Returns

Omar Ali Rizvi graduated from law school in San Francisco and earned a Masters of Laws degree in securities and financial regulations at Georgetown University Law School in the nation's capital, but its obvious that the Irvine man never learned to obey the law.In the last decade, Rizvi has been conv ... More >>

Jeanne Rowzee is This Blog's Second Federal Prison-Bound Irvine Swindler of the Day

One good federal prosecution of an Irvine swindler . . .Richard H. Nickles Gets 12 Years in Federal Pokey for Brazen Ponzi Scam That Took Seniors. . . deserves another: United States District Judge Andrew J. Guilford in Santa Ana has sentenced Jeanne Rowzee, 53, of Irvine, to 87 months in federal p ... More >>

Orange County Register's Freedom Overlords Sell 8 TV Stations to Conservative Concern

Freedom Communications, the Irvine-based media company whose flagship newspaper is the Orange County Register of Santa Ana, has completed the sale of its eight television stations to the company that famously ordered its ABC affiliates not to show an April 30, 2004, Nightline tribute to American sol ... More >>

Broadcom Says SEC Probing Its Accounting

​Irvine chip maker Broadcom, which has been no stranger to courtrooms thanks to shareholder lawsuits, complaints that caused one co-founder to step away as owner of his NHL team and a scandalous divorce involving the other co-founder and his love dungeon, may be back in legal hot water.The company ... More >>

Farzin Bazshushtari, Data Storage Maker's Sale Director, Accused of Insider Trading

​A 50-year-old Mission Viejo man charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with insider trading has agreed to pay more than $150,000 in penalties and surrendered profits to resolve the matter, the SEC announced.According to the complaint filed Friday in federal court, the SEC alleges sales ... More >>

Dana Rohrabacher Endorsement Dooms Mitt Romney's Future

Rohrabacher: Channeling Miss Cleo again​You know a presidential campaign is desperate when it hails the endorsement of a loony, laughable and little known congressman from Orange County.On Monday, Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) officially endorsed Mitt Romney and instead of prudent ... More >>

No Felony Charges In 2009 Orange County Ponzi Scheme That Bilked $800 Million From Investors

​It's been more than two years since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Medical Capital Holdings (MCH), the Tustin lender that was embroiled in a bizarre hospital-related Ponzi scheme that was extensively probed by the Weekly in 2009. MCH was created to purchase unpaid medical ... More >>

Bill Gross Reportedly Buys Jennifer Aniston's House for $37 Mil; Chris Cox Settles Down in Laguna Niguel

​Bill Gross, the Newport Beach financial manager who co-founded Pacific Investment Management Co. (PIMCO) and is worth a billion and change, has reportedly bought a Beverly Hills estate Jennifer Aniston bought in 2006 for $13.5 million, gutted and rebuilt to the fawns of Architectural Digest and p ... More >>

All Dean Goetz Wants for Christmas is His Two Blocks of Shares Daughter Unwittingly Tipped Him About

Goetz​Let this be a lesson to all you law firm associates working on big corporate mergers: DO NOT leave your documents about the pending deal lying around the family home during the holidays--lest your personal injury attorney father scan them and wind up facing accusations of insider trading.Tha ... More >>

SEC Posts Complaint Against mUrgent Corp., Accused of Running Boiler Room and $10 Million Scam

​The Securities and Exchange Commission has posted online the complaint filed in Santa Ana federal court against mUrgent Corp., a Santa Ana Internet marketing firm for the restaurant and hospitality industry that is accused of using high-pressure sales tactics to defraud investors "in a $10 milli ... More >>

Feds Allege "Pump and Dump" Fraud Involving Panamanian Banks, Long Beach Fugitive and Sports Drink Named After Notre Dame's Rudy

Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger​A Long Beach man who is believed to have fled to his native South Africa has been charged with running a $5.2-million "pump and dump" investment fraud that involved a sports drink named after Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger of Notre Dame football and Rudy movie fame, money launde ... More >>

Thank Register Investor for Killing $184 Million Brightwater Bolsa Chica Bailout?

​If the death of a $184 million bailout ultimately kills the developer of homes above the ecologically sensitive Bolsa Chica wetlands, preservationists may have karma, an ancient Indian curse or an Orange County Register investor to thank.Or all three.

Larry R. Crowder, Joseph R. Porche Busted by SEC for Alleged Green-Energy Investment Scam

​A Securities and Exchange Commission complaint filed Wednesday alleges two Orange County men operated a boiler room that used millions raised for green-energy investments to fuel their lavish lifestyles.Larry R. Crowder, 53, of Newport Coast, and Joseph R. Porche, 51, of Aliso Viejo, ran the sc ... More >>

Thanh Viet Jeremy Cao Indicted for Allegedly Filing Tax Liens Against Fed Officials, Tax Returns With $20 Billion in Refunds for Himself

​A Rancho Santa Margarita man has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Las Vegas, where he also lives, for allegedly filing 22 false liens ranging from $25 million to $300 million against four federal judges and employees of the IRS, Secret Service, Securities and Exchange Commission and the ... More >>

OC Real Estate Developer Trick to Gouge Taxpayers Fails

Irvine Co. perfected tactic fails this time​After a state regulatory agency ordered an Orange County real estate developer to pay for the toxic contamination cleanup costs in December 2005 on its property in Huntington Beach, the developer sold the property to another state agency and then attempt ... More >>

Weekly Story Cited in Major Bank Lawsuit!

​Remember that ongoing controversy over Medical Capital Holdings, Inc, (MCH) the Orange County-based medical lender who the SEC claims bilked investor funds to dole out cash to its own executives while also allegedly investing in a yacht and a shady internet porn spamming operation, among other de ... More >>

SEC Investigation of Medical Lender Sets Sail for a Party Yacht

New Complications In the IHHI Saga

Shamed ex-SEC Chairman Chris Cox to Float Not on Ice Floe But Orange County Republican Party Boat

John McCain wanted Christopher Cox fired as the George W. Bush-appointed chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Los Angeles Times opined that Cox's chairmanship will be characterized by missing the signs that Wall Street was poised for a meltdown, noting the critics who said Cox's l ... More >>

Alleged Fraud Within Irvine City Limits Keeps SEC, Whistleblower Busy

Two corporations doing business in Irvine that are the subjects of a noteworthy/notorious whistleblower's fraud investigations have now apparently drawn the attention of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.The SEC is reviewing whether James Peterson, CEO of Irvine-based defense industry comp ... More >>

Our Ex-Rep.-Turned-SEC Chief Chris Cox Comes Out Swinging

The Washington Post reports today that embattled Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox is defending his restrained response to the country's financial crisis, arguing he has guided his agency with a steady hand while other federal regulators have not.Our former Republican congr ... More >>

As Cox Takes More Heat, a Bizarro World Blast From the Past

The hits keep coming for embattled Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, the former local congressman (R-Newport Beach). Amid the Bernard L. Madoff scandal, Cox last week publicly blamed his staff for not vigorously investigating complaints against the fraudster. Today, we hea ... More >>

Well That's the Cox Calling the Kettle Black

While former longtime Newport Beach Republican congressman-turned-Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox lashes out at his own staff for ignoring complaints that could have exposed Bernard Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme many years earlier, others wonder if Cox is not simply dive ... More >>

[Scariest People 2008] Count Coxula

[Moxley Confidential] Chris Cox Says He's a Tough Wall Street Regulator, SEC Record Proves Otherwise

Chris Cox Finally Speaks The Truth!

For more than a decade, I've slammed Christopher Cox, the current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), for a long list of political misdemeanors. Cox has a shameful record of representing the financial interests of the elites, but if Jeremy Grant with FT.com is right, the ex-N ... More >>

Behind every great man...

For some reason, I had forgotten that former OC congressman and current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission Christopher Cox is married, but married he is, and to a very industrious woman. Like many who belong to the bedrock traditional values strata of the Republican Party, which loud ... More >>

The Regulatory Disaster That Isnt

Cox and the media spin a tale of government red tape that should be killing American companiesbut isnt

Same Cox, New Box!

Once savagely anti-investor, the new-and-improved OC Republican says he's ready to run the SEC for the people

'Not to Seem Too Critical or Unsympathetic . . .'

The Smart Guy

Chris Cox in charge of Wall Street? Dumb

Diary of a Mad County

The Smart Guy

Chris Cox in charge of Wall Street? Dumb

Diary Of A Mad County

Bitch, Bitch, Bitch: Episode 1

The Martian Plan

George Bush, Failed Corporate Crook

Diary of a Mad County

Made in Newport Beach

How Chris Cox helped produce the Enron scandal

Oh, Death!

The year that sucked

Poor Edison

Now broke, the power company uses taxpayer cash to fund a global business empire

The Stock Detective

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of online stock tipsters?

The Year in Cyberspace