Hedge fund manager arrested after confession: my fund just a “giant ponzi scheme”

Renowned trader and former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market Bernard Madoff has been arrested and will apparently plead guilty to fraud. (This is the Wall Street everyone has been talking about lately, up close and personal.)
Madoff Confessed $50 Billion Fraud Before FBI Arrest
Dec. 12 — Bernard Madoff confessed to employees this week that [...]

Wild wild Wall Street

These statistics would certainly be receiving more press had they not been presented in the midst of the global credit crisis.
SEC enforcement actions near record
The Securities and Exchange Commission brought its second-highest number of enforcement actions in its history in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the agency said today.
The SEC brought 671 [...]

Mutual fund manager fugitive: Accused of stealing and bribery, spews megalomaniacal tripe

Pirate of Prague Invokes Napoleon, Mandela as He Denies Fraud
Prosecutors would like to thwart Kozeny’s political ambitions and send him to jail. New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau says Kozeny stole $182 million from Americans who invested in his 1998 bid to win control of an oil company in the former Soviet republic of [...]

You know it’s going to be a bad day when you wake up to find your assets frozen by the SEC

Hedge fund manager convicted of fraud
Michael Lauer, the head of Lancer Management Group LLC and Lancer Management Group II LLC of Greenwich, Conn., has been found guilty of overstating the hedge funds’ valuations, manipulating the prices of seven securities and falsely representing the funds’ holdings in newsletters.
On the heels of a decision yesterday by the [...]

Vanguard boss & money managers accused of racketeering, fiduciary breaches

Where are you now John Bogle?
This news reaches us as we commemorate the 5-year anniversary, (almost to the day), of the mutual fund market timing scandals.
The Vanguard Group has enjoyed an excellent reputation for providing an even playing field for investors through low fees, passive investment styles and attention to conflicts of interest. Now [...]

Reflections on the 5-year anniversary of the mutual fund scandals

Nailing the mutual fund industry for market-timing in 2003 was a little like nabbing Dillinger for tax evasion. It was a minor crime, especially in comparison to the ongoing trickery and conflicts. Nevertheless, the legal effort had a positive broad cultural impact.
Chuck Jaffe looks back in an informative article.
Schooled by Scandal
Five years ago next week, [...]

Fund Fad leads to fraud

SEC Charges Mutual Fund Money Manager for Violating Restrictions
Pax World agreed to settle the SEC’s charges and was ordered to pay a penalty of $500,000.
Does globalization render so-called “socially responsible” funds absurd impossibilities?
We should ask the money manager at Pax World Management Corp. The question is whether he was pulling a fast one to gather [...]

Another multi-million dollar lawsuit against America’s top mutual fund companies

The conflicts of interest at work in this case are legion. If the charges stick, they could well become an apt metaphor for the ills of the mainstream mutual fund industry.
In spite of all the reform efforts that began in 2002, many mutual funds continue to dance on the razor’s edge of fraud and [...]

Mutual fund frauds forced to start paying up

Here is another mutual fund company guilty as charged in the scandals of 2003. The SEC has forced them to pay back some of the money they stole from their shareholders.
Fair Fund to distribute $73 million
June 13, 2007 — Investors harmed by fraudulent market timing in the PBHG Funds will receive $73 million under a [...]

Justice: Advisers tell Putnam to buzz off

May 21, 2007 SAN FRANCISCO — In recent months, Putnam chief executive Charles “Ed” Haldeman Jr. has been crisscrossing the country in an effort to try to bring advisers back into Putnam’s fold.
Compared with institutional investors and product distributors, “advisers are the toughest” to win back, Mr. Haldeman said at a recent gathering of industry [...]