“Fraud and false statements” on The Daily Caller

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge has ordered a nearly four-year prison term for a man who posed as a Hollywood producer and fleeced investors out of $3.4 million for a phony show about the Department of Homeland Security. (more)

MOSCOW (AP) — To Russian prosecutors, imprisoned oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky is guilty of more crimes: They say he stole nearly $30 billion in oil from his own company and laundered the proceeds. To others, he is a dissident who stood up to the powerful Vladimir Putin. (more)

NEW YORK (AP) — He was never charged in the case that sent his father to prison after thousands were swindled of their life savings, but for two years, the eldest son of disgraced financier Bernard Madoff still bore the toxic burden of a name that meant fraud to the world. (more)

NEW YORK (AP) — A vast network of Armenian gangsters and their associates used phantom health care clinics and other means to try to cheat Medicare out of $163 million, the largest fraud by one criminal enterprise in the program’s history, U.S. authorities said Wednesday. (more)

PHOENIX (AP) — The mayor of Nogales was arrested Tuesday by FBI agents on multiple charges including bribery, theft, fraud and money laundering, Arizona’s attorney general said. (more)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The main Afghan election observer group said it had serious concerns about the legitimacy of this weekend’s parliamentary vote because of reported fraud, even as President Hamid Karzai commended the balloting as a solid success. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The state of New Jersey has settled federal civil fraud charges of failing to inform bond investors that it had not met obligations to its largest pension plans, federal regulators said Wednesday. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — They don’t seem that interested in hot pursuit. It took private sleuths hired by Medicare an average of six months last year to refer fraud cases to law enforcement. (more)

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Kelly Ayotte, the tough former prosecutor and wife of an Iraq war vet, seemed to be on a glide path to the Republican nomination in New Hampshire and perhaps the Senate. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Resolving a high-profile government case linked to the mortgage meltdown, Goldman Sachs & Co. has agreed to pay a record $550 million to settle civil fraud charges that it misled buyers of complex investments. (more)

DETROIT (AP) — Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pleaded poverty Tuesday and was granted a lawyer at public expense to defend him against charges that he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars collected for a charity on himself and his family. (more)

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (AP) — A Canadian national who the U.S. government says swindled $70 million from 40,000 investors on six continents carried out the same kind of Ponzi scheme the one-time bank robber mocked on his website, federal investigators allege. (more)

CHICAGO — An investigator says the head of Chicago’s commuter rail service who committed suicide last week by stepping in front of a train had admitted to forging a signature to collect an unauthorized $56,000 bonus. (more)

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The son of a Democratic Tennessee lawmaker was convicted Friday on two charges in the hacking of Sarah Palin’s e-mail account while she campaigned on the Republican presidential ticket in 2008. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defending his company under blistering criticism, the CEO of Goldman Sachs testily told skeptical senators Tuesday that customers who bought securities from the Wall Street giant in the run-up to a national financial crisis came looking for risk “and that’s what they got.” (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government on Friday accused Wall Street’s most powerful firm of fraud, saying Goldman Sachs & Co. sold mortgage investments without telling the buyers that the securities were crafted with input from a client who was betting on them to fail. (more)

MUMBAI, India (AP) — One year after the founder of Satyam Computer Services made an astonishing confession to the largest fraud in Indian corporate history, many say that what really sets R. Ramalinga Raju apart is not his malfeasance, but the fact that he got caught. (more)

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s election commission released a partial vote count Monday showing gruff opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych and glamorous Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on course to compete in next month’s final round of the presidential elections. (more)

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Houston woman who worked for a New Orleans mortgage lender has been sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for stealing more than $1 million from the company. (more)

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s presidential candidates are trading accusations of plans to steal Sunday’s election, with at least one warning of possible street confrontations. (more)