The financial news that actually matters
Adrian Lawrence, a Jamaican national who went by the alias “Mastermind,” was sentenced to 66 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $5.4 million in restitution for running a sweepstakes fraud scheme that drained older Americans of their savings. Lawrence impersonated Publishers Clearing House representatives, told victims they had won large cash prizes, and…
Vehicle owners across the United States who paid out of pocket to fix a defect later covered by a safety recall have a legal right to get that money back. Federal law, specifically 49 U.S.C. Section 30120, requires manufacturers to provide recall remedies at no charge and to reimburse owners who already covered the cost…
A courier working a nationwide gold-bar fraud scheme was arrested in Michigan after an elderly widow handed him a package of chocolate coins instead of the $700,000 in gold bars she had been pressured to surrender. The swap, which led directly to the courier’s detention at the Kent County Correctional Facility on false-pretenses charges under…
Devin Ward Elder, a San Antonio CEO, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud tied to a scheme that raised $69.5 million from roughly 345 investors between January 2023 and March 2025. Elder promoted 17 real-estate investment offerings and funneled approximately $8.8 million in new investor money to pay earlier participants, creating the appearance…
Taxpayers earning well above the Roth IRA contribution threshold can still move money into a Roth account, and the federal tax code explicitly allows it. The Internal Revenue Service confirms that conversions from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA carry no adjusted gross income restriction, a rule that has been in place since 2010…
Workers who set aside pretax dollars in a health flexible spending account face a hard deadline: spend the money on eligible expenses before the plan year closes or lose it. For plan years beginning in 2026, the IRS has capped salary-reduction contributions at $3,400, raising the ceiling and, with it, the amount that could vanish…
Roughly 70 million Americans who rely on Social Security retirement checks face a sharper deadline than previously forecast. The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, the program’s main source of benefit payments, is now projected to run dry in the fourth quarter of 2032, one year earlier than last year’s estimate. Once reserves hit zero,…
The cost of borrowing to buy a home has barely moved in months, and a widely publicized new housing law is unlikely to change that anytime soon. The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage sat at 6.49% as of July 9, 2026, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey — a hair above…
A curious gap has opened between how the stock market is behaving and how investors say they feel about it. Through much of June and into July 2026, a widely watched measure of Wall Street sentiment lingered in territory labeled “fear,” even as major indexes pushed to fresh record highs. That divergence is unusual. Record…
A new federal student-loan repayment plan opened for enrollment this month, and its headline feature is not the size of the monthly payment but the length of the road to forgiveness. Under the Repayment Assistance Plan, a remaining balance is not wiped out until a borrower has made payments for a full 30 years. That…