The financial news that actually matters
Seven in ten U.S. homeowners report that their home insurance costs have climbed in recent years, and nearly half of that group says the increase has been steep. The figures, released by Pew Research Center on May 6, 2026, land alongside a federal review confirming that premiums in disaster-prone areas have outpaced national inflation. Together,…
Seven people who reported securities fraud to the SEC collectively received more than $28 million in awards, drawn entirely from penalties paid by the companies and individuals they helped expose. The payouts fall within a fixed statutory band of 10% to 30% of monetary sanctions collected, a range written into federal law since the Dodd-Frank…
Federal prosecutors charged 324 defendants across 50 federal districts in what the Department of Justice called the largest coordinated health care fraud takedown in its history. The schemes involved more than $14.6 billion in alleged false claims, and investigators seized over $245 million in cash, luxury vehicles, cryptocurrency, and other assets. The operation, which drew…
Homebuyers who spent the past several years losing out in frenzied bidding wars are finding something they have not seen in a long time: choice. Newly built homes are sitting on the market longer, and the supply of unsold inventory has climbed to levels not recorded since before the pandemic. The shift is giving buyers…
Ramil Ventura Palafox, the CEO of Praetorian Group International, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison after admitting he ran a $201 million Bitcoin Ponzi scheme that defrauded more than 90,000 investors. He used their money to buy four homes in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Then, weeks before he was supposed to report…
The Internal Revenue Service stopped $7 billion in fraudulent tax refunds over the past two years, according to IRS fiscal year 2025 data. That figure represents a sharp escalation in the agency’s filtering systems designed to catch identity-theft schemes before payments leave the Treasury. But the same filters that block criminals also flag legitimate returns,…
Michael Burry’s Scion Asset Management filed its latest quarterly holdings report with the SEC on November 3, 2025, revealing put options on Nvidia as of September 30. The disclosure places the fund manager who famously bet against the housing market before the 2008 financial crisis on the opposite side of the trade from investors piling…
Costco Wholesale kept ringing up sales gains through the quarter ended May 10, 2026, even as broader U.S. retail spending showed signs of cooling. The company’s latest quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission details continued growth in merchandise revenue and membership-fee income during a stretch when government data pointed to softer results across…
Scharmaine Lawson Baker, a Louisiana nurse practitioner, will spend more than seven years in federal prison after a jury found she submitted over $12.1 million in false Medicare claims tied to medically unnecessary cancer genetic tests and kickback payments. The 87-month sentence, paired with $1,508,868.25 in restitution and three years of supervised release, closes one…
Low-income American households face a gasoline burden roughly four times larger than their wealthiest counterparts when measured as a share of after-tax income. Goldman Sachs flagged this gap in a client note drawing on federal Consumer Expenditure Survey data, and the disparity has persisted across multiple survey years. With crude-oil prices again volatile in 2026,…