The financial news that actually matters
Covers financial scams, fraud cases, regulatory enforcement actions, and government crackdowns on illegal financial activity. It educates readers on financial safety and risk prevention.
A 23-year-old courier who traveled across the United States collecting cash and gold from elderly fraud victims has been sentenced to 18 years in federal prison. Atharva Shailesh Sathawane, of India, personally took and laundered $6,615,484.66 from older Americans and attempted an additional $1,363,395.98 in fraud, bringing the total scheme value above $7 million. The…
Federal prosecutors in North Carolina seized more than $61 million in Tether cryptocurrency tied to overseas pig-butchering scam operations, marking one of the largest single crypto seizures connected to investment fraud laundering. The action, announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina in February 2026, targeted digital wallets used to…
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Patrick James, founder and former CEO of auto-parts maker First Brands, and his brother Edward James, a former senior executive, with orchestrating a multibillion-dollar fraud that hid the company’s true debt load from lenders and factoring firms. The indictment, unsealed on January 29, 2026, alleges the pair submitted fake or…
Christopher Alexander Delgado, the president and CEO of Goliath Ventures, pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering after admitting to at least $250 million in investor losses. The scheme ran from at least January 2023 through January 2026, during which Delgado funneled approximately $17 million in…
An Alabama man who lost his entire life savings to a cryptocurrency confidence scheme has recovered $222,000 after federal agents traced and seized the stolen funds. The recovery is part of what the Department of Justice has called its largest-ever forfeiture action targeting crypto-confidence scams, a category that includes so-called pig-butchering schemes designed to build…
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have charged three top executives of Tricolor Auto with conspiracy and fraud, alleging they ran a years-long scheme that inflated the subprime auto lender’s loan portfolio, deceived the companies financing its operations, and contributed to losses exceeding $1 billion. CEO Daniel Chu, CFO David Goodgame, and COO Jerome Kollar each face…
More than 400 Americans, most of them in their eighties, lost a combined $5 million to a phone scam run out of the Dominican Republic. The operation, which federal prosecutors describe as a “grandparent scam,” relied on callers who impersonated relatives in crisis and pressured elderly victims into handing cash to couriers. Sixteen defendants were…
Reinaldo Miralles Gonzalez, a 52-year-old resident of Doral, Florida, will spend 30 months in federal prison after admitting he conspired with others to impersonate FBI agents and extort money from elderly victims. A federal judge also ordered Gonzalez to pay $123,000 in restitution. The case, filed as number 22-20456 in the U.S. District Court for…
The Justice Department is moving to drop all charges against Matthew Goettsche, the man accused of orchestrating the BitClub Network, a cryptocurrency fraud scheme that took in at least $722 million from investors. Goettsche was arrested alongside two other men in what federal prosecutors once called a “modern, high-tech Ponzi scheme.” The proposed dismissal arrives…
Block Inc., the parent company of Cash App, will pay $45 million to settle a multistate investigation into practices that left fraud victims stranded without working customer support or meaningful identity verification. Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said the company “made it nearly impossible for victims to recover what they lost.” The settlement, joined by…