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.
The Securities and Exchange Commission ordered $17.9 billion in monetary relief across 456 enforcement actions during fiscal year 2025, more than doubling the prior year’s total even as the agency filed far fewer cases. That surge, driven in large part by a single legacy fraud case worth billions, raises a pointed question: does the headline…
Americans lost $3.5 billion to imposter scams in 2025, and the Federal Trade Commission received more than one million reports about the category, making it the single most-reported type of fraud for the third consecutive year. The sheer volume of complaints dwarfs every other fraud type the agency tracks, and the dollar figure keeps climbing…
Edwin Brant Frost IV, the president of First Liberty Building & Loan in Georgia, faces federal wire‑fraud charges and SEC civil allegations for running a $140 million Ponzi scheme that pulled in roughly 300 investors over more than a decade. Frost marketed the investments as bridge loans, used new investor money to pay earlier participants…
Investors who lost money to securities fraud received $262 million back from the Securities and Exchange Commission during fiscal year 2025, while 48 people who reported wrongdoing collected $60 million in whistleblower awards. Those figures, released by the SEC, represent one of the clearest measures of whether enforcement activity translates into real money for real…
Federal authorities have accused 21 people of participating in an insider-trading operation that stretched across years and drew on stolen merger details from some of the world’s top corporate law firms. At the center of the alleged scheme is Nicolo Nourafchan, a Los Angeles-based mergers-and-acquisitions attorney who, according to the SEC, orchestrated the ring and…
A federal grand jury in the Western District of Tennessee has indicted Misam M. Abidi, a 47-year-old resident of Nolensville, on 11 counts tied to an alleged crypto Ponzi scheme that operated through Star Credit Holdings from 2020 to 2024. The charges include three counts of wire fraud and two counts of unlicensed money transmitting,…
Federal prosecutors unsealed criminal charges against 30 people accused of stealing confidential merger details from major law firms and trading on that information across nearly 30 deals, generating what authorities describe as tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed parallel civil charges against 21 of the same individuals,…
Americans lost $3.5 billion to imposter scams in 2025, and a growing share of those cons started with a simple text message claiming an unpaid road toll. Reports of government imposter scams rose 40 percent last year, driven in large part by fake toll-collection texts that trick recipients into handing over bank and credit card…
Investors who lost money in a scheme tied to Greg Martel now stand to recover a fraction of their losses through the forced sale of a Las Vegas mansion listed at $5.1 million. The property liquidation is part of a broader asset-recovery effort designed to return funds to victims of an alleged Ponzi operation. Court-ordered…
The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged two Georgia-based firms, Reign Financial International and Berone Capital, with orchestrating an alleged $26 million fraud through three purported high-yield investment programs that pulled in at least 31 investors. The enforcement action, documented in Litigation Release No. 26552, names both firms and their principals, accusing them of misusing…