MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Wisconsin woman is accused of stealing a narcotic from the Twin Cities hospital where she worked as a nurse. Forty-five-year-old Della Rae Thalin of New Richmond, Wis., was charged Monday in federal court. Thalin is charged with one count of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud. Prosecutors allege that between Feb. 25 and March 19 of ...

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Three employees of the Milwaukee County Department of Health Services and two others have been charged with defrauding Wisconsin’s FoodShare program out of more than $350,000. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports the sheriff’s office announced the three are suspected of issuing fraudulent Quest cards, used by program participants to buy food. The charges allege the employees fraudulently ...

By MARCY GORDON AP Business Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal regulators are accusing brokerage firm Stifel Nicolaus & Co. of civil fraud in its sales of risky complex investments to five Wisconsin school districts that lost all of the $200 million they invested. The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the lawsuit Wednesday against St. Louis-based Stifel Nicolaus and former senior ...

The class action on behalf of shareholders of Koss Corp. may proceed, at least in part.

Securities Fraud

By TODD RICHMOND Associated Press MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin could save at least $266 million a year by clamping down on fraud in public assistance programs, tweaking overtime policies and implementing efficiency ideas state agencies have been developing, according to a report the governor’s waste and fraud commission released Tuesday. The panel found a number of problems across state ...

Contracts Fraud; economic losses

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Four people from Minnesota and Wisconsin are charged in what authorities are calling a “sophisticated mortgage fraud scheme” involving fake documents — including phony divorce decrees and the forged signature of a Minnesota judge. The case involves the sales of foreclosed properties in the Twin Cities area and tens of millions of dollars in federally guaranteed mortgage ...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A federal judge has sentenced a Stevens Point man to probation for defrauding a Sony Corp. sales incentive program. According to court documents, 43-year-old Daniel Weiler worked as a manager at Furniture & ApplianceMart. He was fired in June 2007, but he continued to submit fake sales invoices on Sony products to collect reward payments. He ...

Fraud Honest services A conviction for honest services fraud need not be reversed if the verdict can be supported by an alternative legal theory alleged in the indictment. “Contrary to Segal’s assertion that this case was presented as one primarily resting on an honest services violation, the case, and the government’s presentation, were about the money. Even the government noted ...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A former credit union branch manager is accused of falsifying loans to family members for more than $36,000, then using the money herself. Thirty-two-year-old Jacqueline Smith, of Oregon, was charged Tuesday with fraud in Dane County. The Dane County Credit Union reported the alleged thefts to police in April 2010. According to a criminal complaint obtained ...

Tax Income tax; fraud Where the taxpayer is an attorney specializing in business planning and tax matters, the Tax Court reasonably found that he committed fraud by funneling income into entities that lacked any business purpose. “The Coles also concealed assets by funneling income into multiple business entities that lacked any business purpose. The entities served, as found by the ...

Bankruptcy Discharge; fraud A judgment pursuant to a state’s home improvement act can be discharged in bankruptcy. “At bottom, this case involves a miscommunication, not fraud. Reeves and Davis had different understandings of what was included in the contract. The state court found Reeves’s understanding to be the correct one. But only if Davis in fact shared her understanding of ...

Merely transferring funds from non-exempt assets to exempt ones on the eve of bankruptcy as part of “pre-bankruptcy planning” is not proof of fraud.

Bankruptcy Discharge; fraud Summary judgment on a debt’s nondischargeability for fraud is inappropriate where the debtor is a contractor, and there is a factual dispute whether he was negligent or committed an intentional theft. “In essence, there is a dispute as to which of the company’s principals was the ‘intentional’ tortfeasor and which, if either, was the ‘negligent’ one in ...

Bankruptcy Fraud; dismissal Where an adversary complaint seeks to except a debt from discharge because of fraud, but fails to include allegations how the debtor defrauded the creditor, it must be dismissed. “The bankruptcy code only authorizes a discharge for the proverbial ‘honest but unfortunate debtor.’ Grogan v. Garner, 498 U.S. 279, 287, 111 S. Ct. 654, 112 L. Ed. ...

Increasingly, business owners find themselves the victims of employee theft. It is often the employees put in a position of trust to handle the money and the books that are the perpetrators.

Bankruptcy Fraud An attorney could not get an exception to discharge a client’s debt on the basis that he was fraudulently induced to continue representing him. “The plaintiff’s argument is that he ‘trusted’ the debtor, but arguably the creditor in Huang trusted the debtor to honor various prepetition representations about bankruptcy as well. A prepetition waiver of discharge ‘undermines the ...

I would like to think that most companies are committed to doing business honestly. They try to do the right thing, and when a problem is found, they try to correct it quickly.