Jeffrey Bruce Atkins Sr., better known by his stage name Ja Rule, is an American rapper, singer, and actor. Born and raised in New York City, Ja Rule became known for blending gangsta rap with pop and R&B sensibilities. He signed with Irv Gotti's Murder Inc Records, an imprint of Def Jam Recordings to release his debut studio album Venni Vetti Vecci (1999), which spawned his first hit single, "Holla Holla". In 2001, he peaked the Billboard Hot 100 on three occasions with his single "Always on Time" and his guest appearances on Jennifer Lopez's songs "I'm Real " and "Ain't It Funny".
Garth Drabinsky is a Canadian film and theatrical producer and entrepreneur. In 2009, he was convicted and sentenced to prison for fraud and forgery. The sentence was reduced from 7 to 5 years in prison, on appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear a subsequent appeal. In April 2023, a judge dismissed Drabinsky’s defamation lawsuit against American Actor’s Equity for placing him on their ‘Do Not Work’ list, and in July 2024 the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed this dismissal, along with his claim that the union's conduct violated antitrust law. Drabinsky has attempted 3 comebacks all resulting in failure and millions of investor dollars being lost.
Norman's Cay is a small Bahamian island in the Exumas, a chain of islands south and east of Nassau, that served as the headquarters for Carlos Lehder's drug smuggling operation from 1978 until around 1982.
Craig Harris Carton is an American radio and television personality. He was the co-host of the Carton and Roberts sports radio program on WFAN in New York City, and is seen nationally on Fox Sports 1 as host of Breakfast Ball weekday mornings. He previously co-hosted Boomer and Carton on WFAN and later CBS Sports Network from 2007 to 2017.
Participants in the Madoff investment scandal included employees of Bernard Madoff's investment firm with specific knowledge of the Ponzi scheme, a three-person accounting firm that assembled his reports, and a network of feeder funds that invested their clients' money with Madoff while collecting significant fees. Madoff avoided most direct financial scrutiny by accepting investments only through these feeder funds, while obtaining false auditing statements for his firm. The liquidation trustee of Madoff's firm has implicated managers of the feeder funds for ignoring signs of Madoff's deception.
Rothenberg Ventures, known briefly as Frontier Technology Venture Capital, was an American venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California, and founded in 2012 by Mike Rothenberg, who was later convicted of fraud and money laundering.
Ozy Media was an American media and entertainment company launched in September 2013 by Carlos Watson and Samir Rao. It was headquartered in Mountain View, California, with an additional office in New York City.
The Mantria Corporation Ponzi scheme has been described as the "biggest green energy scam" in United States history. A Federal judge in the Securities and Exchange Commission's civil case found Mantria had scammed more than $54.5 million “by egregiously, recklessly, knowingly, and shamelessly perpetrating a fraudulent scheme” that used “misrepresentations, omissions, and blatant lies to induce unsuspecting and unwitting victim investors to liquidate the equity in their homes and take out bank loans to invest in Defendants’ scheme, which was nothing more than smoke and mirrors.” On November 16, 2009, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged four people who targeted those nearing retirement age who were seeking real estate and "green" investments. Many of these securities were offered by Mantria Corporation.
Elizabeth Anne Holmes is an American biotechnology entrepreneur who was convicted of fraud in connection with her blood-testing company, Theranos. The company's valuation soared after it claimed to have revolutionized blood testing by developing methods that needed only very small volumes of blood, such as from a fingerprick. In 2015, Forbes had named Holmes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in the United States on the basis of a $9-billion valuation of her company. In the following year, as revelations of fraud about Theranos's claims began to surface, Forbes revised its estimate of Holmes's net worth to zero, and Fortune named her in its feature article on "The World's 19 Most Disappointing Leaders".
Magnises was a card-based membership club co-founded by convicted fraudster Billy McFarland in August 2013. Similar to Fyre Festival, another later scam by McFarland, Ja Rule was the spokesman. The club card was not itself a real credit card; members could use it to make purchases only by first linking it to one of their pre-existing credit card accounts.
Jordan Harbinger is an American podcaster and radio personality.
Fyre Festival was a fraudulent luxury music festival organized by Billy McFarland, an American businessman whose enterprises have been characterized by fraud, and the American rapper Ja Rule. It was originally created to promote the company's Fyre app for booking music talent. The festival was scheduled to take place on April 28–30 and May 5–7, 2017, on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma.
Lawrence Gerard Nassar is an American serial child rapist and former family medicine physician. From 1996 to 2014, he was the team doctor of the United States women's national gymnastics team, where he used his position to exploit and sexually assault hundreds of young athletes as part of the largest sexual abuse scandal in sports history.
Fyre is a 2019 American documentary film directed by Chris Smith. It chronicles the planning, failure, and aftermath of the 2017 Fyre Festival, putting the blame primarily on the event's organizer, businessman Billy McFarland. The film premiered on Netflix on January 18, 2019, and the site later reported that 20 million households streamed Fyre during its first month of release.
Fyre Fraud is a 2019 American documentary film about the fraudulent Fyre Festival, a 2017 music festival in the Bahamas. It was directed by Julia Willoughby Nason and Jenner Furst, and premiered on January 14, 2019, on Hulu.
Aviron Pictures was an American film production and distribution company founded by William Sadleir, founder of Clarius Entertainment and David Dinerstein, a founder of Paramount Classics and formerly of Lakeshore Entertainment and LD Entertainment, in 2017.
United States v. Elizabeth A. Holmes, et al., was a United States federal criminal fraud case against the founder of now-defunct corporation Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, and its former president and COO, Ramesh Balwani. The case alleged that Holmes and Balwani perpetrated multi-million dollar wire-fraud schemes against investors and patients. They had separate jury trials.
In February 2020, the office of the Mississippi State Auditor arrested six people it accused of mishandling federal funds disbursed by the Mississippi Department of Human Services, including the department's former director. In May, the auditor's office released a report identifying $94 million in questionable spending by the department, much of it being funneled through two nonprofits, the Mississippi Community Education Center and Family Resource Center of North Mississippi.
