Mark Edward Whitacre is an American business executive who came to public attention in 1995 when, as president of the Decatur, Illinois-based BioProducts Division at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), he became the highest-level corporate executive in U.S. history to become a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) whistleblower. For three years (1992–95), Whitacre acted as a cooperating witness for the FBI, which was investigating ADM for price fixing. In the late 1990s Whitacre was sentenced to 9 years in federal prison for embezzling $9.5 million from ADM at the same time he was assisting the federal price-fixing investigation.
Crestwood is a village about 24 miles southwest of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. Per the 2020 census, the population was 10,826. Crestwood is known as the home of the Windy City ThunderBolts.
Scott Frederick Turow is an American author and lawyer. Turow has written 11 fiction and three nonfiction books, which have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 30 million copies. Films have been based on several of his books.
AXS TV is an American cable television channel. Majority-owned by Anthem Sports & Entertainment, it is devoted primarily to music-related programming and combat sports–including boxing, mixed martial arts and professional wrestling.
Richard F. "Dickie" Scruggs is an American former naval aviator and disbarred trial lawyer. He is the brother-in-law of former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. Scruggs first came to the public eye after successfully suing the asbestos industry on behalf of ill shipyard workers. He later represented the state of Mississippi in the tobacco litigation of the 1990s. He also represented hundreds of homeowners in lawsuits against insurance companies following Hurricane Katrina, and a national class action of patients against HMOs in the early 2000s.
Brian Zachary France is an American businessman and the former CEO and chairman of NASCAR. He served in the post from 2003 to 2018, following his grandfather Bill France Sr. and father Bill Jr., in the executive position. In 2019, France founded Silver Falcon Capital, Inc. and became CEO of the private investing firm.
Lloyd A. Karmeier is a former American judge who served as a justice of the Illinois Supreme Court from the 5th district. He served as chief justice of that court from 2016 to 2019. Karmeier retired at the conclusion of his second term in December 2020.
Kerri Rigsby and Cori Rigsby (Moran) are the American sisters who worked for eight years at E.A. Renfroe Company and were managers overseeing catastrophe claims adjusters. Kerri and Cori Rigsby are also the whistleblowers who proved to a Mississippi jury that State Farm committed fraud against the U.S. government. The sisters claim State Farm ignored or minimized wind damage to avoid payments relating to Hurricane Katrina and instead attributed damage to flooding so that the National Flood Insurance Program would cover the claims. The jury verdict was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, was then affirmed 8-0 by the United States Supreme Court. The Rigsbys were managers who worked in Gulfport, Mississippi for a subcontractor hired by State Farm to adjust wind and flood claims after Hurricane Katrina. They were the first to uncover a fraudulent scheme by State Farm to improperly categorize wind damage as flood damage. This mischaracterization was very important because State Farm had to pay for wind damage out of its own pocket under State Farm homeowner policies, while flood damage was paid by the federal government under FEMA's flood policies. Over the course of several months, the sisters amassed thousands of pages of documents related to State Farm's activities. The Rigsbys' landmark win was historic because they were the first to prove that an insurance company defrauded the government in FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program despite testimony by FEMA’s Executive Director that, after investigating the allegations, he personally didn’t believe that there was any fraud by State Farm, and he confirmed that FEMA had not asked State Farm to repay any money to the National Flood Insurance Program. However, according to court documents, the sisters took the documents without authorization. Their actions in regard to these documents is the subject of ongoing legal action. Eventually, their story went public when ABC's 20/20 show aired it in August 2006. In 2008, Judge Senter of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Mississippi found that the sisters and their attorneys had acted unethically when the Scruggs Katrina Group paid the sisters $150,000 per year each to testify, and barred them from testifying or using any of the documents that were taken. Scruggs was later forced to withdraw as their attorney because he improperly paid them for downloading and giving him the State Farm claims files and other documents to use in his lawsuits against State Farm. Scruggs also was later disbarred after pleading guilty to conspiracy to bribe a state circuit court judge in 2008 and separately, to improperly influence another state court circuit judge. He was sentenced to serve five years and seven years, to run concurrently, on the two guilty pleas.
Robert Burt DeLaughter Sr. is a former state prosecutor and then Hinds County Circuit Judge. He prosecuted and secured the conviction in 1994 of Byron De La Beckwith, charged with the murder of the civil rights leader Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963. Two earlier trials in Mississippi in 1964 had resulted in hung juries.
Pablo Fajardo Mendoza is an Ecuadorian lawyer and activist. He is the lawyer that has been leading the litigation against Chevron Corporation related to the environmental disaster he alleged was caused by the oil operations of Texaco in the Lago Agrio oil field between 1964 and 1990. In this process, Fajardo represented the over 30,000 local inhabitants affected by the spill of crude oil and toxic waste. Chevron, which instead blames Petroecuador and has not paid the judgement, has had repeated success in arguing against it. The judgement has been validated by further Ecuadorian courts and the Supreme Court of Canada but it has been declared fraudulently obtained by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and an arbitration court in The Hague.
Pro se legal representation comes from Latin pro se, meaning "for oneself" or "on behalf of themselves", which in modern law means to argue on one's own behalf in a legal proceeding as a defendant or plaintiff in civil cases or a defendant in criminal cases, rather than have counsel or an attorney do it for you.
Oliver E. Diaz Jr. is a former Presiding Justice on the Supreme Court of Mississippi representing District 2 Place 2. In 2008, he was defeated by Randy "Bubba" Pierce.
American Violet is a 2008 American drama film directed by Tim Disney and starring Nicole Beharie. The story is based on Regina Kelly, a victim of Texas police drug enforcement tactics.
Mark Arthur Ciavarella Jr. is a convicted felon and former President Judge of the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania who was involved, along with fellow judge Michael Conahan, in the "Kids for cash" scandal in 2008, for which he was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison in 2011.
Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in Canada are well documented dating back to the 1960s. The preponderance of criminal cases with Canadian Catholic dioceses named as defendants that have surfaced since the 1980s strongly indicate that these cases were far more widespread than previously believed. While recent media reports have centred on Newfoundland dioceses, there have been reported cases—tested in court with criminal convictions—in almost all Canadian provinces. Sexual assault is the act of an individual touching another individual sexually and/or committing sexual activities forcefully and/or without the other person's consent. The phrase Catholic sexual abuse cases refers to acts of sexual abuse, typically child sexual abuse, by members of authority in the Catholic church, such as priests. Such cases have been occurring sporadically since the 11th century in Catholic churches around the world. This article summarizes some of the most notable Catholic sexual abuse cases in Canadian provinces.
Manjaagiin Ichinnorov is a Mongolian civil rights activist, born in the Khovd Province of Western Mongolia.
Presumed Guilty is a documentary following Antonio Zúñiga, who was falsely convicted of murder. It holds the box office record for documentary in Mexico, previously held by Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911. According to The Economist, this is "by far the most successful documentary in Mexico's history." The plot of the film is the attempt by two young Mexican attorneys to exonerate a wrongly convicted man by making a documentary. The film was released theatrically at about the same time the Oscar nominated films such as Black Swan and The King's Speech were being shown on cinema screens in Mexico. It surpassed both of those films at the box office. The film was televised by Televisa on Channel 2 in the fall of 2011.
Kent Sorenson is a former Iowa state legislator who resigned after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice and other felonies related to campaign finances.
Injustice is the absence or opposite of justice.
Obinwanne Okeke also known as Invictus Obi is a Nigerian entrepreneur and convicted fraudster who is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence in the United States for internet fraud that caused $11M losses to his victims. After initially pleading guilty, on February 16, 2021, Okeke was sentenced to ten years in prison. Until his arrest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation following a 13-month investigation, Okeke was a globally-renowned businessman who had investments in oil and gas, agriculture, private equity, alternative energy, telecom and real estate. He operated his holdings under the 'Invictus Group'. Invictus Group operated in three African countries including Nigeria, South Africa, and Zambia. He holds a master's degree in International business and Counter-terrorism from Monash University, Australia.
