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In finance, default is failure to meet the legal obligations of a loan, for example when a home buyer fails to make a mortgage payment, or when a corporation or government fails to pay a bond which has reached maturity. A national or sovereign default is the failure or refusal of a government to repay its national debt.
MCI, Inc. was a telecommunications company. For a time, it was the second-largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T. WorldCom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunications companies, including MCI Communications in 1998, and filed bankruptcy in 2002 after an accounting scandal, in which several executives, including CEO Bernard Ebbers, were convicted of a scheme to inflate the company's assets. In January 2006, the company, by then renamed MCI, was acquired by Verizon Communications and was later integrated into Verizon Business.
Creative accounting is a euphemism referring to accounting practices that may follow the letter of the rules of standard accounting practices, but deviate from the spirit of those rules with questionable accounting ethics—specifically distorting results in favor of the "preparers", or the firm that hired the accountant. They are characterized by excessive complication and the use of novel ways of characterizing income, assets, or liabilities, and the intent to influence readers towards the interpretations desired by the authors. The terms "innovative" or "aggressive" are also sometimes used. Another common synonym is "cooking the books". Creative accounting is oftentimes used in tandem with outright financial fraud, and lines between the two are blurred. Creative accounting practices are known since ancient times and appear world-wide in various forms.
The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services company headquartered in Denver, Colorado.
The Crédit Mobilier scandal was a two-part fraud conducted from 1864 to 1867 by the Union Pacific Railroad and the Crédit Mobilier of America construction company in the building of the eastern portion of the First transcontinental railroad. The story was broken by The New York Sun during the 1872 campaign of Ulysses S. Grant.
Bank fraud is the use of potentially illegal means to obtain money, assets, or other property owned or held by a financial institution, or to obtain money from depositors by fraudulently posing as a bank or other financial institution. In many instances, bank fraud is a criminal offence. While the specific elements of particular banking fraud laws vary depending on jurisdictions, the term bank fraud applies to actions that employ a scheme or artifice, as opposed to bank robbery or theft. For this reason, bank fraud is sometimes considered a white-collar crime.
A creditor or lender is a party that has a claim on the services of a second party. It is a person or institution to whom money is owed. The first party, in general, has provided some property or service to the second party under the assumption that the second party will return an equivalent property and service. The second party is frequently called a debtor or borrower. The first party is called the creditor, which is the lender of property, service, or money.
Predatory lending refers to unethical practices conducted by lending organizations during a loan origination process that are unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent. While there are no internationally agreed legal definitions for predatory lending, a 2006 audit report from the office of inspector general of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) broadly defines predatory lending as "imposing unfair and abusive loan terms on borrowers", though "unfair" and "abusive" were not specifically defined. Though there are laws against some of the specific practices commonly identified as predatory, various federal agencies use the phrase as a catch-all term for many specific illegal activities in the loan industry. Predatory lending should not be confused with predatory mortgage servicing which is mortgage practices described by critics as unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent practices during the loan or mortgage servicing process, post loan origination.
Cheque fraud, or check fraud, refers to a category of criminal acts that involve making the unlawful use of cheques in order to illegally acquire or borrow funds that do not exist within the account balance or account-holder's legal ownership. Most methods involve taking advantage of the float to draw out these funds. Specific kinds of cheque fraud include cheque kiting, where funds are deposited before the end of the float period to cover the fraud, and paper hanging, where the float offers the opportunity to write fraudulent cheques but the account is never replenished.
Asset-based lending is any kind of lending secured by an asset. This means, if the loan is not repaid, the asset is taken. In this sense, a mortgage is an example of an asset-based loan. More commonly however, the phrase is used to describe lending to business and large corporations using assets not normally used in other loans. Typically, the different types of asset-based loans include accounts receivable financing, inventory financing, equipment financing, or real estate financing Asset-based lending in this more specific sense is possible only in certain countries whose legal systems allow borrowers to pledge such assets to lenders as collateral for loans.
Credit is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately, but promises either to repay or return those resources at a later date. The resources provided by the first party can be either property, fulfillment of promises, or performances. In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and extensible to a large group of unrelated people.
Refco was a New York City-based financial services company, primarily known as a broker of commodities and futures contracts. It was founded in 1969 by Raymond Earl Friedman as Ray E. Friedman and Co. Prior to its collapse in October, 2005, the firm had over $4 billion in approximately 200,000 customer accounts, and it was the largest broker on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The firm's balance sheet at the time of the collapse showed about $75 billion in assets and a roughly equal amount in liabilities. Though these filings have since been disowned by the company, they are probably roughly accurate in showing the firm's level of leverage.
BAWAG P.S.K. is the fourth largest bank in Austria. It was formed on October 1, 2005 by the merger of the separate banks P.S.K. and BAWAG.
Check kiting or cheque kiting is a form of check fraud, involving taking advantage of the float to make use of non-existent funds in a checking or other bank account. In this way, instead of being used as a negotiable instrument, checks are misused as a form of unauthorized credit.
Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational financial services company with corporate headquarters in San Francisco, California; operational headquarters in Manhattan; and managerial offices throughout the United States and internationally. The company has operations in 35 countries with over 70 million customers globally. It is considered a systemically important financial institution by the Financial Stability Board. Wells Fargo, in its present form, is a result of a merger between the original Wells Fargo & Company and Minneapolis-based Norwest Corporation in 1998. While Norwest was the nominal survivor, the merged company took the better-known Wells Fargo name and moved to Wells Fargo's hub in San Francisco. At the same time, its banking subsidiary merged with Wells Fargo's Sioux Falls-based banking subsidiary. Wells Fargo became a coast-to-coast bank with the 2008 acquisition of Charlotte-based Wachovia.
Financial law is the law and regulation of the commercial banking, capital markets, insurance, derivatives and investment management sectors. Understanding financial law is crucial to appreciating the creation and formation of banking and financial regulation, as well as the legal framework for finance generally. Financial law forms a substantial portion of commercial law, and notably a substantial proportion of the global economy, and legal billables are dependent on sound and clear legal policy pertaining to financial transactions. Therefore financial law as the law for financial industries involves public and private law matters. Understanding the legal implications of transactions and structures such as an indemnity, or overdraft is crucial to appreciating their effect in financial transactions. This is the core of financial law. Thus, financial law draws a narrower distinction than commercial or corporate law by focusing primarily on financial transactions, the financial market, and its participants; for example, the sale of goods may be part of commercial law but is not financial law. Financial law may be understood as being formed of three overarching methods, or pillars of law formation and categorised into five transaction silos which form the various financial positions prevalent in finance.
USIS (US Investigation Services) was a US corporation that provided security-based information and service solutions to both government and corporate customers, in the United States and abroad. Its corporate headquarters were in Falls Church, Virginia, in Greater Washington, D.C. Training took place in Boyers, Pennsylvania. USIS was a part of Altegrity Inc., a company headquartered in the Falls Church area that was owned by Providence Equity Partners.
The Pittsburgh Food & Beverage Company was a holding company created in 1991 by entrepreneur Michael P. Carlow to manage a pair of struggling but iconic companies in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally joining the candymaker D. L. Clark Co., maker of the Clark Bar, with the Pittsburgh Brewing Company and their Iron City Beer, it expanded to add further regional businesses: Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania's L. E. Smith Glass Company, the Fort Wayne, Indiana-based Wayne Candies, Inc., and Pittsburgh's City Pride Bakery. Its 1995 collapse in bankruptcy and the subsequent conviction of Carlow for using a check kiting scheme, said to have defrauded a local bank of more than $31 million, was reported nationally.
Frederick Darren Berg is an American entrepreneur, business executive, convicted Ponzi scheme operator, and prison escapee. He is the founder of MTR Western, a motorcoach operator headquartered in Seattle. He sold fraudulent investments through the Meridian Group, a group of investment companies, defrauding nearly 700 investors who lost almost $150 million, and he was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2012. He has been nicknamed "Mini Madoff" for his crimes' similarity to those of Bernie Madoff. Berg escaped from prison in 2017.
References
- ↑ Kohn, George The New Encyclopedia of American Scandal ISBN 978-0816042258
- ↑ O.P.M. Bankruptcy: Questions Abound New York Times March 26, 1981
- ↑ The Bubble Bursts Following O.P.M.'s Overnight Success Washington Post April 5, 1981
- ↑ A Close-Up Look At The Fraud That Ruined O.P.M. New York Times May 1, 1983