In Chicago region law and financial news, according to authorities two individuals were detained for suspected of counterfeiting 100 dollar bills and attempting to pass them off at various local regional shops. All in all, the Mundelein Police Department, who are possibly much more accustomed to dui cases, has fingered the individuals as Robert Sims age twenty and Craig Williams. They had better have a good layer. The authorities state they received a report of 2 individuals that had passed a counterfeit $100 dollar bill at a local store. When the men were found, the authorities apparently found yet more 100 dollar bills in their pockets. According to the authorities the counterfeit 100 dollar bills were really just 5 dollar bills which were washed and then eventually reprinted or perhaps recreated as the counterfeit bills in question. Incidentially if you require a top notch Chicago dui lawyer then you might wish to take a peak at Mathew Miller’s website. here you can find a top drawer Chicago dui lawyer to fit your requirements.
All in all, the individuals according to the authorities were likewise suspected of passing 100 dollar bills in other regions and are investigating. Robert Sims was arrested and charged with forgery and theft by deception. Craig Williams was charged with forgery, theft by deception and possession of drug paraphernalia.
I just returned from Chicago and am back in the saddle again, so to speak. I am rady to start blogging again after my little hiatus. It has been reported that hedge fund manager Mike Lauer has been convicted of swindling investors over the course of several years for over half a billion dollars. Yes you heard that one right. It seems that all of those million could not buy him an Attorney who could get him off. How very sad indeed.
The Judge on this case found in a sixty-seven page order that Lauer had essentially tweaked and twisted the prices of 7 seperate securities. These were a large part of the funds portfolios, which he did not provide a basis for such very steep valuations. The Judge in question also found that he was untruthful, to put it charitably, to investors about the hedge funds holdings. In plain english you might even say that he lied through his teeth, but this case is not for me to sit here and judge. In any event, a head of the Lancer Management Group, his moves were ruled to be highly premeditated and directly caused the loss of millions and millions of dollars worth of investor’s hard earned money. I realize that no one really suffered personal bodily injury per say but what about the emotional scars? I mean, it is nothing personal, right?
All in all, a ruling has not been given on the amount that Lauer will have to pay back to his victims. That amount is pending an evidentiary hearing and a fine amount decided by the Securities Exchange Commission which has to be made within sixty days or so. By the way if you happen to live in Chicago or the surrounding region and need a top drawer
Chicago Personal Injury Attorney then I strongly wish to suggest the Budin Law offices as he is one of the finest Chicago Personal Injury Attorney around that whole area. You can call him for a personal consultation. Alright now back to the story at hand.
The criminal trial for Lauer will begin in April for the charges in the hedge fund and according to his lawyer stated that Lauer will be pleading not guilty and will fight the charges at trial. The Attorney who is representing Lauer is one Norman Moscowitz.
According to various news sources such as the respected online Businesswire, Medical Properties Trust, Incorporated stated recently that it has acquired for just under twenty million dollars, the real estate of the HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital of Fayetteville, Arkansas. This particular transaction represents the completion of the previously announced $358 million portfolio acquisition from HCP, Inc. By the way more health, wellness, medical and alternative healing related news may be found over at the Health News blog Here there are a plethera of wellness and fitness related articoes and editorials as well.Medical Properties Trust likewise stated it will report its second quarter financial results on Thursday, August 7, 2008 before trading on the New York Stock Exchange and host a conference call and webcast at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time with regards to these particular second quarter results. All in all,
the Medical Properties Trust corporation is a real estate investment trust formed to capitalize on the various shifting trends in the healthcare delivery field by acquiring and developing net-leased healthcare facilities. These facilities include inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, long-term acute care facilities, ambulatory surgery centers and other single-discipline healthcare facilities, such as heart hospitals, and orthopedic hospitals as well.
Here is some more weird and wacky real eastate and monetary news for your consumption…According to articles in the Los Angeles Times and other news publications,
the estate of Boxer Evander Holyfield is up for foreclosure. This comes on the heels of a report that former ‘Tonight Show’
sidekick Ed McMahon was facing similiar foreclosure problems. Is this a sign of worsening economic times in general or just
a case of bad financial management in particular? Incidentially if you need a great Seattle Criminal Defense Lawyer then by all means take a look at the
law offices of Aaron Pelley. Also if you need a top Los Angeles criminal defense attorney then look at the offcies of Jonathin Kelman. They are among the best in their field.
In the rather sordid and sad case of Evander, the Former heavyweight champion was able to defeat the likes of the ex criminal Mike Tyson (in all fairness to iron Mike, he has already paid his debt to society and deserves another chance, editor) but has not been up to the challenge thus far when it comes to his accounting and monetary issues…
One Associated Press writer stated that “his Georgia estate is under foreclosure. The house is worth an estimated ten million dollars is set to be auctioned by a bank on July 1.”
The article goes on to quots the mother of one of the boxers 9 kids as stating that he has also missed a pair of child-support installment payments.
Besides the 2 aforementioned celebrity foreclosures, former Oakland Athletics baseball player and admitted steroid user Jose Conseco faced foreclosure in the Los Angeles area on May 1 (perhaps this is just his Karma for incriminating all of his ex-teammates in his tell-all book but I do not know for sure), Marion Jones last summer (in North Carolina of all places) and Michael Jackson barely averted the same fate
recently as well, also in the greater Los Angeles area. Then again, these guys were never known for their brains, that is for sure.
Canseco was so discreet about his steroid use back in his playing days the other players used to refer to it as drinking a “Jose Canseco milkshake”. And Holyfield used to make tens of millions of dollars per fight when he boxed.
Why didn’t he just pay cash for a place instead of taking out a loan. He could have bought a mansion with a fraction of his winnings. He of all people should have known that you only have a few good years in that sport.
His case sort of reminds me of bankrupt rapper MC Hammer, thinking that one hit album equaled his average yearly salary when in fact he captures lightning in a bottle once. I hope that they all have a good attorney or better yet, a team of attorneys.
The Apple Corporation has opened the new year on an infamous note:
on the target end of another suit pertaining to its huge lead in the music player space.
An antitrust claim filed December 31 alleges the company is maintaining an illegal monopoly on the digital music market.
As it stands now, the particulars of the suit claims that the Apple Corp. is purposely crippling the iPod, preventing it from playing back, for instance, Windows Media files, despite the fact that the chips used in the device could do so.
Apple would have to pay Microsoft a licensing fee for Windows Media playback, but anticipates that this particular fee would be under $800,000, or 3 cents per iPod sold last year. As it were,
the firm is not by any means by itself in pricing higher capacity players at more than the cost of parts. Microsoft charges fifty dollars more for its 8GB Zune than the 4GB model, the same difference as the 4GB and 8GB iPod nano. And there is really no law against premium pricing as the law currently stands.
The tech giant is already deep into in a legal war going back several years which states that the firm ties the iPod to the iTunes Store, and so on. The entity has failed in its motion to dismiss that legal suit and litigation continues. An eerily similar class-action suit known as Black verses. Apple Incorporated. was filed in August 2007
They have likewise been involved in litigation with the French consumer group Union Federale des Consummateurs since 2005 because of the iPod being only compatible with the iTunes E-Store. As others have since begun selling DRM-free music, however, those positions against Apple might have weakened, at least somewhat.
According to a recent article in the Bizjournals.com online news publication, t
he Spacehab Corporation has signed an agreement with Praemittias Group Incorporated to sell Spacehab’s technology to the United States DOD.
The Praemittias corporation, which is an Englewood, Colorado headquartered defense firm, will market the spectrometer technology which detects,
identifies as well as analyzes possible dangerous explosives plus related harmful materials as well. Under
Under the particular licensing terms of the agreement, the Praemittias corporation will produce sales of ten million dollars in 2008, fifty million in 2009, and one hundred million in 2010 for Spacehab (NASDAQ: SPABD).
This particular technology is just the initial product to come out of their wholly owned subsidiary known as Spacetech. In related financial news,
the Spacehab Corporation stated December 12 (today) it has approved a 1-for-10 reverse stock split.
They also stated that the split will go into effect on November 29, when their stock will begin trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol SPABD for twenty trading days.
Then on December 28, the firm will continue to trade under the symbol SPAB. After
the conversion of their shares of preferred stock into corresponding common stock and Thursday’s reverse split, the defense firm should have some thirteen million or so shares outstanding.
They also reported a quarterly ney loss which they said was due to their support of space shuttle mission STS-118 which returned to the planet several months ago.
This particular mission was the Space Shuttle Endeavour’s flight to continue on their construction on the ISS lab.
As both the rate of United States house foreclosures plus the rate of houses that are entering into the foreclosure process rose to a record in the 3rd quarter of this year, aggravated by dropping or stagnant house prices as well as increasing premiums,
the Commander & Chief Executive launched an effort today to decrease these foreclosures, which some experts claimed was a good beginning yet would not, by itself, solve all the problems relating to the rather depressed real estate housing market.
The program in question would essentially freeze low teaser mortgage rates for 5 years for the two million or so odd home owners with ARM loans facing steeper payments, according to the Reuters online news Network. Almost
a million American homes are in the process of foreclosure, unfortunately. In addition to this,
The percentage of loans in the actual foreclosure process rose to 1.69 percent of loans outstanding.
Overall, various issues with payments on all kinds of mortgages drove up the pace of homes entering foreclosure, according to certain trade groups.
Furthermore, some experts have warned that the Sub-prime mortgages are not the only ones failing: 2nd mortgages, hybrid intermediate-term ARMS, and of course the much critized Pay Option ARM are likewise feeling the pich to a considerable extent.
These 3 loan types were chiefly thought to be ‘prime’ so they have been overlooked, but could likely haunt the financial markets for many years.
According to the respected Forbes magazine,
New Swiss reporting regulations not far-reaching enough.
According to a breaking story out of Zurich,
Saurer AG Arbon chairman Giorgio Behr stated that he welcomes the revision of Switzerland’s shareholding reporting rules yet also stated that the new regulations in question are not nearly far-reaching enough.
As of December 1, Switzerland lowered the threshold for reporting a stake in a firm to three ercent from five percent.
‘Under the old legislation a hostile bidder needed 6 ‘investors’ to buy up just below 5 pct so as to gain a 30 pct stake. Now ten are needed. That is all the new law does,’ Behr said in an interview with Swiss Sunday paper Sonntagszeitung.
The revision of the stock exchange act was triggered by several deals which saw investors covertly building up stakes of above thirty percent in Swiss firms, such as the acquisition of a 31.4 pct stake in Sulzer AG by Russian federation investor Viktor Vekselberg.
As the world’s countries meet in Indonesia for an important climate summit, a major priority will be to put the focus on the large greenhouse gas emitters.
China appears to be about to overtake the United States as the globe’s top carbon emitter. But they have said that they will not be ready to take on emission caps “for a large period of time”.
In addition, India is also arguing for catch-up time to lift its citizens out of poverty.
The buzz word at the 2-week conference being held in bali, Indonesia will be “roadmap”, with the deadline of 2009 looming for the closure of a future climate deal to replace the Kyoto accord, which expires in about 4 years.
In general, Political momentum has been growing on the climate change issue in the run up to Bali.
For example, just last month the government of Switzerland had announced that it would align itself to the EU targets, which foresee emissions reductions of up to thirty percent or so by 2020.
Furthermore, last month featured the publication of the most damning report yet from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, also known as the IPCC.
The scientific panel has stated that climate systems have already started to fundamentally change.
They also stated that the evidence was in the measured warming of air and ocean temperatures, melting of snow and ice over a very wide area and rising sea levels.
All in all, The report by the IPCC – co-winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize along with United States politician and climate crusader, Al Gore - is expected to guide negotiators in Bali.
According to a news report today from the AFP network,
the internet giant known as the Yahoo Corporation has reported that their 3rd quarter profits have slipped despite an increase in revenues and an almost finishes corporate structure reorganization.
Their income for the quarter was 151 million dollars, or some eleven cents per share, as compared to 159 million dollars in the same period in 2006.
Interestingly enouph, some stock market analysts had predicted that the firm would post income of twelve cents per share.
Revenue had risen to 1.77 billion from 1.58 billion in the corresponding quarter in 2006.
Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, who took over as CEO earlier in the year and started several months ago on a one hundred day plan to reorganize the firm into a more profitable entity, remained optimistic in general.
Yang stated that his firm has made certain decisions to increase the size of it’s user base as well as the website publishers who use their services.
All in all, their lackluster 3rd Qtr. results came about as it faced some big questions from the United States Congress.
For example, the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs stated today that it desires the firm’s executives to testify at a hearing concerning their role in a human rights case in China which resulted in a journalist being imprisoned for about ten years.
The Committee chairman Tom Lantos had requested that Yang appear at a hearing next month to discuss the firm’s disclosure of damning data to the Chinese authorities regarding the case of Shi Tao.
“We want to clarify how that happened, and to hold the company to account for its actions. And we want to examine what steps the company has taken since then to protect the privacy rights of its users in China.”
The committee has stated that it has data which seems to indicate that Yahoo had known more regarding the Chinese investigation than was admitted during testimony. Well I personally predict that they will make a strong rebound in the near future.
They are still the most popular portal site on the internet and they just have too many users not to sustain their profits, particularly with the pending reorganization, in my humble opinion.
