Financial and Investment News

In Seattle criminal and white collar crime headlines, the owner of the MA Quick Construction has been charged with a minimum of nineteen counts of theft and securities fraud. According to records in King County Superior Court the owner identified as Laurence Anthone defrauded investors between of over $600,000 for parcels of land he stated he owned or was going to buy.
The property in Seattle Central District including Skyway and Renton was to be used to construct townhouses; Anthone had at least six investors that gave funds ranging from $10,000 to $327,000 according to prosecutors and/or District Attorney.
The investigation has uncovered after a 4 year investigation by the Securities Division of the state’s Department of Financial Institution that Anthone took funds from his investors at times as “earnest money” and the businesses that he allegedly told these investors would be for a sandwich shop, a female fitness center plus residential townhouses. If this allegation is true it obviously qualifies as criminal behavior, albeit financial crime.
In 2004 Antone was charged in the King County District Court with attempted theft and unregistered contracting. He did not appear and was considered a fugitive until July 2005 when he was arrested. Prior to the trial in 2006 for these charges he made restitution to the defendant in the amount of $10,000 and pleaded guilty to a lesser contracting charge.
In the criminal complaint it is stated that the fraud victims of Antone have won in a civil court that ordered Antone to pay an amount of $600,000 to the defrauded investors. To date none of the money has been paid by Antone. By the way if you need a wonderful and helpful Seattle criminal lawyer you may want to consider the respected law Offices of Blair & Kim. They are exceptional Seattle criminal lawyer and cover assault, DWI, dui and domestic violence. They serve not only Seattle but also Tacoma, bellevue, everett and Renton as well as Bothell. While this particular case in question qualifies as white collar crime there has been a fair share of other types of criminal activity in the Seattle area as of late. For instance, Clinton Chad Grainger, age 22 was arrested recently after being involved in a fight at the Folklife Festival and was carrying a gun that was strapped to his ankle. he has plead guilty to the class C felony he is charged with.
Grainger according to the King County deputy prosecutor Ian Goodhew was at the festival and hand a gun strapped to his ankle when he became involved in a fight. The person he was fighting with noticed the weapon in question……
He has been confined since the shooting took place on May 24 and could be sentenced from three to eight months. I hope for his sake that he has a good criminal lawyer, he is going to need it I think.

From cities as diverse to one another as Miami and Seattle, the subprime fiasco contines to get more and more interesting, if in a negative and chaotic way…… According to a wonderful story by elite journalist Mark jewell of the respected AP,
various Regulators are doing their best to punish the stock market powers that be for their part in the mortgage finance practices which contributed to the subprime mess as it were while at the same time dramatically increasing house ownership while spreading the pertinent risk to many new players in the real estate/investment market.
A few state securities regulators as well as two different foreclosure-affected urban areas have fired the opening shots of this new battle via lawsuits trying to prove that investment banks and the other similiar lenders are in fact guilty of more than just poor or incompetent business decisions as a whole. And some regulators even insist that
severe greed  combined with fraud caused much of the subprime mortgage confusion which have spread so quickly and mercilessly across the broader mortgage market, causing a plethera of foreclosures in an appalling fashion.
Yet in addition to these substantial civil cases, no less than the Federal Burue of investigation is even conteplating potential criminal action, and more specifically, which particular Wall Street companies actually were aware of the relative risks of mortgage securities backed by these rather flimsy subprime loans, plus whether or not they hid these same risks from the poor investors. I hope they have a good attorney.
Speaking of attorneys and criminal cases, if you are in Seattle or the greater Puget Sound are and you require a competent Seattle criminal attorney then take a good look at the offices of Kirk c. Davis
His legal firm also covers drunk driving, personal injury cases, Reckless Driving  and related criminal cases in the city of Seattle as well as the greater Puget Sound area.
Some legal cases in question could indeed turn up evidence which will finally force Wall Street to defend itself as authorities attempt to ease subprime-related financial pressures on some bond insurers. Furthermore, these actions may actually prompt other investors to file additional lawsuits than the ones that they have brought to bear up to this point in time.
There certainly were a lot of resources wasted, that is for sure. All of those foreclosed homes sitting vacant due to the rampant speculation that went on.
Even though some cities have indeed sued to try to recover damages from the “big bad” mortgage lenders in question, the majority of the cases filed up to this point are from the official regulators who are alleging violations of the state securities laws.
At a minimum they wish to show which specific banks did not properly disclose the risks involved to the investors who purchased mortgage-related securities and were not up front about the various conflicts of interests that were actually involved in this whole mess.
This thing sort of has the same ring to it as the Savings & Loan disaster of 1986 and 1987 which really lasted into the 1990’s if you measure it’s fill impact.
It used to be that unds from stock market banks extended increasing quantities of credit to low &  middle-income people who were possibly lured into the real estate market at the wrong time.. Wow, what a tangled web we weave!
But now that prices are dropping, those players are hurting. The losses have truly been staggering for some of the concerned parties.
At this early point in time, the raw number of these types of cases filed fast outpacing the rate of litigation which emerged from the S&L meltdown that was mentioned earlier, the story went on to say. And Criminal action is also a definate possibility in some of these cases, according to statements made by the FBI.
All in all,  there is indeed a plethera of blame to go around here (and i agree,it is a variety of causes really, and not all of them are really criminal in scope)
Those causes include (but are not limited to) investors purchasing mortgage-related investments and not fully comprehending the risks

California, who has been wanting to impose a stricter set of rules for greenhouse gas emission standards for automobiles has been denied.

   According to statements from Stephen L. Johnson who is the administrator of the EPA the reason that

California along with fifteen other states is due to White House policy. This policy is to keep a national standard rather than one set by each state, this occurred in December of 2007 and there was also a bill put into law named the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 which will require auto makers to product fuel efficient autos including SUV’s and small trucks. This may not be enough for the State of

California since these automakers will have until the year 2020 to produce these fuel-efficient autos that will be a required 35 per gallon. Incidentially, while we are on the subject of California and legal news, if you are in the greater Los Angeles area and you require a good Los Angeles spinal cord injury lawyer  then The law offices of Bob Mansell may assist you in this regard should you need a good spinal cord Injury lawyer, a Los Angeles traumatic brain injury lawyer or perhaps a Pasadena burn injury lawyer. Now back to the news article at hand…….

   In answer to this refusal to regulate their own standards the California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown jr.  brought a lawsuit against the United States Environmental Protection Agency for not allowing the state of

California to make their own regulations. This suit was filed January 8^th of 2008 in the United States Court of Appeals at the 9^th Circuit. Meanwhile, according to the respected online publication ‘The Juror’, it was reported that several days ago EPA officials claimed executive priviledge regarding certain pertinent documents.