PwC To Provide Up To $12.5M To JPMorgan For FSA Fine [Dow Jones]
“J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM) disclosed in a regulatory filing Friday that PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP agreed to provide up to an aggregate of $12.5 million to the bank related to a fine J.P. Morgan had to pay to the U.K. Financial Services Authority.”
Late Ponzi schemer’s accountant surrenders license [Nashville Business Journal]
This accountant managed to surrender his CPA in just under four months for his role in a Ponzi scheme. Dave Friehling had to be stripped of his license nearly 9 months after pleading guilty. NY DoE should get with Tennessee and see how they do things.
IRS to stay at new Austin site after plane crash [AP]
“An Internal Revenue Service office will not return to the Texas building where a tax protester killed himself by crashing his plane into the structure.
IRS spokeswoman Lea Crusberg said Thursday that the agency has signed a two-year lease on another office space in Austin. She declined to identify the location.”
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That's Weintraub on the left there with Rothstein rockin' the 'fro. Source: SFBJ
Unless you were born blind and deaf, you may have noticed that South Florida has its share of shady characters. We all know that Berns Madoff frequented the area. Plus there’s the obsessively dapper Lew Freeman, who was Miami’s go-to forensic accountant until he thought he’d just keep his client’s money.
Another model citizen/criminal in FLA is Scott Rothstein. His Ponzi Scheme managed to bring in just over $1 billion and he got 50 years for his trouble. But now the fallout from Rothstein’s little stunt is now raining hell on Miami accounting firm Berenfeld Spritzer Schechter & Sheer.
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Not that it’s impossible for an accountant to score a trophy wife – a former Scores Dancer, no less – but observers of accountant/business manager-cum-Ponzi Schemer du jour (allegedly!), Kenneth I. Starr are pretty confident that it was a decent sign of things going in the wrong direction.
Vanity Fair’s article on “not that Ken Starr” gets a lot of perspective from people that knew Starr, including Blackstone co-founder, Pete Peterson, ” Did something in the way of a profound midlife crisis trigger this behavior?”
But of course, there are people that are more forthright:
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UBS Customers May Have `Mere Hours’ to Report to IRS [Bloomberg]
Since the Swiss Parliament were finally able to give the OK on the agreement to disclose UBS client names to the U.S., it’s only a matter of time until the IRS starts kicking down doors in the middle of the night.
“For UBS account holders, they have mere hours to run to the IRS and hope they can disclose the account before the Swiss hand the data over,” said Asher Rubinstein, a partner at Rubinstein & Rubinstein LLP in New York who said he’s been “getting panicked calls all week.”
The lesson to be learned here, it appears, is that if you try to call the IRS on a bluff, you are likely to be wrong, wrong, wrong. Doug Shulman doesn’t like to be take for a fool, “We will immediately follow up on the information we receive from the Swiss and we will vigorously enforce the laws against those who have attempted to evade their tax responsibilities by hiding their assets offshore.”
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Photo: Harnick/AP
What the hell is gonna to take for a celebrity to get an honest money manager around these parts?
IRS agents arrested Kenneth Starr (not this guy) today who has managed money for celebrities including Martin Scorsese, Uma Thurman and financial shitshows Annie Leibovitz and Wesley Snipes.
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Mysterious letter rattles E&Y’s Iraq ambitions [Accountancy Age]
Ernst & Young has been trying to get its audit on in Iraq shortly after Saddam Hussein’s party ended in 2004. The firm has been providing services there, however not yet been approved to perform auditing services. E&Y has been claiming that it was making headway, “on the verge of obtaining an accounting license” but now a letter from somewhere within the dense Iraqi bureaucracy seems to have delayed those plans.
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Things are not going so well for the Stan as he awaits trial in H-town.
For starters, he managed to fire another lawyer, which is not going to go over well with Judge David Hittner. Judge Hittner warned Stan about his Steinbrenner-ish ways last month, “You’ve had 10 attorneys attempt to enter this case on your behalf. I will not entertain any further substitutions.”
And secondly, Al doesn’t seem to be very good at making friends:
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“Every day, I am fraught with pain and anguish for those affected by my actions. For those who lost money, I will work to repair and replace what has been lost.”
~ Convicted Ponzi Schemer Tom Petters, at his sentencing where Judge Richard Kyle sentenced him to 50 years in prison.
“[I]t is hard to justify giving special compensation to the investors of Mr. Madoff and Mr. Stanford just because they lost significant amounts of money with little prospect of any recovery.”
~ Peter J. Henning, on Madoff and Stanford victims lobbying members of Congress for a law that would compensate them for some of their losses.
Of course the investors are appealing but one win at at time, amiright?
The suits were filed in the fall by investors who lost millions in the LuxAlpha Sicav-American Selection fund which had 95% of its fund invested with Bernie Madoff. The fund claims that it had $1.4 billion in net assets a month prior to Madoff’s arrest.
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