Category: Regulation

Pfizer Identifies Fake Covid-19 Shots Abroad as Criminals Exploit Vaccine Demand

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pfizer-identifies-fake-covid-19-shots-abroad-as-criminals-exploit-vaccine-demand-11619006403

Excerpt:

Fake shots for the pandemic can be easy to distinguish from real ones, experts said, because legitimate ones can be found for now sold only to governments, making any shots for sale on the internet counterfeit and potentially harmful.

Police in China and South Africa last month seized thousands of doses of counterfeit Covid-19 vaccines in warehouses and manufacturing plants, arresting dozens of people, according to the international police agency Interpol. Mexico also is investigating a shipment of some 6,000 doses of purported Sputnik vaccine from Russia, which were seized from a private plane headed to Honduras in March.

The Russia Direct Investment Fund, which leads efforts to market the vaccine internationally, said an analysis of photographs of the seized batch “suggests that it is a fake.” The Mexican Attorney General’s Office said it was investigating the matter and declined to comment further. Authorities haven’t determined whether the vaccines are genuine.

For months, agents from the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, an investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, have been investigating fraud related to the Covid-19 pandemic globally, recovering $48 million of phony masks, personal protective equipment and other products. Last fall, investigators shifted their focus to include Covid-19 vaccines that were nearing potential clearance by regulators, beginning with online scams. They have removed 30 websites and seized 74 web domains, according to IPR Center officials.

Author(s): Jared S. Hopkins, José de Córdoba

Publication Date: 21 April 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

CalPERS Employee Accused of Embezzling $685,000 from Beneficiary Bank and CalPERS Accounts Hasn’t Been Arrested, Much the Less Prosecuted. Why the Cover Up?

Mary Pat Campbell
CalPERS Employee Accused of Embezzling $685,000 from Beneficiary Bank and CalPERS Accounts Hasn’t Been Arrested, Much the Less Prosecuted. Why the Cover Up?

Excerpt:

As you can see from the embedded filing below, CalPERS is suing Gloria Najera, a former employee it says embezzled $685,000 from beneficiaries, including, Wells Fargo style, from a beneficiary’s bank accounts.

The civil claim is sketchy on the timetable, but Najera was a clerical worker responsible for updating beneficiary addresses and bank direct deposit information. That apparently also gave her access to at least the last four digits in their Social Security numbers. Najera used this information to pilfer directly from the bank account of one beneficiary to the tune of nearly $69,000. For nine others, she diverted funds from dormant CalPERS accounts (where CalPERS had reason to think the beneficiary was still alive but had only out-of-date bank deposit information) to bank accounts controlled by Najera and co-conspirators.

Yet despite CalPERS allegedly informing the police about the theft back in January, the perp of this huge embezzlement of beneficiary trust funds hasn’t even been arrested, much the less charged.

CalPERS instead is taking the virtually unheard of approach of merely filing a civil suit, rather than letting a prosecutor file criminal charges, even though California law requires that a criminal court order full restitution on behalf of CalPERS.

Author(s): Yves Smith

Publication Date: 22 April 2021

Publication Site: naked capitalism

PSERS Signs Verus in ‘Emergency’ Hiring to Handle CIO Duties

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.fundfire.com/c/3145634/397343/psers_signs_verus_emergency_hiring_handle_duties

Excerpt:

The $64 billion Pennsylvania Public Schools’ Retirement System made the “emergency” hiring of an outside manager yesterday to take on the duties of chief investment officer James Grossman, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

Seattle-based Verus Investments will now handle “monitoring and oversight of investment” as the embattled pension system deals with “internal and external investigations,” including an FBI probe into its investing, PSERS says.

The fund’s investment of millions of dollars in real estate deals in Harrisburg is under federal investigation, while outside lawyers are looking into an “error” that inflated PSERS’ investment returns.

Author(s): Kathleen Laverty

Publication Date: 21 April 2021

Publication Site: FundFire

Public Finance: Full Accrual Accounting and Governmental Accounting Standards Board Testimony

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/public-finance-full-accrual-accounting

Video:

Excerpt:

I will give a very simple example: suppose Netflix makes a deal where instead of you paying for a year’s subscription at a time, you can get a big discount if you pay for 2 years’ subscription.

Subscribers love the deal and pay for it….

….and then Netflix says their sales doubled in their financial reports. That’s IF they followed cash-based accounting, which records cash flows.

But they don’t, because accounting standards boards (outside the government sphere) know that this is just a trick to boost how financials look under cash accounting. And there are loads of these tricks. I just gave one simple example. The trick of getting people to pre-pay for sales to boost the numbers is a well-known ploy on the revenue side. A well-known ploy on the expenses side is to put off paying bills.

This is obviously distorting recognizing the true economic arrangement underlying these transactions, and some of the tricks make for a more fragile economic position for specific businesses. It was always the marginal businesses, which were barely hanging on, where cash-basis accounting tempts into trickery, which usually ends in financial failure. So accounting standards have developed to prevent this stuff.

Author(s): Mary Pat Campbell

Publication Date: 22 April 2021

Publication Site: STUMP at Substack

Key investor in $100 million NJ deli has a history of legal problems, ties to criminals

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/19/hometown-international-nj-deli-linked-legal-problems.html

Excerpt:

A key investor in the mysterious $100 million company that owns only a tiny New Jersey deli has a history of legal woes and ties to several people who have criminal convictions or have been sanctioned by regulators.

They include a lawyer, an accounting firm and a former stockbroker who have done work related to the company, Hometown International. They are linked to shareholder Peter Coker Sr., a 78-year-old North Carolina businessman.

Coker’s Hong Kong-based son, Peter Coker Jr., is chairman of Hometown International, whose Your Hometown Deli in Paulsboro, New Jersey, had sales of only about $35,000 in the past two years combined.

Despite those meager sales, Hometown International had nearly 8 million common shares of stock outstanding. On Monday, shares of the company rose 0.15% to $13.01.

Author(s): Dan Mangan

Publication Date: 19 April 2021

Publication Site: CNBC

GASB Webcast Recordings

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.gasb.org/jsp/GASB/Page/GASBSectionPage&cid=1176163492322#vchttps://www.gasb.org/jsp/GASB/Page/GASBSectionPage&cid=1176163492322

Excerpt:

Past GASB and GASAC meeting webcasts are available below. To view or hear a recording, click on the date of the meeting. Recordings are available within 24 hours of the meeting conclusion and remain on the site 90 days following the meeting date.

Help with problems viewing or hearing webcasts, contact FAF Technical Support. Please do not use the “Submit Feedback” button on the right-hand side of the page to submit technical problems.

Archived Meeting Recordings
04/14/21 GASB Public Hearing  – p.m. session
04/14/21 GASB Public Hearing  – a.m. session
04/13/21 GASB Public Hearing  – p.m. session
04/13/21 GASB Public Hearing  – a.m. session

Date Accessed: 20 April 2021

Publication Site: GASB

Lawyer linked to creation of $100 million New Jersey deli firm pleaded guilty in shell company scheme

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/16/lawyer-hometown-international-deli-owner-stock-scams.html

Excerpt:

A now-disbarred lawyer who pleaded guilty to federal crimes related to shell company scams is listed as an attorney in early financial documents filed by a New Jersey firm whose stock valuation has risen as high as $100 million or more despite owning just a single, small delicatessen.

The former lawyer, Gregg Jaclin, was copied on communications filed by deli owner Hometown International with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2015 and 2016, records show.

They include the very first document filed by Hometown with the SEC that is publicly available.

In June 2020, Jaclin pleaded guilty to criminal charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Separately, in a related case, the SEC in 2019 entered a final judgment against him “for running a fraudulent shell factory scheme through which sham companies were taken public and sold for a profit,” a press release noted that year.

The companies involved in that conduct — none of which were Hometown International — were incorporated in Nevada with the assistance of Jaclin, who was disbarred in New Jersey last October for his actions.

Author(s): Dan Mangan

Publication Date: 16 April 2021

Publication Site: CNBC

Applications for New Businesses Have a Double-WTF Moment

Mary Pat Campbell
Applications for New Businesses Have a Double-WTF Moment

Graphic:

Excerpt:

I don’t remember anything that has ever drawn so much fraud to itself, like an industrial magnet attracting ferrous scrap metal, as the federal government programs to support the unemployed and struggling businesses.

When it comes to this twin-spike in business applications, the forgivable Payroll Protection Program (PPP) loans and Economic Injury Disaster loans come to mind immediately – especially since the spike into July, and then the renewed spike this year, are timed with the two PPP generations.

Businesses that applied for the PPP loans had to submit documentation of wages paid over specified periods. The first-generation PPP program ended on August 8, 2020. The second-generation PPP program started this year and remains open.

The dates were structured so that it would be impossible by honest people to create a business entity after the announcement, pay wages for long enough to qualify for a PPP loan, and then apply for a PPP loan. Applicants had to submit historical wage documentation to the lenders whose job it was to check all this out.

Author(s): Wolf Richter

Publication Date: 16 April 2021

Publication Site: Wolf Street

Diversity within the Federal Reserve System

Mary Pat Campbell
Diversity within the Federal Reserve System

Graphic:

Excerpt:

Given that Class A directors are explicitly bankers elected by bankers, it is perhaps unsurprising to see their predominance. But a trend since roughly 1980 includes a substantial and growing number of non-banking finance representatives as the third-most represented single group, after banking and manufacturing. The influence of finance on the Reserve Banks’ governance remains very strong, even among the classes of directors meant to represent other interests.

Author(s): Peter Conti-Brown, Kaleb Nygaard

Publication Date: 13 April 2021

Publication Site: Brookings

NEW YORK ENACTS LEGISLATIVE ‘FIX’ FOR LEGACY LIBOR CONTRACTS GOVERNED BY NY LAW; WILL A FEDERAL FIX BE NEXT?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2021/04/new-york-enacts-legislative-fix-for-legacy-libor-contracts-governed-by-ny-law-will-a-federal-fix-be-next

Excerpt:

The State of New York has enacted a new law that should ease the transition away from US dollar LIBOR for legacy financial contracts that are governed by New York law but do not contain modern benchmark fallback provisions. A similar federal law is in the works, which if passed would apply nationwide.

Author(s): Charles A. Sweet, Kurt W. Rademacher

Publication Date: 19 April 2021

Publication Site: Morgan Lewis

Relief from SALT cap for Illinois pass-through businesses may be on the way – Wirepoints

Mary Pat Campbell
Relief from SALT cap for Illinois pass-through businesses may be on the way – Wirepoints

Excerpt:

It’s Senate Bill 2531. The bill is sponsored by Sen. Win Stoller (R-Germantown Hills) and it has picked up additional sponsors from both parties. It would allow a small business to elect to be taxed at the entity level, instead of letting the income pass through to their personal return. The owner would then claim an offsetting credit on their state return. It passed the Senate Revenue Committee with a vote of 9-0 and now goes to the Senate floor for further consideration.

We hope and expect the bill will become law. While we support the $10,000 federal SALT cap, it’s entirely appropriate for Illinois to facilitate exceptions recognized by the IRS, just as other states are doing. At least fourteen other states have passed or are in the process of passing similar legislation. The legislation could help up to 400,000 Illinois small business owners save thousands of dollars annually on their federal tax filings, according to Stoller.

Author(s): Mark Glennon, Ted Dabrowski

Publication Date: 17 April 2021

Publication Site: Wirepoints