Monday, August 19, 2013

Occupy Bank Cards and Defrauding the Auditors with Sam Antar






One percent -- meet 99 percent. Our favorite, one percent-er, Jamie Dimon, just disclosed some troubling news. JP Morgan has set aside an additional six point eight billion dollars to deal with future fines and lawsuits. That puts them on track to take over Bank of America when it comes to legal problems in the too-big-to-fail arena. According to JP Morgan's filing, the Justice Department is now investigating them on six separate counts. Will heads roll? Likely not those at the top, so sleep well Mr. Dimon.

And one of those investigations involves bribery abroad. But It's not just at JPMorgan, several of the top banks are hiring children of senior Chinese officials to help them develop relationships in the region. Commonly known as "princelings", the Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into how these hiring practices could help banks win business. There is, however, nothing illegal about hiring "princelings" in general.

But getting back to the main point -- what about the 99%? A new offshoot of the Occupy movement called "Occupy Money Cooperative" is now in the banking business. They'll be selling pre-paid debit cards to those who might not currently have a bank account. And these won't be the Kim Kardashian kind, with monthly fees that amount to over one hundred dollars a year. Fees are expected to be much lower. But is anyone asking why Occupy is getting into banking in the first place? We do. Perianne profiles the Occupy Money Cooperative.

Plus self-proclaimed fraudster, Sam Antar is back on Prime Interest. He's the former chief financial officer of Crazy Eddie. That was the New York appliance retailer that engaged in massive accounting fraud. Here's a clip from one of their famously crazy commercials. Sam cooked the books, but today we look at our payments system and the potential for fraud, and tie it all into the latest Occupy movement to get into banking.

No comments:

Post a Comment