CenTrust Bank Scandal
CenTrust, first called Dade Federal Savings and Loan, was founded in 1934 during the Great Depression and eventually became a stalwart of the South Florida business establishment. By the early 1980s, Miami had a corporate community that any city would envy. The companies were large and growing. They contributed mightily to local causes. They virtually invented a skyline where none existed as late as the early 1980s. CenTrust Bank and David Paul gave huge sums of money and much effort toward founding the New World Symphony in the 1980s. But the local corporate world was shaken badly at that time. In South Florida, home of fragile physical, social and economic climates, big business became an endangered species. Prominent in the downtown skyline were buildings built by financial institutions that had failed or were in serious trouble. By November 1983, CenTrust had losses of $500 million and was headed toward insolvency and federal takeover. David Paul, pledging little more than some real-estate holdings, gained control and quickly remade and personalized the institution. Before long, the company's stock-ticker symbol became DLP, Paul's initials. At the end, as senior managers deserted him, David Paul held the posts of chairman, president, chief executive officer and chief operating officer.
South Florida became a center of risky banking practices in the 1980s, and CenTrust was one of hundreds of thrifts traumatized by inflation and soaring interest rates.
Through this time, Drexel's former junk king Michael Milken, sold billions of dollars of high-yield junk bonds to cooperative companies with big piles of cash such as CenTrust Bank, Columbia Savings & Loan, Imperial Corp. of America and First Executive. The companies were loyal buyers of Drexel underwritings. They paid fat trading and investment banking fees to Drexel and helped the firm to launch bigger and bigger deals.
CenTrust held more than $1 billion in junk bonds and worked closely with Drexel. The relationship was launched when Drexel led an underwriting syndicate of five investment bankers that raised $12 million in subordinated debt to bolster CenTrust's capital base. Eventually, CenTrust also bought $1.4 billion in junk bonds from Drexel. Moreover, in early 1989, Lincoln and CenTrust sold warrants and other assets to each other through Drexel, with each recognizing s...
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...s of false internal accounting by the thrift. CenTrust eventually repurchased the securities for more than BCCI had paid, and Mr. Pharaon allegedly kept the difference of $331,500.
Mr. Pharaon a Saudi businessman was indicted on 1991 as well as Mr. Milken on 1989 was indicted of racketeering and securities violations. Drexel Burnham Lambert has settled criminal and civil securities charges.
After being seized, CenTrust sold its deposits in June 1990, to Great Western Financial Corp., Beverly Hills, California. Mr. Paul, the former chairman and CEO of the failed CenTrust Savings Bank of Miami, was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison after being convicted in a jury trial of 68 fraud-related counts in US District Court in Miami involving the spectacular collapse of CenTrust at a cost of $1.7 billion to taxpayers, and for allegedly helping arrange the sham purchase of $25 million in CenTrust securities by Bank of Credit & Commerce International. The verdict followed a six-week trial. In all felony counts, most involving allegations that he siphoned $3.2 million from CenTrust and spent it on his 95-foot yacht, his homes in Miami, his luxuries, and elsewhere during the 1980s.
Seidman, L. W. (1986) Lessons of the Eighties: What does the evidence show? Retrieved July 25, 2010 from http://www.fdic.gov/bank/historical/history/vol2/panel3.pdf
Case 4: In this case, The PCAOB found that Ligand Pharmaceuticals restated the financial statements for the year 2003, and recognized around $59 million less in revenues from product sales than originally recognized and reported a net loss more than 2.5 times the net loss originally reported. As a result, PCAOB ordered that James was prohibited from associating with any registered public accounting firm for at least two years from the date of its order.
After the time of financial crisis, JP Morgan was not the only national bank in US which got involved in trade of toxic loans related to mortgage. Before JP Morgan, it was Goldman Sachs-another large US Bank that faced the allegation of manipulating the trades in its own self interes, ended up in favor of SEC while GoldMan Sachs were asked to pay $500 Million during late 2011 in a deal called Abascus 2007-AC1 where the bank were alleged to mislead its investors on a deal related to Collateral Debt Obligation(CDO). (Eaglesham, 2011) The ab...
House of Cards describes in particular the complicated series of events that led to the downfall of Bear Sterns in March 2008. Its actual appeal, however, deduces from its complete and careful analysis of the history of the firm since its origination as an upstart brokerage firm in 1923 and a gripping account of the demise of Bear Sterns in 2007. This failure prognosticated a lot of issues that would eventually stultify the firm, and the author puts forward that its deviation from various historical operating practices led to its ultimate sale to JPMorgan Chase at $10 per share, down from over $170 just a year earlier.
John Rigas started Adelphia Communcations in 1952 with the help of two partners, but soon bought it out. The company was taken public in 1986 and as a result would have to abide by the regulations of the SEC. By the early 2000s, Adelphia was one of the top cable companies in the United States. This was the peak of a corporation that would begin a downward spiral over the first half of 2002 as a result of fraudulent use of the company’s assets at its’ shareholders expense. Members of the Rigas family drove the company to bankruptcy through rampant spending of company funds on personal expenditures (Barlaup, 2009). These expenditures included the likes of gross misuse of the company’s aircraft for personal trips by members of the Rigas family and the construction of a personal golf course on the family’s private land (Markon, 2002). This was accomplished after careful manipulation of the company’s reported numbers and fabrication of transactions within the company. Co-borrowing and self-dealing were commonplace in this time period that resulted in over 2 billion dollars’ worth of debt. All this was done under the nose of shareholders and culminated in an insurmountable debt that would lead the company to bankruptcy and to the imprisonment of multiple members of the Rigas family (Barlaup, 2009).
Overview of the Case: The Securities and Exchange Commission claims Mark D. Begelman misused proprietary information regarding the merger of Bluegreen Corporation with BFC Financial Corporation. Mr. Begelman allegedly learned of the acquisition through a network of professional connections known as the World Presidents’ Organization (Maglich). Members of this organization freely share non-public business information with other members in confidence; however, Mr. Begelman allegedly did not abide by the organization’s mandate of secrecy and leveraged private information into a lucrative security transaction. As stated in the summary of the case by the SEC, “Mark D. Begelman, a member of the World Presidents’ Organization (“WPO”), abused his relationship of trust and confidence and misappropriated material, non-public information he obtained from a fellow WPO member about the pending merger. It was the specific written policy of the WPO that matters of a confidential nature were to be kept confidential (Securities and Exchange Commission). Mr. Begelman maintained a relationship with a fellow WPO member, an insider with BFC Financial, who provided access to non-public information regarding the merger. Mr. Begelman used this information to purchase 25,000 shares of Bluegreen stock prior to the announcement of the acquisition. After the merger was made official and disclosed to the street, Mr. Begelman sold his stake for a net gain of $14,949. He maintained ownership of Bluegreen securities for fifteen days (Gehrke-White).
March 20, 2003, Richard Scrushy, the former chief executive officer of HeathSouth Corporation, was charged by the Securities and Exchang...
In 2008 the worst financial crisis since the great depression hit and left many people wondering who should be responsible. Many Americans supported the prosecution of Wall Street. To this day there have still not been any arrests of any executive on Wall Street for the financial collapse. Many analysts point out that greed of executives was one of the many factors in the crisis. I will talk about subprime loans, ill-intent, punishments, and white collar crime.
Throughout history there have been many white collar crimes. These crimes are defined as non-violent and financial-based crimes that are full ranges of fraud committed by business and government professionals. These crimes are not victimless nor unnoticed. A single scandal can destroy a company and can lose investors millions of dollars. Today, fraud schemes are more sophisticated than ever, and through studying: Enron, LIBOR, Albert Wiggan and Chase National Bank, Lehman Brothers and Madoff, we find how the culprits started there deception, the aftermath of the scandal and what our country has done to prevent future scandals.
Mooney, Richard. "Banker of America." The Boston Globe 4 Apr. 1999: L1 "Powerful house of Morgan Changes with the Times." The San Diego Union-Tribune 24 Feb. 1986: 18 Sinclair, Andrew. Corsair: The Life of J. Pierpont Morgan. Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1981.
Charles Keating exceeded Mr. Lindner’s expectations, which persuaded Mr. Lindner to extend an offer to the forty-eight year-old lawyer a position with American Financial in 1972 as the executive vice-president. Under Lindner’s supervision at American Financial in the mid-1970’s, Keating found a resourceful strategy to raise money from the public without the interference of the Wall Street underwriters. The success of this strategy resulted from sharp decline in profits that Lindner’s company was experiencing. Keating’s success revolved around him raising fifty million dollars for American Financial from the public without using an underwriting syndicate.
In 1995 The Bayou Hedge Fund Group, referred to as the fund, was founded by Samuel Israel III in Stamford, Connecticut with the intention to produce high returns for investors. Good intentions were not enough when the fund began to experience losses almost immediately and Mr. Israel resorted to fraudulent activities to keep the appearance of success alive. The resulting life of the fund was filled will illegal, fraudulent, and unethical activities that finally brought the fund to bankruptcy and landed Mr. Israel and some of his key associates in prison. The objective of this paper is to overview the history of the case and to highlight some of the major issues that should have alerted investors and other outside parties to the wrongdoings being perpetrated.
Companies.” Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition ed.: 1. Nov 26 1999. ProQuest. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
The Mutual Savings Bank Crisis of the 1980s was the first of the banking crises addressed by the FDIC in the 80s. The crisis was brought on by new options in the financial services market that caused disintermediation. In order to rescue the mutual savings industry, the FDIC was forced to experiment with a number of different regulatory attempts. Many mutual savings banks including Richard Parsons's Dime Savings Bank were forced to submit to assisted mergers and demutualization. The mutual savings crisis management served as a training ground for the Savings & Loan and Commercial Banking Crises.
Enron was a company founded in the year 1985 based in Houston, USA. It was one of the world's largest energy trading and Distribution Company having an income of nearly hundred billion dollars during 2000 and was also regarded as America’s most Innovative companies for 6 consecutive years by the fortune magazine. In the last quarter of 2001, it was exposed that it’s declared financial condition was maintained significantly by systematized and skillfully premeditated accounting fraud, known thereafter as the Enron scandal. They hid major debts and did not book them in the balance sheet. The inflated figures in their balance sheet shot up their stock price to unprecedented levels, taking advantage of the situation executives with insider information traded in millions of dollars of Enron stocks. The senior executives and insiders were aware of the offshore accounts that were covering up losses for the Organization; the investors were kept in the dark. This sent across a domino effect which resulted in shareholders losing seventy four billion dollars, loss of hundreds of jobs and thousands of investors and employees losing their retirement accounts.