Results tagged “fraud”

Local Thai restaurant chain Thai Ginger is at the center of an immigration fraud conspiracy. Restaurant owner Varee Bradford was arrested yesterday for assembling "sham marriages" between four Thai nationals--three of which were her relatives--and Thai Ginger employees. Bradford had offered $10,000-$20,000 to select restaurant workers with U.S. residency that could move up the chain's corporate ladder, simply by agreeing to marry her relatives until death green card do they part. Now Bradford is looking at a maximum prison term of five years on the conspiracy charge and ten years for each of the document fraud counts.

Bloomberg is reporting that Regal Financial Bank, headquartered at the 4th and Madison Tower, is being "sued by a group of more than 4,000 Indonesian investors over accusations it helped operate a $600 million Ponzi scheme." The suit alleges that Regal Financial Bank President Jesse Tam and an advisory board member, Danny Wong, assisted in soliciting funds for an investment company, but that the funds were used to pay previous investors, while Tam "Madoff" with some of the funds for Regal. Regal says the allegations are "baseless," says the PSBJ.

Larry McFadden and John Rothnie, managers at the Port of Seattle, have resigned from their positions after a special investigation into the Port's activities found ten provable instances of fraud. According to the P-I's sources, Port CEO Tay Yoshitani had planned to fire the two men as part of his disciplinary response to the investigation's findings, but they chose to leave under their own will before Yoshitani could announce his intentions.

Were you as shocked as we were when you heard that there's corruption afoot at the Port of Seattle? Shocked! A $1.3 million investigation into the state of affairs over at the Port of Seattle offices has dredged up ten specific times when employees committed civil fraud. It's not new information, but the investigation does confirm and provide evidence for each case. One guy even used his connections to get his daughter an internship, which is one of those unfair but all-too-commonplace occurrences in this broken, broken world.

CRM software supplier Entellium claims to "empower small and medium sized businesses," but it looks like the Seattle company's CEO and CFO empowered themselves to pretend their small business was a few sizes bigger, to win $50 million from venture capitalists. "We are the old-fashioned type of entrepreneurs where you have to get revenue in order to spend," CEO Johnston told John Cook in 2004. When the revenue didn't come in fast enough, Johnston and his CFO created a second set of books that inflated Entellium's profits. Cook has Johnston's resignation letter on his new blog, which is currently a clearinghouse for details on the Entellium fraud.

Charges have been dismissed against a Federal Way woman who registered her Australian Shepherd/Terrier Mix, Duncan, to vote. Jane Balogh registered Duncan to vote in order to prove that Washington's policies are so lax that even a non-existent person--or a canine--could register to vote. A King County Judge dropped the charges Monday, after Balogh proved she had completed community service and paid $240 in court fees. Balogh swears Duncan never actually voted in an election. No word on who the pooches presidential pick would be if he was still a registered voter, but we predict he's a Blue Dog.

A Seattle-area man whose identity had been stumping the FBI has been identified with the help of his parents. The 52-year-old man had been arrested two weeks ago by federal authorities on charges of identity theft and fraud. The government had not been able to identify the man, who had been known to use over 30 aliases, because he had burned the tips of his fingers to alter his prints.

Here are three vaguely computer-related crimes taken from recent headlines in Seattle, Chicago and New England.

Seattlest's favorite crime (just edging Identity Theft) strikes again, this time in one of Seattlest's favorite places. A copper theft at Snoqualmie Pass temporarily disabled highway signs and safety lighting, which had to suck for people navigating the pass in the middle of the night.

Save our Sonics & Storm appealed to Seattle pride in a letter to supporters today.

In case you have not seen it Sonics and Storm fans have been "called out" in the Oklahoma City Newspaper owned by the Bennett family.

Continue reading "Sonics & Storm Savers Say: "Seattle, You've Been Called Out""

A decomposed body was found in the house of ex-radio guy Mike Webb. We heard that first on the television, but we've been reading about Webb on the excellent Blatherwatch blog for a while now--they've been following Webb's fall for months, even from way back in the days before they had a special category for "Mike Webb Missing" on the blog.

Although the dailies almost convinced us that spam as we know it has ended because Robert Alan Soloway was arrested yesterday, our inbox says otherwise.

We here in the Ist-A-Verse know that we're sensational, but it's very rare that we get a chance to be sensationalistic. This week, we've decided to have ourselves a little fun and try our hand at tacky tabloid headlines, using nothing more than our favorite posts from this week.

--Your office may be nicer than Steve Ballmer's.

In the future, when Vegas favors your Super Bowl opponent by a touchdown or more, it's best to consider that they're perpetrating some fraud on the betting public or simply don't know what they're talking about only after you've thought long and hard on the possibility that they indeed know exactly what they're talking about. You should, unlike Seattlest -- born and raised in the Windy City -- think long and hard on it before you finish a particularly drinky NFC Championship by seating yourself in front of Southwest.com. In retrospect, no way the Bears are winning that game, and even if they do it's ten below outside -- only the most jingoistic of idiots turns cars over and parties in the streets when it's ten below. There was no Shuffling in Chicago this weekend. It was more of a mad dash from one thermostat to the next.

--Todd Bishop has an update on the Microsoft researcher currently lost at sea.

At the risk of beating the pulp of the dead horse, Seattlest knows that many are still without power at home. We feel a little remiss in that all that we can do is sit around and post lame things about it when, instead, we should be going out there and doing something about it. Well, the problem is that we have a barbarian's understanding of electric fundamentals. Sure, sure. We can wire up 12 volt DC gadgets in our car; we can even wire some rudimentary circuits on the ol' 110 in the palatial estate. So perhaps it is more accurate to say that we have an educated barbarian's understanding of electricity.

Get to work you worthless layabouts, and quit mooching off unemployment. Once upon an unemployed summer, Seattlest got very familiar with the hoops you gotta jump through to keep those checks coming. At one point we had to attend a class somewhere on Aurora, but week to week we just had to keep a little job searching log and if that log ever showed that we failed to apply for two positions a week (or make two employer contacts or whatever), woe be unto us - We'd be cut off. That being at the start of the internet age, we actually sent out about a dozen resumes a week (which took about ten minutes), but when it came time to fill out the journal it was always easier to just make something up. It's one of the many little frauds that we're sure will one day catch up with us.

Yes, Starbucks fucked up. Their "complimentary iced grande beverage" email coupon rapidly escalated beyond its intended audience, to no-one's surprise but Starbucks management's. They're embarrassed, and they should be -- it's a rookie Internet mistake, the kind of thing that we associate with the wild-'n'-woolly days of early '00 or so.

JJ Hunsecker here. Those in the know think the trivia game at The Old Pequliar is starting to smell like yesterday's fish. You can usually find Seattlest there Tuesday nights, but we were unable to go this week. Turns out we missed quite an event.

Democrats supporting the proposal fired back with partisan shots of their own. "I think that's a bunch of right-wing blog nonsense...I think what's important is the answers he gives when he appears before the council," said the council's ranking thinker Dow Constantine.

We know that if you had any intention of seeing the Da Vinci Code you’ve probably gone already, but just in case you still care, we saw it opening weekend at a packed-to-the-gills Pacific Place (we knew it’d be popular, but we didn’t expect to see a line waiting for the theater when the film ended) (also, we didn’t expect such an Old Navy-clad crowd, or that anyone would think it was an appropriate movie to bring a 3-year-old to see, but then even now we’re not sure what kind of crowd we did expect), and there are a few things about it we’d like to get off our chest, if you’ll indulge us.

Just a quick nod to our brothers in ist down in Houston and their coverage of the Enron thing. The trial wrapped up today when Lay was found guilty of all the charges brought against him and Skilling was found guilty of most.

Once, Seattle had an afternoon paper. It was called the Seattle Times, and had sensible columnists like Emmett Watson who knew how to write a sentence. We can only assume it has no connection to the shrill, idiotic Seattle Times that now appears in the mornings. Anyway, the afternoon Times was there to tell you what happened while you were at work. Since it's gone, Seattlest steps into the void with our daily afternoon news roundup, "All the News."

As the Mariners continue to stagger through the second week of the season our optimism following the 3-1 start has dropped a bit, okay a huge bit. We may need to take a break tonight since we have spent the last few games with our head in our hands.

[See the end of this post for contest information. Win a shirt!]

DCist helps us make more sense of the world this week. Posts like this concert review are the reason for Scott Stapp. DCist also enumerates the reasons for playing ultimate frisbee, Condi’s tight buns, their love of a local convenience store, and their jealousy of a person in Seattle calling the city.

Apparently Republicans don't like the U.S. Postal Service since liberals are able to perpetrate voter fraud by mail much more easily than conservatives. Naturally, the Sound Politics blog is all fired up about King County Executive Ron Sims' plan to make mail-in voting official for elections, maybe by next year.

Claiming that the Republicans did not show "clear and convincing" proof Judge John Bridges sided with the Democrats in the governor’s election trial.