WThe $2 billion arms deal or Dasukigate is an arms procurement deal in Nigeria that resulted in the embezzlement of $2 billion through the office of the National Security Adviser under the leadership of Colonel Sambo Dasuki, the former National Security Adviser. The illegal deal was revealed following an interim report of the presidential investigations committee on arms procurement under the Goodluck Jonathan administration. The committee report showed an extra-budgetary spending to the tune of N643.8 billion and an additional spending of about $2.2 billion in the foreign currency component under the Goodluck Jonathan administration.
WThe Abraaj Group was a private equity firm operating in six continents. The firm was founded by Pakistani businessman Arif Naqvi and was based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
WAl Yamamah is the name of a series of record arms sales by the United Kingdom to Saudi Arabia, paid for by the delivery of up to 600,000 barrels (95,000 m3) of crude oil per day to the British government. The prime contractor has been BAE Systems and its predecessor British Aerospace. The first sales occurred in September 1985 and the most recent contract for 72 Eurofighter Typhoon multirole fighters was signed in August 2006.
WBanc De Binary was an Israeli financial firm with a history of regulatory issues on three continents. On January 9, 2017, the company announced that it would be closing due to negative press coverage and its tarnished reputation. The firm also surrendered its brokerage license with the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) removing its ability to legally trade in the European Union. Its 2014 revenues were reported as $100 million.
WBanco Intercontinental was the second largest privately held commercial bank in the Dominican Republic before collapsing in 2003 in a fraud tied to political corruption.
WBanco Español de Crédito, S.A., “Spanish Credit Bank”) better known as Banesto, was a Spanish multinational financial services company. Prior to the Spanish Government's historical intervention in 1993, the very first in the history of banking, Banesto was the third-largest financial group in Spain, operating around 1,770 branches, as well as the fifth-largest company of the IBEX 35. The ambitious capital increase planned in 1993 by its Executive Chairman Mario Conde together with J.P. Morgan's vice-president Roberto Mendoza became the biggest restructuring plan in the history of Europe, involving asset sales and a rights issue of US$1.2 billion, after which Banesto was expected to become the largest financial firm in Europe. Although initially accepted by the Bank of Spain, it was later frustrated following intervention on the basis of financial transparency.
WEric Reed Boucher, better known by his professional name Jello Biafra, is an American singer and spoken word artist. He is the former lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys.
WA bucket shop is a business that allows gambling based on the prices of stocks or commodities. A 1906 U.S. Supreme Court ruling defined a bucket shop as "an establishment, nominally for the transaction of a stock exchange business, or business of similar character, but really for the registration of bets, or wagers, usually for small amounts, on the rise or fall of the prices of stocks, grain, oil, etc., there being no transfer or delivery of the stock or commodities nominally dealt in".
WCARES Act-related frauds in Puerto Rico was a series of several financial fraud scandals related to the payment of benefits from the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program from the CARES Act in Puerto Rico during 2020. The most notable of these schemes, involved several employees from the Department of Labor of Puerto Rico receiving unemployment checks while still working.
WCentral Registry of Securitisation Asset Reconstruction and Security Interest (CERSAI) is a central online security interest registry of India. It was primarily created to check frauds in lending against equitable mortgages, in which people would take multiple loans on the same asset from different banks.
WCheck kiting or cheque kiting is a form of check fraud, involving taking advantage of the float to make use of non-existent funds in a checking or other bank account. In this way, instead of being used as a negotiable instrument, checks are misused as a form of unauthorized credit.
WThe Danske Bank money laundering scandal arose in 2017-2018, when it became known that around €200 billion of suspicious transactions had flowed from Estonian, Russian, Latvian and other sources through the Estonia-based bank branch of Denmark-based Danske Bank from 2007 to 2015. It has been described as possibly the largest money laundering scandal ever in Europe, and as possibly the largest in world history. It includes incoming funds from Estonia (23%), Russia (23%), Latvia (12%), Cyprus (9%), UK (4%) and others. Outgoing funds were distributed between Estonia (15%), Latvia (14%), China (7%), Switzerland (6%), Turkey (6%) and others (52%)
WThe Enron scandal was an accounting scandal involving Enron Corporation, an American energy company based in Houston, Texas. Upon being publicized in October 2001, the company declared bankruptcy and its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen – then one of the five largest audit and accountancy partnerships in the world – was effectively dissolved. In addition to being the largest bankruptcy reorganization in U.S. history at that time, Enron was cited as the biggest audit failure.
WFalse billing is a fraudulent act of invoicing or otherwise requesting funds from an individual or firm without showing obligation to pay. Such notices are, for example, often sent to owners of domain names, purporting to be legitimate renewal notices, although not originating from the owner's own registrar.
WHong Kong Mercantile Exchange was an electronic commodities exchange established in Hong Kong for the trading of commodity futures, options and other financial derivatives. The exchange was originally pitched as a platform to trade oil futures. In fact, it ended up trading mainly silver and gold futures.
WJan Lewandowski known professionally as Jan Lewan, is a Polish-American songwriter and polka band leader. Lewan's financial crimes were described by The Morning Call as a "classic Ponzi scheme".
WThe Dominion of Melchizedek (DoM) is a micronation known for facilitating large scale banking fraud in many parts of the world during the 1990s and early 2000s. DoM was unilaterally declared to occupy a few tiny islands worldwide, and is internationally unrecognized by any other nation.
WMicrocap stock fraud is a form of securities fraud involving stocks of "microcap" companies, generally defined in the United States as those with a market capitalization of under $250 million. Its prevalence has been estimated to run into the billions of dollars a year. Many microcap stocks are penny stocks, which the SEC defines as a security that trades at less than $5 per share, is not listed on a national exchange, and fails to meet other specific criteria.
WMichael Robert Milken is an American convicted felon, financier and philanthropist. He is noted for his role in the development of the market for high-yield bonds, and his conviction and sentence following a guilty plea on felony charges for violating U.S. securities laws. Since his release from prison, he has also become known for his charitable giving. Milken was pardoned by President Donald Trump on February 18, 2020.
WNaked short selling, or naked shorting, is the practice of short-selling a tradable asset of any kind without first borrowing the asset from someone else or ensuring that it can be borrowed. When the seller does not obtain the asset and deliver it to the buyer within the required time frame, the result is known as a "failure to deliver" (FTD). The transaction generally remains open until the asset is acquired and delivered by the seller, or the seller's broker settles the trade on their behalf.
WNew Utopia, officially the Principality of New Utopia, is a micronation claiming the Misteriosa Bank, an unclaimed undersea rise of land in the Caribbean Sea off the Cayman Islands where it is hoped to build structures raised up from the underwater land. It was first proclaimed on 13 April 1999 by American businessman Howard Turney ; the project has recently been revived.
WThe Panama Papers are 11.5 million leaked documents that were published beginning on April 3, 2016. The papers detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. The documents, some dating back to the 1970s, were created by, and taken from, former Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca.
WThe Panama Papers are 11.5 million leaked documents that detail financial and attorney-client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. The documents, some dating back to the 1970s, were created by and taken from, Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, and were leaked in 2015 by an anonymous source.
W"Pump and dump" (P&D) is a form of securities fraud that involves artificially inflating the price of an owned stock through false and misleading positive statements, in order to sell the cheaply purchased stock at a higher price. Once the operators of the scheme "dump" (sell) their overvalued shares, the price falls and investors lose their money. This is most common with small cap cryptocurrencies and very small corporations/companies, i.e. "microcaps".
WChael Patrick Sonnen is an American submission grappling promoter, mixed martial arts (MMA) analyst, and retired mixed martial artist. Beginning his MMA career in 1997, Sonnen competed for the UFC, where he became a top contender in both the light heavyweight and middleweight divisions and challenged for both the UFC Light Heavyweight and UFC Middleweight Championships. Sonnen has also fought in the WEC, Pancrase, and most recently for Bellator MMA. Sonnen is often considered one of the best mixed martial artists never to have won a UFC Championship. In 2014, Sonnen began working as a MMA analyst for ESPN and two years later, in July 2016, founded Submission Underground (SUG), his own submission wrestling promotion. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest trash-talkers in MMA history.
WSOS Rasisme was a Norwegian organisation, whose stated goal was to "fight racism and nazism." It was founded in 1985, as the Norwegian sister organisation of the French SOS Racisme. It went bankrupt in 2013 after being convicted of defrauding the government and the Norwegian Children and Youth Council by reporting grossly exaggerated membership figures in order to obtain public funding. The police subsequently opened an investigation of the organisation and indicted ten of its key officials for fraud, embezzlement and money laundering.
WStratton Oakmont, Inc. was a Long Island, New York, "over-the-counter" brokerage house founded in 1989 by Jordan Belfort and Danny Porush. It defrauded many shareholders, leading to the arrest and incarceration of several executives and the closing of the firm in 1996.
WThe Wirecard scandal is a series of accounting scandals that resulted in the insolvency of Wirecard, a German payment processor and financial services provider that was part of the DAX index. Wirecard AG is a payment processor headquartered in Munich, Germany. The company offers its customers electronic payment transaction services and risk management, as well as the issuing and processing of physical cards. The subsidiary Wirecard Bank AG holds a banking licence and holds contracts with multiple international financial services companies.
WJacob Alexander Wohl is an American far-right conspiracy theorist and fraudster. Wohl and conservative lobbyist and conspiracy theorist Jack Burkman have allegedly been responsible for multiple unsuccessful plots to frame public figures for fictitious sexual assaults, including in October 2018 against U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in April 2019 against 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, and in April 2020 against White House Coronavirus Task Force member Anthony Fauci.
WA work-at-home scheme is a get-rich-quick scam in which a victim is lured by an offer to be employed at home, very often doing some simple task in a minimal amount of time with a large amount of income that far exceeds the market rate for the type of work. The true purpose of such an offer is for the perpetrator to extort money from the victim, either by charging a fee to join the scheme, or requiring the victim to invest in products whose resale value is misrepresented.
WThe Workers' Youth League affair was a political affair, where leaders of the Workers' Youth League (AUF) were charged with deliberately inflating membership numbers to receive increased government funding. Two former treasurers and two former leaders of the Oslo chapter were found guilty of fraud, and given prison sentences, for having unlawfully received 648,000 kr in grants from the City of Oslo between 1992 and 1994. The convicted were Ragnar Bøe Elgsaas, Anders Hornslien, Bjørn Jarle Rødberg Larsen and Anders Greif Mathisen. Anders Mathisen's sentence was suspended.