A Collaborative Approach to Fighting Financial Crime

Tony Sio, Head of Regulatory Strategy and Innovation of Nasdaq's Anti-Financial Crime division, discusses how Nasdaq helps root out bad actors in the financial industry by providing tools like Nasdaq Market Surveillance and Nasdaq Trade Surveillance.

Unraveling the Mystery: Bitcoin's Meteoric Rise and the Cryptocurrency Problem

Read my new article on Substack on the complex landscape of bitcoin's surge and the unresolved mysteries of cryptocurrency - is it an asset, gambling or a scam?

Free access HERE

 

Stanley’s Musings - Fintech, Banking & Payments News #2

Thoughts on fintech, banking, payments, risk management, AI, going green, economics, business and much more…

The latest edition is now available - HERE

Is Today’s Internet a Vulnerable Home for Our Money?

In 'The Unhackable Internet' veteran banking attorney and regulator Tom Vartanian argues for replacing today's Internet with a new, more secure network for financial business. Is he crazy — or a prophetic Cassandra for the age of digital money?

Read all about it HERE.

Is This A Golden Age of Fraud?

How "passive income" money-making scams seem to have taken over the world, and the economic implications of such scams.

The Fake Genius: a $30 BILLION Fraud

Sam Bankman-Fried was supposed to be a billionaire genius running the world's largest Crypto exchange: FTX. In only a few weeks, his $32B empire crumbled, leading to his arrest. In this video, we unravel one of the decade's most significant cases of financial fraud.

Crypto fugitive is arrested

After his TerraUSD cryptocurrency imploded, Do Kwon became one of the most wanted men in crypto.

Last week, after a global manhunt, he was arrested at an airport in Montenegro. WSJ’s Alexander Osipovich tells the story of how Kwon went from being a major crypto player to facing fraud charges in several countries.

Listen to this story from WSJ HERE.

FTX wants politicians and PACs to return their donations

FTX and its affiliated debtors have sent confidential letters asking politicians, PACs and other recipients of funds to return donations made by the crypto exchange once valued at $32 billion.

The recipients are being asked to return donations — or potentially face repercussions — to the now-bankrupt exchange, according to a Sunday statement from FTX.

Get all the details HERE.

Scam Calls Are Still a Huge Problem. How Do We Block Them?

Phone scams may seem like a thing of the past, but nearly a quarter of older adults who reported losing money in a scam last year said it all started with a phone call. But, there is tech that can help prevent these criminals from tricking you or your loved one. 

WSJ family and tech columnist Julie Jargon joins host Zoe Thomas to explain what they are and how they work.

Crypto: The World’s Greatest Scam

Bitcoin to Blockchains, to NFTs, to Web 3.0... it's time to find out if it's really all the hype or just part of one of the greatest scams in human history.

$100 Million Pump & Dump Scheme!

Federal prosecutors and the SEC recently charged seven Influencers with using Twitter, Discord and YouTube to commit securities fraud that netted them more than $100 million. 

An eighth influencer was charged with aiding and abetting the alleged scheme in the SEC’s civil complaint and with conspiracy to commit securities fraud in the Department of Justice’s criminal case. 

Each of the defendants had well over 100,000 Twitter followers as of this month, they ran a podcast called "Pennies: Going In Raw" and a YouTube channel called "Goblin Gang".

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.

"Pump and dump" schemes have two parts. In the first, promoters try to boost the price of a stock with false or misleading statements about the company. Once the stock price has been pumped up, fraudsters move on to the second part, where they seek to profit by selling their own holdings of the stock, dumping shares into the market.

These schemes often occur on the Internet where it is common to see messages urging readers to buy a stock quickly. Often, the promoters will claim to have "inside" information about a development that will be positive for the stock. After these fraudsters dump their shares and stop hyping the stock, the price typically falls, and investors lose their money.

Why We Trust Fraudsters!

From Enron to Wirecard to Theranos and FTX, elaborate investment scams can remain undetected long after the warning signs appear. What are investors missing?

Prosecutors Step Up Pressure on Bankman-Fried's Associates

US authorities are ratcheting up pressure on Sam Bankman-Fried’s inner circle as they scrutinize former close FTX associate Nishad Singh, according to people familiar with the matter. Bloomberg's Sonali Basak reports.

Charles Ponzi - The Documentary

Charles Ponzi, was an Italian born con artist based out of the United States and Canada. Born and raised in Lugo Italy, he became internationally famous in the early 1920s as a con man for his money-making scheme. He promised clients a 50% profit within 45 days, or 100% profit within 90 days, by buying discounted postal reply coupons in Europe and redeeming them at face value in the United States as a form of financial arbitrage.

 
In reality, Ponzi was paying earlier investors using the investments of later investors. While this type of fraudulent investment scheme was not originally invented by Ponzi, it became so identified with him that it now is referred to as a "Ponzi scheme".

 
His scheme ran for just under a year before it collapsed, costing his "investors" $20 million.
This history channel style documentary tells the full story of Charles Ponzi, from his childhood in Italy, through to the heights of his fame in Boston Massachusetts, through to his prison sentence, deportation, and his life after the scheme collapsed. In this film the Ponzi scheme is explained along with how it differs from a pyramid scheme.

 
The film is written and narrated by Patrick Boyle, a fund manager and finance professor at King's College London.