Ex-employee says Madoff "told me what to do"

Accused fraudster Annette Bongiorno said in federal court that she was merely a well-paid typist for Bernard Madoff, and that she didn't know he was running a Ponzi scheme.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

She also testified that she would go back and alter trading records at Madoff's request when market conditions changed.

Bongiorno and four other ex-employees of Madoff's firm are currently on trial for fraud in federal court in Manhattan.

Under cross examination on Thursday, Bongiorno insisted that she didn't know that she was doing anything wrong.

"We did it all the time, these changes," she said. "I didn't think of it."

Bongiorno also claimed that she didn't know what the S&P 500 Index was, even though she admittedly spent years staring at a Bloomberg terminal as she backdated months or years worth of fictional trades.

She testified that after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in September of 2008, she rewrote Madoff's records to make it look like he shrewdly sold 5,600 shares of the firm two months before its collapse. But she insisted that she didn't understand the significance of what she was doing, because she didn't read The Wall Street Journal.

"Everything was backdated," said Bongiorno. "It didn't raise a red flag."

Related: Five things you didn't know about Madoff's scam

She said that she spent so much of her career backdating trades that she did it without thinking, like "brushing my teeth," she told the court.

Bongiorno insisted that she was only entering data on orders from Madoff, whom she said was like a big brother to her.

"He told me what to do," she said. "I typed."

She said that she was paid a "good salary" for her typing. She also acknowledged that she owned a Bentley and two Mercedes, along with a house on Long Island, NY, and another home in Florida. She said that she had been looking forward to retirement and planned to sell her two homes and buy a $6.5 million condominium in Boca Raton.

But then in 2008 Madoff's scheme fell apart and the feds "seized everything," she said.

Bongiorno is on trial along with colleagues Dan Bonventre, Joann Crupi, Jerome O'Hara and George Perez. All are accused of helping Madoff orchestrate his $20 billion pyramid-style scam, and all have pleaded not guilty.

Related: JPMorgan's $2.6 billion Madoff reckoning

Madoff, who pleaded guilty in 2009 and is serving a 150-year sentence in a federal prison in North Carolina, hired underlings with limited experience and education. Bongiorno started working at the firm when she was 19 and fresh out of high school. She introduced Madoff to Frank DiPascali, Jr., who was driving a delivery truck for a dry cleaning service when Madoff hired him 1975. He eventually became a portfolio manager and is now acting as a witness for the government.

DiPascali admitted to cooking the books for his former boss by recording fake trades that actually didn't exist in testimony earlier this year. "We were lying," he said at the time.

Bonventre was an accountant when he went to work for Madoff, and was therefore one of the most experienced new hires on Madoff's staff. He also got an Associate's degree over the course of six years while working at the firm.

Related: SAC Capital's Martoma found guilty

Despite his college education and accounting experience, Bonventre said that the bulk of his Wall Street knowledge came from his former boss.

"[Madoff] often boasted that he wrote the rules," Bonventre said in testimony earlier this month. "He always told me 'this is how things work' and 'this is how we do it,' and I always believed him."

The trial, which has dragged on for five months, could go to the jury next week.

First Published: February 28, 2014: 1:01 PM ET

15.30 | 0 komentar | Read More

The dysfunctional debate on debt

When it comes to long-term U.S. debt, Washington lawmakers and the White House aren't debating how to handle it, but rather who is ignoring the issue more.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

And both are projected to resume a northward trek in a few years.

But lawmakers are not talking seriously about how to put the federal budget on sounder footing for the long run.

In some ways, that's not surprising. Lawmakers and President Obama have been at war over the budget and debt ceiling since the 2008 financial crisis.

Those fights yielded the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the fiscal cliff deal of 2013, among other measures, which together have reduced projected deficits by a few trillion bucks over the next decade.

That's not nothing. But those measures don't do much to address the long-term debt problem that will come as the bulk of Baby Boomers retire, health care costs per person rise and interest on the growing debt builds.

What lawmakers have done is buy themselves a little time to plan for that future budget crunch.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that federal spending in coming decades will continually outpace revenue, and that the country's accumulated debt will keep growing faster than the economy.

End result: The vast majority of federal dollars will go to paying entitlement benefits and interest on the debt, leaving less money to pay for everything else Americans expect their government to do.

Related: Deficits continue to drop sharply - CBO

What lawmakers have now is a "quiet" period -- an improved economy and stabilized deficits. If they don't take advantage of it to start talking about these issues in earnest, it will be harder in the future to align spending pressures with incoming revenue. The longer lawmakers wait, the more abrupt the changes they may need to make.

"This is the time," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former CBO director and now president of the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank. "Fixing it in the middle of [the crunch] is not the time."

So what is Washington doing? Pointing fingers at who is ignoring the issue more and worrying about the next election.

Take the recent news that President Obama won't include a controversial Social Security proposal in his 2015 budget proposal due out on Tuesday.

The proposal, known as chained CPI, was included in his budget last year and would help reduce deficits by changing how federal benefits are adjusted for cost of living.

Those annual COLA increases, including growth in Social Security benefits, would be smaller under chained CPI than they are under more widely used inflation measures. Hence, why it's so controversial.

Related: 2013 deficit drops to $680 billion

The White House said the proposal is still good if Republicans are willing to close some tax loopholes to raise revenue for deficit reduction.

"That offer has been on the table for more than a year, and we've not seen any constructive engagement from the other side," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.

Republicans characterized the White House decision to drop the proposal from the budget as a clear sign Obama is done dealing with debt reduction.

"With three years left in office, it seems the president is already throwing in the towel," said Brendan Buck, the spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner.

So there we are. "You won't deal," Democrats say. "No, you won't deal," Republicans say.

Regardless of who you think is right, the fact remains no one's dealing.

First Published: February 28, 2014: 3:45 PM ET

15.30 | 0 komentar | Read More

Online poker players get $76 million back

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

A court-appointed administrator announced the distribution Friday of $76 million to roughly 27,500 U.S. customers of the defunct poker site. Their accounts have been frozen since 2011 due to a criminal case.

The Poker Players Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group, applauded the action, but said there are still "several thousand" ex-Full Tilt players in the U.S. who have yet to receive their money. John Pappas, executive director of the PPA, estimated that there are between $50 million and $60 million in unclaimed or disputed funds that have yet to be distributed.

Prosecutors accused Full Tilt and two other sites -- PokerStars and Absolute Poker -- of circumventing federal laws against Internet gambling by deceiving banks and credit card issuers into processing payments for U.S. players.

In July 2012, the Justice Department announced a $731 million settlement with PokerStars and Full Tilt to resolve the allegations. Full Tilt also settled allegations that it had operated a Ponzi scheme, failing to maintain sufficient funds on deposit for players to withdraw.

Under the settlement, Full Tilt agreed to forfeit virtually of all its assets to the government, with PokerStars acquiring them.

Former Full Tilt CEO Raymond Bitar pleaded guilty last year to multiple gambling and fraud charges. He faced a substantial prison sentence but was released because of health problems.

First Published: February 28, 2014: 5:57 PM ET

15.30 | 0 komentar | Read More

Ex-employee says Madoff "told me what to do"

Accused fraudster Annette Bongiorno said in federal court that she was merely a well-paid typist for Bernard Madoff, and that she didn't know he was running a Ponzi scheme.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

She also testified that she would go back and alter trading records at Madoff's request when market conditions changed.

Bongiorno and four other ex-employees of Madoff's firm are currently on trial for fraud in federal court in Manhattan.

Under cross examination on Thursday, Bongiorno insisted that she didn't know that she was doing anything wrong.

"We did it all the time, these changes," she said. "I didn't think of it."

Bongiorno also claimed that she didn't know what the S&P 500 Index was, even though she admittedly spent years staring at a Bloomberg terminal as she backdated months or years worth of fictional trades.

She testified that after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in September of 2008, she rewrote Madoff's records to make it look like he shrewdly sold 5,600 shares of the firm two months before its collapse. But she insisted that she didn't understand the significance of what she was doing, because she didn't read The Wall Street Journal.

"Everything was backdated," said Bongiorno. "It didn't raise a red flag."

Related: Five things you didn't know about Madoff's scam

She said that she spent so much of her career backdating trades that she did it without thinking, like "brushing my teeth," she told the court.

Bongiorno insisted that she was only entering data on orders from Madoff, whom she said was like a big brother to her.

"He told me what to do," she said. "I typed."

She said that she was paid a "good salary" for her typing. She also acknowledged that she owned a Bentley and two Mercedes, along with a house on Long Island, NY, and another home in Florida. She said that she had been looking forward to retirement and planned to sell her two homes and buy a $6.5 million condominium in Boca Raton.

But then in 2008 Madoff's scheme fell apart and the feds "seized everything," she said.

Bongiorno is on trial along with colleagues Dan Bonventre, Joann Crupi, Jerome O'Hara and George Perez. All are accused of helping Madoff orchestrate his $20 billion pyramid-style scam, and all have pleaded not guilty.

Related: JPMorgan's $2.6 billion Madoff reckoning

Madoff, who pleaded guilty in 2009 and is serving a 150-year sentence in a federal prison in North Carolina, hired underlings with limited experience and education. Bongiorno started working at the firm when she was 19 and fresh out of high school. She introduced Madoff to Frank DiPascali, Jr., who was driving a delivery truck for a dry cleaning service when Madoff hired him 1975. He eventually became a portfolio manager and is now acting as a witness for the government.

DiPascali admitted to cooking the books for his former boss by recording fake trades that actually didn't exist in testimony earlier this year. "We were lying," he said at the time.

Bonventre was an accountant when he went to work for Madoff, and was therefore one of the most experienced new hires on Madoff's staff. He also got an Associate's degree over the course of six years while working at the firm.

Related: SAC Capital's Martoma found guilty

Despite his college education and accounting experience, Bonventre said that the bulk of his Wall Street knowledge came from his former boss.

"[Madoff] often boasted that he wrote the rules," Bonventre said in testimony earlier this month. "He always told me 'this is how things work' and 'this is how we do it,' and I always believed him."

The trial, which has dragged on for five months, could go to the jury next week.

First Published: February 28, 2014: 1:01 PM ET

17.42 | 0 komentar | Read More

The dysfunctional debate on debt

When it comes to long-term U.S. debt, Washington lawmakers and the White House aren't debating how to handle it, but rather who is ignoring the issue more.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

And both are projected to resume a northward trek in a few years.

But lawmakers are not talking seriously about how to put the federal budget on sounder footing for the long run.

In some ways, that's not surprising. Lawmakers and President Obama have been at war over the budget and debt ceiling since the 2008 financial crisis.

Those fights yielded the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the fiscal cliff deal of 2013, among other measures, which together have reduced projected deficits by a few trillion bucks over the next decade.

That's not nothing. But those measures don't do much to address the long-term debt problem that will come as the bulk of Baby Boomers retire, health care costs per person rise and interest on the growing debt builds.

What lawmakers have done is buy themselves a little time to plan for that future budget crunch.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that federal spending in coming decades will continually outpace revenue, and that the country's accumulated debt will keep growing faster than the economy.

End result: The vast majority of federal dollars will go to paying entitlement benefits and interest on the debt, leaving less money to pay for everything else Americans expect their government to do.

Related: Deficits continue to drop sharply - CBO

What lawmakers have now is a "quiet" period -- an improved economy and stabilized deficits. If they don't take advantage of it to start talking about these issues in earnest, it will be harder in the future to align spending pressures with incoming revenue. The longer lawmakers wait, the more abrupt the changes they may need to make.

"This is the time," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former CBO director and now president of the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank. "Fixing it in the middle of [the crunch] is not the time."

So what is Washington doing? Pointing fingers at who is ignoring the issue more and worrying about the next election.

Take the recent news that President Obama won't include a controversial Social Security proposal in his 2015 budget proposal due out on Tuesday.

The proposal, known as chained CPI, was included in his budget last year and would help reduce deficits by changing how federal benefits are adjusted for cost of living.

Those annual COLA increases, including growth in Social Security benefits, would be smaller under chained CPI than they are under more widely used inflation measures. Hence, why it's so controversial.

Related: 2013 deficit drops to $680 billion

The White House said the proposal is still good if Republicans are willing to close some tax loopholes to raise revenue for deficit reduction.

"That offer has been on the table for more than a year, and we've not seen any constructive engagement from the other side," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.

Republicans characterized the White House decision to drop the proposal from the budget as a clear sign Obama is done dealing with debt reduction.

"With three years left in office, it seems the president is already throwing in the towel," said Brendan Buck, the spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner.

So there we are. "You won't deal," Democrats say. "No, you won't deal," Republicans say.

Regardless of who you think is right, the fact remains no one's dealing.

First Published: February 28, 2014: 3:45 PM ET

17.42 | 0 komentar | Read More

Online poker players get $76 million back

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

A court-appointed administrator announced the distribution Friday of $76 million to roughly 27,500 U.S. customers of the defunct poker site. Their accounts have been frozen since 2011 due to a criminal case.

The Poker Players Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group, applauded the action, but said there are still "several thousand" ex-Full Tilt players in the U.S. who have yet to receive their money. John Pappas, executive director of the PPA, estimated that there are between $50 million and $60 million in unclaimed or disputed funds that have yet to be distributed.

Prosecutors accused Full Tilt and two other sites -- PokerStars and Absolute Poker -- of circumventing federal laws against Internet gambling by deceiving banks and credit card issuers into processing payments for U.S. players.

In July 2012, the Justice Department announced a $731 million settlement with PokerStars and Full Tilt to resolve the allegations. Full Tilt also settled allegations that it had operated a Ponzi scheme, failing to maintain sufficient funds on deposit for players to withdraw.

Under the settlement, Full Tilt agreed to forfeit virtually of all its assets to the government, with PokerStars acquiring them.

Former Full Tilt CEO Raymond Bitar pleaded guilty last year to multiple gambling and fraud charges. He faced a substantial prison sentence but was released because of health problems.

First Published: February 28, 2014: 5:57 PM ET

17.42 | 0 komentar | Read More

Ex-employee says Madoff "told me what to do"

Accused fraudster Annette Bongiorno said in federal court that she was merely a well-paid typist for Bernard Madoff, and that she didn't know he was running a Ponzi scheme.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

She also testified that she would go back and alter trading records at Madoff's request when market conditions changed.

Bongiorno and four other ex-employees of Madoff's firm are currently on trial for fraud in federal court in Manhattan.

Under cross examination on Thursday, Bongiorno insisted that she didn't know that she was doing anything wrong.

"We did it all the time, these changes," she said. "I didn't think of it."

Bongiorno also claimed that she didn't know what the S&P 500 Index was, even though she admittedly spent years staring at a Bloomberg terminal as she backdated months or years worth of fictional trades.

She testified that after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in September of 2008, she rewrote Madoff's records to make it look like he shrewdly sold 5,600 shares of the firm two months before its collapse. But she insisted that she didn't understand the significance of what she was doing, because she didn't read The Wall Street Journal.

"Everything was backdated," said Bongiorno. "It didn't raise a red flag."

Related: Five things you didn't know about Madoff's scam

She said that she spent so much of her career backdating trades that she did it without thinking, like "brushing my teeth," she told the court.

Bongiorno insisted that she was only entering data on orders from Madoff, whom she said was like a big brother to her.

"He told me what to do," she said. "I typed."

She said that she was paid a "good salary" for her typing. She also acknowledged that she owned a Bentley and two Mercedes, along with a house on Long Island, NY, and another home in Florida. She said that she had been looking forward to retirement and planned to sell her two homes and buy a $6.5 million condominium in Boca Raton.

But then in 2008 Madoff's scheme fell apart and the feds "seized everything," she said.

Bongiorno is on trial along with colleagues Dan Bonventre, Joann Crupi, Jerome O'Hara and George Perez. All are accused of helping Madoff orchestrate his $20 billion pyramid-style scam, and all have pleaded not guilty.

Related: JPMorgan's $2.6 billion Madoff reckoning

Madoff, who pleaded guilty in 2009 and is serving a 150-year sentence in a federal prison in North Carolina, hired underlings with limited experience and education. Bongiorno started working at the firm when she was 19 and fresh out of high school. She introduced Madoff to Frank DiPascali, Jr., who was driving a delivery truck for a dry cleaning service when Madoff hired him 1975. He eventually became a portfolio manager and is now acting as a witness for the government.

DiPascali admitted to cooking the books for his former boss by recording fake trades that actually didn't exist in testimony earlier this year. "We were lying," he said at the time.

Bonventre was an accountant when he went to work for Madoff, and was therefore one of the most experienced new hires on Madoff's staff. He also got an Associate's degree over the course of six years while working at the firm.

Related: SAC Capital's Martoma found guilty

Despite his college education and accounting experience, Bonventre said that the bulk of his Wall Street knowledge came from his former boss.

"[Madoff] often boasted that he wrote the rules," Bonventre said in testimony earlier this month. "He always told me 'this is how things work' and 'this is how we do it,' and I always believed him."

The trial, which has dragged on for five months, could go to the jury next week.

First Published: February 28, 2014: 1:01 PM ET

15.30 | 0 komentar | Read More

The dysfunctional debate on debt

When it comes to long-term U.S. debt, Washington lawmakers and the White House aren't debating how to handle it, but rather who is ignoring the issue more.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

And both are projected to resume a northward trek in a few years.

But lawmakers are not talking seriously about how to put the federal budget on sounder footing for the long run.

In some ways, that's not surprising. Lawmakers and President Obama have been at war over the budget and debt ceiling since the 2008 financial crisis.

Those fights yielded the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the fiscal cliff deal of 2013, among other measures, which together have reduced projected deficits by a few trillion bucks over the next decade.

That's not nothing. But those measures don't do much to address the long-term debt problem that will come as the bulk of Baby Boomers retire, health care costs per person rise and interest on the growing debt builds.

What lawmakers have done is buy themselves a little time to plan for that future budget crunch.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that federal spending in coming decades will continually outpace revenue, and that the country's accumulated debt will keep growing faster than the economy.

End result: The vast majority of federal dollars will go to paying entitlement benefits and interest on the debt, leaving less money to pay for everything else Americans expect their government to do.

Related: Deficits continue to drop sharply - CBO

What lawmakers have now is a "quiet" period -- an improved economy and stabilized deficits. If they don't take advantage of it to start talking about these issues in earnest, it will be harder in the future to align spending pressures with incoming revenue. The longer lawmakers wait, the more abrupt the changes they may need to make.

"This is the time," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former CBO director and now president of the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank. "Fixing it in the middle of [the crunch] is not the time."

So what is Washington doing? Pointing fingers at who is ignoring the issue more and worrying about the next election.

Take the recent news that President Obama won't include a controversial Social Security proposal in his 2015 budget proposal due out on Tuesday.

The proposal, known as chained CPI, was included in his budget last year and would help reduce deficits by changing how federal benefits are adjusted for cost of living.

Those annual COLA increases, including growth in Social Security benefits, would be smaller under chained CPI than they are under more widely used inflation measures. Hence, why it's so controversial.

Related: 2013 deficit drops to $680 billion

The White House said the proposal is still good if Republicans are willing to close some tax loopholes to raise revenue for deficit reduction.

"That offer has been on the table for more than a year, and we've not seen any constructive engagement from the other side," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.

Republicans characterized the White House decision to drop the proposal from the budget as a clear sign Obama is done dealing with debt reduction.

"With three years left in office, it seems the president is already throwing in the towel," said Brendan Buck, the spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner.

So there we are. "You won't deal," Democrats say. "No, you won't deal," Republicans say.

Regardless of who you think is right, the fact remains no one's dealing.

First Published: February 28, 2014: 3:45 PM ET

15.30 | 0 komentar | Read More

Online poker players get $76 million back

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

A court-appointed administrator announced the distribution Friday of $76 million to roughly 27,500 U.S. customers of the defunct poker site. Their accounts have been frozen since 2011 due to a criminal case.

The Poker Players Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group, applauded the action, but said there are still "several thousand" ex-Full Tilt players in the U.S. who have yet to receive their money. John Pappas, executive director of the PPA, estimated that there are between $50 million and $60 million in unclaimed or disputed funds that have yet to be distributed.

Prosecutors accused Full Tilt and two other sites -- PokerStars and Absolute Poker -- of circumventing federal laws against Internet gambling by deceiving banks and credit card issuers into processing payments for U.S. players.

In July 2012, the Justice Department announced a $731 million settlement with PokerStars and Full Tilt to resolve the allegations. Full Tilt also settled allegations that it had operated a Ponzi scheme, failing to maintain sufficient funds on deposit for players to withdraw.

Under the settlement, Full Tilt agreed to forfeit virtually of all its assets to the government, with PokerStars acquiring them.

Former Full Tilt CEO Raymond Bitar pleaded guilty last year to multiple gambling and fraud charges. He faced a substantial prison sentence but was released because of health problems.

First Published: February 28, 2014: 5:57 PM ET

15.30 | 0 komentar | Read More

Identity theft tops consumer complaints...again

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Of the more than 2 million complaints made to the Federal Trade Commission, law enforcement and consumer protection agencies, nearly 300,000 (or 14%) were related to identity theft, according to the FTC's annual tally.

1)	Identify theft	14%
2)	Debt Collection	10%
3)	Banks and lenders	7%
4)	Imposter scams	6%
5)	Telephone and mobile services	6%
6)	Prizes, sweepstakes and lotteries	4%
7)	Auto related complaints	4%
8)	Shop-at-home and catalog sales	3%
9)	Television and electronic media	3%
10)	Advance payment for credit card services	2%

Beyond identity theft, the agency received more than 1.1 million complaints about various fraud schemes, which led to losses of more than $1.6 billion for consumers. The FTC did not have an estimate of identity-theft related losses.

Related: New scam targets homeless

Roughly a third of the identity-theft complaints came from consumers who said their personal information had been stolen and used in government documents, such filing a false tax return or applying for government benefits.

Meanwhile, around one-quarter of the identity-theft complaints were about bank or credit card fraud.

Rounding out the top three complaints were problems with debt collectors (10%), including repeated or profane phone calls and misrepresentations of the amounts owed, followed by complaints about banks and lenders (7%), ranging from the use of predatory lending practices to fees and overdraft charges.

Related: Debit vs. credit cards: Which is safer to swipe?

Many consumers said they had fallen victim to other frauds as well, including phony sweepstakes and so-called "imposter scams," a popular scheme where fraudsters pose as a loved one in need.

Florida, Nevada, California and Georgia were complaint hotspots, with the highest ratios based on state populations.

First Published: February 27, 2014: 2:08 PM ET

15.30 | 0 komentar | Read More