911 insurance fraud
Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:02 pm
9/11 testimony censored
Witness forbidden to mention attack in quoting defendant calling destroyed files Symbol's 'lucky break'
"A former executive at Symbol Technologies said the company got "a lucky break when {its} documents were destroyed on 9/11" in the attack on the World Trade Center, according to a government witness in the fraud trial of that executive and two others.
But the jury in federal court in Central Islip never got to hear the witness' entire statement yesterday because the judge overseeing the trial ruled it was too inflammatory to bring a mention of the terrorist attack into a securities-fraud case.
The Symbol records involved had been subpoenaed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a civil investigation into the company finances and were stored in the commission's office in 7 World Trade Center. They were among hundreds of cases of files destroyed when the building collapsed after the attack on the adjacent Twin Towers." -Newsday (01/14/06)
"Aimed at the world's financial heart, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were designed to throw capitalism into chaos. In one respect they succeeded: Millions of crucial documents were vaporized in the tragedy, and the process of sorting the losses out has been difficult and has included charges of opportunism.
A Citigroup lawyer, for instance, recently told a congressional committee looking into the bank's role in the WorldCom mess that she couldn't provide them with all the information they sought because some of it was destroyed in the attack on the World Trade Center.
"Some further email records the committee has requested cannot be retrieved," wrote Citigroup Deputy General Counsel Jane Sherburne in an Aug. 7 letter to House Committee on Financial Services. "The backup tapes for external emails from September 1998 through December 2000, and for a short time period in September 2001, were lost when the building in which they were stored (7 World Trade Center) was destroyed in the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001."
Maybe no financial institution lost more critical documents than the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had its New York regional office at 7 World Trade Center. While the regulatory agency was fortunate in that it lost no employees in the terror attacks, it suffered setbacks in a number of long-running securities investigations.
In August, defense lawyers for several former executives of Rite Aid, who've been charged by the SEC with fraud and obstruction of justice, filed a motion seeking a delay in the trial, claiming some of the documents gathered by the SEC had been lost in the attack. SEC attorneys contend many of the original copies of those documents still exist at other locations but acknowledge it will take time to reconstruct all the evidence in the case.
The SEC says the main problem it encountered was that an index for the documents in the Rite Aid case was destroyed in the attack -- not necessarily the documents themselves.
A similar reconstruction of evidence had to take place in a decade-old insider trading case against several former executives of Motel 6, a chain of low-cost motels. The SEC settled the case against the remaining defendants in June. But before that could occur, it had to obtain a court order directing the lawyers for some of the defendants to assist the SEC in reconstructing files "that were destroyed due to the events of Sept. 11, 2001."
In the Motel 6 case, the four remaining defendants, without admitting or denying the insider-trading charges, entered into a settlement with the SEC in which they agreed to pay fines and penalties totaling $798,000. In all, the 10-year case netted $6.36 million in fines, penalties and disgorged profits for the SEC.
SEC officials won't discuss how many cases may have been impacted by the terror attacks, but they claim the lost information was limited to two weeks' worth of data stored on the agency's computers that hadn't yet been backed up.
But it's clear from talking to securities lawyers who practice before the SEC that things haven't gone as smoothly as the agency would like the public to believe.
"Regardless of what the regulators say, they lost a ton of files," says Bill Singer, a New York securities lawyer, who says one case he had pending before the SEC quickly settled because so many of the original documents were destroyed. "In my opinion it was a wholesale loss of documents." -TheStreet.com (9/09/02)
Witness forbidden to mention attack in quoting defendant calling destroyed files Symbol's 'lucky break'
"A former executive at Symbol Technologies said the company got "a lucky break when {its} documents were destroyed on 9/11" in the attack on the World Trade Center, according to a government witness in the fraud trial of that executive and two others.
But the jury in federal court in Central Islip never got to hear the witness' entire statement yesterday because the judge overseeing the trial ruled it was too inflammatory to bring a mention of the terrorist attack into a securities-fraud case.
The Symbol records involved had been subpoenaed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a civil investigation into the company finances and were stored in the commission's office in 7 World Trade Center. They were among hundreds of cases of files destroyed when the building collapsed after the attack on the adjacent Twin Towers." -Newsday (01/14/06)
"Aimed at the world's financial heart, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were designed to throw capitalism into chaos. In one respect they succeeded: Millions of crucial documents were vaporized in the tragedy, and the process of sorting the losses out has been difficult and has included charges of opportunism.
A Citigroup lawyer, for instance, recently told a congressional committee looking into the bank's role in the WorldCom mess that she couldn't provide them with all the information they sought because some of it was destroyed in the attack on the World Trade Center.
"Some further email records the committee has requested cannot be retrieved," wrote Citigroup Deputy General Counsel Jane Sherburne in an Aug. 7 letter to House Committee on Financial Services. "The backup tapes for external emails from September 1998 through December 2000, and for a short time period in September 2001, were lost when the building in which they were stored (7 World Trade Center) was destroyed in the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001."
Maybe no financial institution lost more critical documents than the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had its New York regional office at 7 World Trade Center. While the regulatory agency was fortunate in that it lost no employees in the terror attacks, it suffered setbacks in a number of long-running securities investigations.
In August, defense lawyers for several former executives of Rite Aid, who've been charged by the SEC with fraud and obstruction of justice, filed a motion seeking a delay in the trial, claiming some of the documents gathered by the SEC had been lost in the attack. SEC attorneys contend many of the original copies of those documents still exist at other locations but acknowledge it will take time to reconstruct all the evidence in the case.
The SEC says the main problem it encountered was that an index for the documents in the Rite Aid case was destroyed in the attack -- not necessarily the documents themselves.
A similar reconstruction of evidence had to take place in a decade-old insider trading case against several former executives of Motel 6, a chain of low-cost motels. The SEC settled the case against the remaining defendants in June. But before that could occur, it had to obtain a court order directing the lawyers for some of the defendants to assist the SEC in reconstructing files "that were destroyed due to the events of Sept. 11, 2001."
In the Motel 6 case, the four remaining defendants, without admitting or denying the insider-trading charges, entered into a settlement with the SEC in which they agreed to pay fines and penalties totaling $798,000. In all, the 10-year case netted $6.36 million in fines, penalties and disgorged profits for the SEC.
SEC officials won't discuss how many cases may have been impacted by the terror attacks, but they claim the lost information was limited to two weeks' worth of data stored on the agency's computers that hadn't yet been backed up.
But it's clear from talking to securities lawyers who practice before the SEC that things haven't gone as smoothly as the agency would like the public to believe.
"Regardless of what the regulators say, they lost a ton of files," says Bill Singer, a New York securities lawyer, who says one case he had pending before the SEC quickly settled because so many of the original documents were destroyed. "In my opinion it was a wholesale loss of documents." -TheStreet.com (9/09/02)