August 2024 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

DOJ Gets Crash Course In AI As Attys Brace For Crackdown
by Gunnar Larson 14 Aug '24

14 Aug '24

DOJ Gets Crash Course In AI As Attys Brace For Crackdown <https://www.law360.com/fintech/articles/1869545?nl_pk=d2b3e7ef-ab62-4a62-80…> By Phillip Bantz The U.S. Department of Justice is working to keep pace with the swift rise of the tools known as artificial intelligence, investigating potential fraud as its Criminal Division learns the nuances of the technology — an unsettling dynamic for some defense lawyers. Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/fintech/articles/1869545?nl_pk=d2b3e7ef-ab62-4a62-80…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/fintech/articles/1869545?nl_pk=d2b3e7ef-ab62-4a62-80…>

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FINRA Flags Potential Pitfalls As Members Wade Into Crypto
by Gunnar Larson 14 Aug '24

14 Aug '24

FINRA Flags Potential Pitfalls As Members Wade Into Crypto <https://www.law360.com/fintech/articles/1869562?nl_pk=d2b3e7ef-ab62-4a62-80…> By Aislinn Keely The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority on Tuesday raised potential problem areas it has noticed related to members' dealings in crypto assets as part of a broader update on how the firms it oversees are wading into digital assets. Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/fintech/articles/1869562?nl_pk=d2b3e7ef-ab62-4a62-80…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/fintech/articles/1869562?nl_pk=d2b3e7ef-ab62-4a62-80…>

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JPMorgan Trust Seeks Shareholder Nod For Equity Raise
by Gunnar Larson 14 Aug '24

14 Aug '24

JPMorgan Trust Seeks Shareholder Nod For Equity Raise <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1869181?nl_pk=a94fc…> By Dawood Fakhir JPMorgan Global Growth & Income PLC said Tuesday that it is seeking approval from its shareholders to grant the investment trust the authority to issue up to 200 million of its shares in light of strong investor demand. Read full article » <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1869181?nl_pk=a94fc…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1869181?nl_pk=a94fc…>

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Probe Unveils €500M Money-Laundering Group, Agency Says
by Gunnar Larson 14 Aug '24

14 Aug '24

Probe Unveils €500M Money-Laundering Group, Agency Says <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1869220?nl_pk=a94fc…> By Ronan Barnard European and Brazilian authorities have searched multiple homes and frozen millions in assets during an operation investigating what is alleged to be an Italian mafia-run money-laundering network worth more than €500 million ($547.8 million), the European Union law enforcement agency Eurojust announced Tuesday. Read full article » <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1869220?nl_pk=a94fc…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1869220?nl_pk=a94fc…>

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UK Charity Sector Pension Funding Reaches £50B
by Gunnar Larson 14 Aug '24

14 Aug '24

UK Charity Sector Pension Funding Reaches £50B <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1869178?nl_pk=a94fc…> By Josh White The charity sector's pension schemes have seen funding reach £50 billion ($63.9 billion) in 2022, potentially leading to more pension buy-outs, according to a report published Tuesday by pensions consultancy Hymans Robertson LLP. Read full article » <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1869178?nl_pk=a94fc…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1869178?nl_pk=a94fc…>

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UK Regulators Mull Digital Reporting Future Outside EU
by Gunnar Larson 14 Aug '24

14 Aug '24

UK Regulators Mull Digital Reporting Future Outside EU <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1869186?nl_pk=a94fc…> By Joel Poultney Britain's accounting watchdog on Tuesday proposed a number of potential reforms for the future of digital reporting in the U.K., amid recent legislative changes after the country's departure from the European Union. Read full article » <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1869186?nl_pk=a94fc…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1869186?nl_pk=a94fc…>

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These FDIC-Insured Banks Have Lost 69 to 40 Percent of their Market Value Year-to-Date
by Gunnar Larson 14 Aug '24

14 Aug '24

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2024/08/these-fdic-insured-banks-have-lost-6… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 13, 2024 ~ Piggy Bank ThumbnailHere’s a look at three FDIC-insured banks that have lost 69 percent, 57 percent and 40 percent, respectively, of their share price year-to-date. The decline represents the change from their share price at the close on the last trading day of 2023 (Friday, December 29) and their close yesterday, (Monday, August 12, 2024). New York Community Bancorp (Ticker NYCB): YTD Stock Performance, Down 69.33 Percent New York Community Bancorp, Inc. is the parent company of Flagstar Bank, N.A., headquartered in Hicksville, Long Island, New York with 420 branch offices in 12 states. As of March 31, 2024, Flagstar had $112.8 billion of assets, ranking it the 28th largest bank in the United States according to a listing compiled by the Federal Reserve. For more on what’s going on at NYCB, see our report: Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s Treasury Secretary/Foreclosure Kingpin, Joins with Hedge Fund Guys to Grab a Teetering, Federally-Insured Bank for $2 a Share. Adding insult to injury, effective after the market closed on July 11 of this year, the stock did a 1-for-3 reverse stock split, meaning that for every three shares of stock that you previously owned, you now owned just one. Patriot National Bancorp (Ticker PNBK): YTD Stock Performance, Down 57 Percent Patriot National Bancorp is the parent of Patriot Bank, N.A. with headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut. As of March 31, it had just eight branch offices and a tiny $1 billion in assets. Its share price reflects ongoing losses being reported by the bank. First Foundation (Ticker FFWM): YTD Stock Performance, Down 40 Percent First Foundation is a small regional bank with 30 branches in five states. Like New York Community Bancorp, it has an over-concentration in loans on multifamily real estate. It reported $13.6 billion in assets as of March 31, 2024. The share price took a particularly brutal beating in early July when it announced a $228 million equity infusion from a group led by Fortress, leading to serious dilution of existing shareholders. The deal came at a big cost, giving 49 percent ownership to the new investors, according to media reports. ~~~ These battered share prices are far from the worst episode to hit a federally-insured bank this year. On Friday, April 26, the FDIC announced the first federally-insured bank failure of 2024, the publicly-traded Republic First Bancorp (ticker FRBK) which did business as Republic Bank. (This failure is not to be confused with the much larger First Republic Bank that failed last year and was sold to JPMorgan Chase. (See our report: JPMorgan Chase, Officially the Riskiest Bank in the U.S., Is Allowed by Federal Regulators to Buy First Republic Bank.) At the time of its failure, Republic First Bancorp was trading at 1-cent, down from 27-1/2 cents in September 2023 when we first reported that the stock had lost 96 percent of its market value in a year. Federally-insured banks taking Mom and Pop deposits and then morphing into penny stocks is not really the stuff that builds confidence in the U.S. banking system. Yes, it’s true that no depositor has lost a penny in a federally-insured bank since the creation of federal deposit insurance in 1933 if they remained under the federal insurance cap on deposits. Currently, that insurance cap is $250,000 per depositor, per bank. But with federal regulators continuing to allow fintech to gain more footholds in banking, things are certain to keep blowing up. After the media reported that the fraudster crypto exchange, FTX, was using Silvergate Bank for deposits, there was turmoil at Silvergate Bank last year, forcing it into eventual voluntary liquidation. (See Disgraced Silvergate Bank Hints It May Not Be Able to Cover All of Its Deposits; Fed Slaps It with a Cease and Desist Consent Order.) A more recent embarrassment for U.S. banking regulators was the bankruptcy filing by Synapse Financial Technologies, a fintech startup that had financial backing from Andreessen Horowitz, the giant Menlo Park, California venture capital firm that has morphed into a major funder of the Super PAC, Fairshake, that is attempting to pack the U.S. Senate with crypto sycophants come the election in November. (See Crypto Just Got Exponentially More Dangerous: Meet Fairshake.) Because Synapse was not a federally-insured bank but a middleman in facilitating deposit-taking for its clients at real banks, its bankruptcy collapse has left thousands of depositors unable to access over $100 million in deposits, which remain frozen or up in smoke. How big is the potential scope of this dangerous marriage between fintech and banking? The Hill reported the following on July 25: “While the numbers vary, fintech companies have been valued today at more than $1 trillion. There is another $2.5 trillion in cryptocurrencies represented by 10,000 different coins, as well as about $1.3 trillion in synthetic and derivative crypto securities being sold by Wall Street….” Who benefits from this move fast and break things business model for federally-insured banking that is now gobbling up the U.S. financial system one disaster at a time? The venture capitalists who bring these untested fintechs to public markets as Initial Public Offerings become billionaires or super rich; the investment banks that underwrite these offerings get fat underwriting fees; and lawyers, like those at Sullivan & Cromwell, are able to bill more than $200 million when a fraudster fintech like FTX goes into bankruptcy, despite its legal work for FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried when he was the golden boy of crypto. Are we suggesting that fintech failures are a feature, not a bug, of this business model? The thought hadn’t crossed our mind until we wrote the above paragraph. But now that it’s out there – it’s worthy of deliberation since it’s certainly not depositors that are benefitting or the U.S. insured banking system as a whole.

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Texas Firm Says Recordings Show Call Center Deception
by Gunnar Larson 13 Aug '24

13 Aug '24

Texas Firm Says Recordings Show Call Center Deception <https://www.law360.com/legalethics/articles/1868893?nl_pk=153d4a8a-6fb9-4a5…> By Daniel Connolly A Texas personal injury law firm asked a federal judge to impose a preliminary injunction on a lawyer referral service, arguing that newly obtained audio recordings from the referral service's call center show the other company deliberately tries to trick the firm's potential clients into signing up with other lawyers. Motion attached | Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/legalethics/articles/1868893?nl_pk=153d4a8a-6fb9-4a5…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/legalethics/articles/1868893?nl_pk=153d4a8a-6fb9-4a5…>

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Young Thug Jury Returns, Told Not To Fret About New Judge
by Gunnar Larson 13 Aug '24

13 Aug '24

Young Thug Jury Returns, Told Not To Fret About New Judge <https://www.law360.com/legalethics/articles/1868938?nl_pk=153d4a8a-6fb9-4a5…> By Cara Salvatore After weeks away from court, jurors weighing racketeering charges against Atlanta rapper Young Thug and his alleged Young Slime Life gang were instructed Monday "not to concern yourselves" with the switch to a new judge and to "disregard" any "disparaging" comments made by the jurist who previously presided over the marathon trial. Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/legalethics/articles/1868938?nl_pk=153d4a8a-6fb9-4a5…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/legalethics/articles/1868938?nl_pk=153d4a8a-6fb9-4a5…>

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TelexFree Victims To Depose Alleged Scammer's Estranged Wife
by Gunnar Larson 13 Aug '24

13 Aug '24

TelexFree Victims To Depose Alleged Scammer's Estranged Wife <https://www.law360.com/banking/articles/1868978?nl_pk=feb6bbba-7878-4d39-be…> By Brian Dowling A Massachusetts federal judge on Monday denied a request from the estranged wife of alleged TelexFree Ponzi schemer Carlos Wanzeler to escape a civil lawsuit filed by victims of the alleged $3 billion ploy and ordered her to sit for a Sept. 17 deposition and hand over documents requested by victims of the scheme. Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/banking/articles/1868978?nl_pk=feb6bbba-7878-4d39-be…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/banking/articles/1868978?nl_pk=feb6bbba-7878-4d39-be…>

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