Ex-Monster counsel pleads guilty in options case
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A former general counsel at Monster Worldwide Inc.  pleaded guilty on Thursday to criminal charges related to stock options backdating.
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Former Enron Corp. investor relations chief Mark Koenig Wednesday pleaded guilty in Houston to federal charges and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
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A former eye doctor in California pleaded guilty to accepting $6.1 million in secret kickbacks for serving as a lead plaintiff in securities lawsuits filed by Milberg Weiss.
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WASHINGTON, Aug 25  - A former top Enron official responsible for investor relations pleaded guilty Wednesday to securities fraud as part of a plea agreement, under which he has agreed to cooperate fully with the government&#39;s ongoing criminal
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(InfoWorld) - Monster Worldwide's former general counsel pleaded guilty in a Manhattan courtroom Thursday, another executive caught up in the stock options backdating scandal. Myron Olesnyckyj faced charges of securities fraud and conspiracy in connection with the backdating of millions of dollars' worth of employee stock option grants at the online recruitment services company. Olesnyckyj appeared before U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain. According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's office in New York, Olesnyckyj "conspired with other former senior executives at Monster to systematically backdate stock option grants to Monster employees in an effort to fraudulently suppress Monster's compensation expenses and falsely inflate its earnings and share price. As a result, Monster's public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission between 1997 and 2005 fraudulently understated the company's compensation expenses and inflated its earnings by over 300 million dollars." The names of Olesnyckyj's alleged co-conspirators were not immediately disclosed.
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Monster Worldwide said it had dismissed its general counsel as part of its investigation into past stock-option grant practices.
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A man who helped Milberg Weiss, a New York law firm, get lucrative class-action lawsuits pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and two other charges.
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A former New York computer help desk technician yesterday pleaded guilty to playing a key part in what prosecutors reckon is the largest identity theft case to date.
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The former legal counsel for McAfee is facing federal charges of improperly backdating stock options at the security software company.
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The former chief lawyer and chief account of the maker of the Grand Theft Auto video games pleaded guilty Thursday to falsifying business records.
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David J. Bershad, a former partner in Milberg Weiss & Bershad, has agreed to plead guilty to charges that he helped pay kickbacks to plaintiffs in securities lawsuits.
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Monster Worldwide Inc.  on  Wednesday said its board fired the company's general counsel  for cause related to its internal stock option investigation.
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A former eye doctor who set off a seven-year federal investigation into class action law firm Milberg Weiss has agreed to plead guilty to taking $6.4 million in secret kickbacks from the firm, lawyers in the case said on Wednesday.
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Three former Countrywide Financial Corp.  executives agreed to plead guilty to charges they conducted insider trading in shares of the large U.S. mortgage lender, and each reaped tens of thousands of dollars in illegal profits, federal prosecutors said.
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(InfoWorld) - The former legal counsel for McAfee is facing federal charges of improperly backdating stock options at the security software company. Kent Roberts, 50, of Dallas, was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury on seven counts of fraud for improperly backdating options between 2000 and 2002, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. Roberts is charged with "devising a scheme to defraud by granting himself and others valuable in-the-money stock options while hiding the true nature and value of the stock option grants," the statement says. Roberts hid the fraud from the company, then known as Network Associates, its board, shareholders, auditors, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Roberts joins a small butÂ growing list of executivesÂ or former executives of companies charged in the U.S with improperly backdating stock options grants to make them more profitable for the recipients, but at the expense of shareholders. More than 100 U.S. companies are under investigation by the SEC, federal prosecutors, or through internal audits. According to the indictment, the Network Associates board granted Roberts the option to buy 20,000 shares of Network Associates' stock at the strike price of $29.62, which was the price at which the stock closed on Feb. 14, 2000. In late 2000, Roberts became concerned that his options were "underwater," that is, the $29.62 exercise price of the grant was more than the market price for stock. Roberts allegedly caused Network Associates' then-controller to change the grant date and exercise price in the computer system that recorded stock option grants. The grant date was changed to April 14, 2000, with a new exercise price of $19.75. Furthermore, Roberts implicated the then-controller in the improper backdating of other stock options for consultants to the company. Roberts initiated an investigation in 2002 and recommended that the controller be removed from his position. Roberts also participated in a conference call with the SEC at the time, in which he implicated the controller. All the while, the indictment says, Roberts never mentioned that the controller backdated his options, too. The government also says that Roberts altered board meeting minutes to change the date on which options were granted to the company's then-CEO and chairman. He allegedly changed the options date from Jan. 15, 2002, when the stock closed at $27.19, to Jan. 16, when it closed at only $25.43. The greater the difference between the lower options price and the higher market price when the executive exercises the option, the greater the profit. Roberts is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday before Federal Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero in San Francisco. Roberts' attorney Neal Stephens could not be reached for comment.
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A Manhattan man pleaded guilty in an investment scam that bilked investors, mostly in Germany, of more than $18 million, U.S. prosecutors said on Wednesday.
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RAYMOND Reginald Williams, who had previously claimed he could have saved HIH from collapse, yesterday pleaded guilty to three criminal charges arising from his management of the failed insurer.