List of All Articles with Tag 'pp'

By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali WASHINGTON The U.S. Army on Thursday expressed deep concern for how North

The Republican attorney general in Kansas is working to keep transgender people from intervening of his state-court lawsuit against changing the sex listings on their state driver’s licenses

Manchester United signed Cameroonian goalkeeper Andre Onana from Inter Milan on Thursday in a deal that could rise to...

Democrats tore into anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a congressional hearing Thursday, reprising the most incendiary claims made by the man challenging US President Joe Biden...

Barbie, the doll, may be 64 years old, but “Barbie,” the movie, is a pandemic baby

A New Jersey con man who was pardoned by former President Donald Trump has been arrested and is accused of defrauding investors out of millions of dollars. Eliyahu “Eli” Weinstein was charged alongside four others with a number of crimes, including conspiring to defraud investors of more than $35m and conspiracy to obstruct justice, according to a statement from the office of the US attorney for New Jersey. Each of the five defendants was charged with one count of wire fraud conspiracy and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice. Mr Weinstein was given a 24-year federal prison sentence after being convicted of two separate investment fraud schemes — one that ran from 2004 through 2011, the other from 2012 through 2013 — across both of which he defrauded investors of roughly $230m, according to a court document. On 19 January, 2021, after Mr Weinstein had served less than eight of the 24 years, Mr Trump pardoned him. Shortly after his release from prison, Mr Weinstein started up a new scheme, the statement said. “We allege Mr. Weinstein took part in a new scheme to rip off investors by hiding his real identity,” Special Agent in Charge James E Dennehy of the Newark FBI said. Mr Weinstein allegedly used the alias “Mike Konig” in this new scheme outlined by the FBI. Mr Weinstein allegedly said in a “surreptitious audio” obtained by investigators August 2022: “We collectively did not tell everyone who I was, no one would ever give you a penny if they knew who I was . . . because I have a bad reputation.” He worked with four others, the court document states: Aryeh “Ari” Bromberg , Joel Wittels, Shlomo Erez, and Alaa Hattab. The men were accused of taking “tens of millions of dollars from investors” through the firm Optimus Investments Inc. Most of these investors were “family, friends, or close associates,” the document said. Mr Weinstein, Mr Bromberg, and Mr Wittels received a large portion of the money through Tryon Management Group LLC — another company that was owned and operated “by two other conspirators” — which promised investors opportunities to invest in deals involving Covid-19 face masks, “scarce baby formula,” and first-aid kits “bound for Ukraine,” according to the statement. However, unable to pay the investors with legitimate investment returns, the men decided to combine the funds from both Optimus and Tryon investors and “use it to make monthly payments to other investors in a Ponzi-like fashion” starting in February 2022, the document states. “Once the Tryon owners learned that Mike Konig was actually Weinstein, they agreed with the defendants to continue concealing Weinstein’s identity from investors and to raise additional money to pay off existing Tryon investors, all in an effort to stop the Ponzi scheme from falling apart and to cover up the fraud,” the statement said. The men are also charged with obstructing justice after allegedly “hiding Mr Weinstein’s assets” — $200m in restitution — owed to his previous victims, as well as allegedly “concealing his myriad business activities, which were expressly prohibited by the terms of his supervised release,” according to the court document. If convicted on both charges, each of the five men face a maximum of 25 years in prison and fines of “either $250,000 or twice the gain or loss from the offense, whichever is greatest,” according to the statement. On top of this, the Securities and Exchange Commission also filed a civil complaint against the men and two other individuals “based on the same and additional conduct,” the statement said. Mr Weinstein was one of the 143 people pardoned by former President Trump in the final hours of his term. Read More Donald Trump is the first former president arrested on federal charges. Can he still run in 2024? An inmate was pardoned by Oregon’s governor. Two years on he’s a person of interest in four suspicious deaths Egypt pardons jailed activists, including two prominent rights defenders, official reports say

By Olena Harmash KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine's central bank said it will nationalise Russian-owned Sense Bank, one of the country's top

Lewis Hamilton expressed sympathy on Thursday for rookie Nyck de Vries, sacked by Alpha Tauri after only 10 races, and said it demonstrated the way in which Red Bull, not...

Rex Heuermann was arrested outside his architectural firm in Manhattan on July 13

Wayne Rooney says Marcus Rashford must help Manchester United win regular trophies if he's to reach the levels of Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland. The former Red Devil also says Harry Maguire must leave the club after losing the captaincy.

Reddit users have hijacked a collaborative experiment launched by the company within minutes of its launch. The third edition of Reddit Place – a 1-million-pixel online canvas that allows any user to choose the colour of an individual pixel – launched on Thursday amid ongoing protests against the platform’s management. Communities, or sub-Reddits, quickly organised to post explicit messages aimed at Reddit’s chief executive on various sections of the canvas. In the centre of r/Place, a giant sign appeared within minutes reading, “Fuck Spez”, referring to Reddit CEO Steve ‘Spez’ Huffman. Other sections included graffiti scrawled with the same message, while another featured the text “Never forget what was stolen from us” – referring to the third-party apps that shut down in the wake of API changes to the site. Reddit was forced to push back the experiment several times in efforts to avoid coinciding with the worst of the protests, which at one stage saw thousands of high profile sub-Reddits go dark. Reddit acknowledged the timing of the latest social experiment, adding the tagline: “Right place, wrong time.” The Independent has reached out to Reddit for further comment on the latest protests. Reddit Place is set to continue for the next four days, allowing users to contribute to its evolving creation. Previous editions featured flags, cartoon characters, popular memes and even works of art. One nihilistic group called The Black Void was able to take over vast swathes of the 2017 Reddit Place Canvas with black pixels. The original concept of Reddit Place was intended to “enable humans to communicate and collaborate in ways they have never been able to before”, according to creator Josh Wardle, who went on to create the popular word game Wordle. “My hope is that the success and collaborative nature of projects like Place will encourage other internet companies to take some more risks when exploring ways that their users can interact,” he said at the time. Read More The Reddit blackout, explained: Why thousands of subreddits are protesting third-party app charges Reddit CEO tells employees ‘this will pass’ in response to major chaos at site Netflix kills its cheapest plan without ads Netflix’s password sharing crackdown is going much better than people expected Stolen ChatGPT accounts for sale on the dark web

By Ricardo Brito BRASILIA The governor of Brazil's wealthiest and most populous state, Tarcisio de Freitas, has emerged