Cambridge Analytica whistleblower makes Capitol rounds

Christopher Wylie, the whistleblower source who revealed more about Cambridge Analytica's harvesting of Facebook data to the news media, says he hopes Democratic lawmakers he met with Tuesday will investigate the company. read more »

How Fake Mark Zuckerbergs Scam Facebook Users Out of Their Cash

A Facebook notification on Gary Bernhardt’s phone woke him up one night last November with incredible news: a message from Mark Zuckerberg himself, saying that he had won $750,000 in the Facebook lottery.

“I got all excited. Wouldn’t you?” said Mr. Bernhardt, 67, a retired forklift driver and Army veteran in Ham Lake, Minn. He stayed up until dawn trading messages with the person on the other end. To obtain his winnings, he was told, he first needed to send $200 in iTunes gift cards.

Hours later, Mr. Bernhardt bought the gift cards at a gas station and sent the redemption codes to the account that said it was Mr. Zuckerberg. But the requests for money didn’t stop. By January, Mr. Bernhardt had wired an additional $1,310 in cash, or about a third of his social-security checks over three months.

Mr. Bernhardt eventually realized that he had been the unwitting victim of a scam that has thrived on Facebook and Instagram by using the sites’ own brands — and its top executives — to lure people in.

An examination by The New York Times found 205 accounts impersonating Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg on Facebook and its photo-sharing site Instagram, not including fan pages or satire accounts, which are permitted under the company’s rules. At least 51 of the impostor accounts, including 43 on Instagram, were lottery scams like the one that fooled Mr. Bernhardt. read more »

Mulvaney, Watchdog Bureau’s Leader, Advises Bankers on Ways to Curtail Agency

Mick Mulvaney, the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told banking industry executives on Tuesday that they should press lawmakers hard to pursue their agenda, and revealed that, as a congressman, he would meet only with lobbyists if they had contributed to his campaign.

“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican lawmaker from South Carolina, told 1,300 bankers and lending industry officials at an American Bankers Association conference in Washington. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.” read more »

Madoff Geneva Case Gets Partial Reboot a Decade Later

Nearly a decade after Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for orchestrating a $17.5 billion Ponzi scheme, Switzerland’s top court revived prospects for a criminal complaint against the manager at one of Madoff’s Geneva-based feeder funds. read more »

BRF CEO resigns days after EU bans imports from 12 facilities

BRF has announced that it its newly-appointed CEO José Aurélio Drummond Jr has resigned just three days before shareholders meet to select a new board of directors.

The news comes days after the European Union (EU) revealed plans to ban imports from 12 plants operated by BRF which were previously allowed to export products to EU member states.

Drummond, who previously served as chief executive of appliance maker Whirlpool, took over from Pedro de Andrade Faria at the end of December 2017.

During Pedro de Andrade Faria’s time as chief, BRF was implicated in an extensive food corruption scandal in which health officials were accused of taking bribes to allow unsafe meat to be exported overseas – including some that may have been rotten, or contaminated with salmonella.

JBS and smaller company Grupo Peccin were also investigated by Brazilian police. The affair was dubbed Carne Fraca – or ‘weak flesh’ – by the country’s media. read more »

Bollore Stays in Custody as French Bribery Cops Face `Taboo'

French regulators, notoriously slow in their pursuit of economic crimes, are announcing their arrival as global cops.

The country’s anti-bribery enforcers have rarely levied large fines against corruption cases, but are now going after the scalps of one of the country’s richest men as well as one of Europe’s flagship industrial companies. Billionaire Vincent Bollore was detained for police interrogation Tuesday on corruption suspicions -- and could remain in custody until Thursday -- while Airbus SE reportedly risks a fine in excess of $1 billion.

For years, French regulators were missing from the international corruption enforcement scene, an absence that earned the country a rebuke from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development at the beginning of the decade. U.S. authorities, on the other hand, haven’t been shy in fining foreign companies -- especially French ones. read more »