Senate bill could allow 2 top banks to hold billions less in reserves, reducing buffers against collapse

A bipartisan Senate bill quickly moving toward passage could allow two of the nation’s biggest banks to reduce the amount of money they must keep on hand as a buffer against collapse by a collective $30 billion, an internal analysis by a top banking regulator has found.

That reduction in capital could weaken one of the safeguards Congress helped put in place after the Great Recession, some banking experts say. read more »

Ivy League Doctor Gets 4 Years in Prison for Insys Opioid Kickbacks

Rhode Island physician got bribes to prescribe painkiller. Case resulted from federal probe of Insys Therapeutics

A Rhode Island doctor who took kickbacks from Insys Therapeutics Inc. officials for prescribing the company’s highly addictive liquid version of the opioid painkiller Fentanyl was sentenced to more than four years in prison.

Jerrold Rosenberg, who lost his medical license and was ousted from his post as a Brown University professor, pleaded guilty to taking more than $188,000 in kickbacks disguised as speaker fees and creating false patient records to dupe insurers into covering Insys’s Subsys pain medication.

“You in effect sold your medical license to a pharmaceutical company,” U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. said Friday in federal court. “That’s intolerable.” The judge sentenced him to 51 months and ordered restitution of $754,000.

Rosenberg is the fourth doctor jailed over Insys bribes following a federal probe that resulted in the indictment of billionaire founder and Chief Executive Officer John Kapoor and six other executives. The group was charged with orchestrating an elaborate scheme to bribe doctors and defraud health-care providers. read more »

‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli sentenced to seven years for defrauding investors

A Brooklyn federal judge dismissed the tearful plea for mercy from "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli and sentenced him Friday to seven years in prison for defrauding investors.

Shkreli, a snarky social media maven who infamously tried to squeeze AIDS patients by jacking up the price of a life-saving drug, wept as he apologized to the investors. read more »

Data breach victims can sue Yahoo in the United States: judge

Yahoo has been ordered by a federal judge to face much of a lawsuit in the United States claiming that the personal information of all 3 billion users was compromised in a series of data breaches. read more »