Fraud Watch: Chinese Fugitives, $1000 Cognac, And Ruth The Robot

After the slew of high-profile fraud cases that came to light as the recession deepened, things have settled down somewhat – fraud fans like us have been having to make do with table scraps from the Madoff case or the parade of jail sentences percolating through for the likes of Marc Dreier. But now news is coming through of what could be China’s biggest ever bank fraud, amounting to £413m.

This being China, the news has taken nearly two years to start trickling out, with details of the court case begun last week making it into the FT this morning. One of the chairmen of developer Canton Properties, Wang Sheng, is accused of taking loans out in the company’s name from state-and-HSBC-owned Bank of Communications, and keeping them for himself. The president of the bank who allowed the loans has been on the run since the investigation was started in late 2007, making the attempts of his recent fraudulent peers in the States look very weak indeed. It’s in his interest to keep running – China’s state news agency reports today that the state has just executed two major fraudsters.

They’re not the only ones committing everyone’s favourite white collar crime though – check out these bozos from this week’s press: 

- First up is Edward Okun, who has been sentenced this week for running a fraud in which he used money given to him to invest in banks as pocket money for nice things like the divorce from his old wife and jewelry for his new one. He also bought his chums shots of cognac for $1,008 each during a holiday in the Bahamas, about which the restaurant owners still laugh now. In the overkill that saw Madoff get 150 years in jail, Okun was recommended 400 years – in the end he got off lightly with just 100.

- “Magician Paul Daniels helped his son escape jail today after he admitted stealing £10,000 from the NHS” is the opening paragraph in a Sun story today, but as is the case so often with the tabloids, they ruthlessly pique your interest only to disappoint you a paragraph later. Rather than performing some kind of disappearing trick involving glittery capes and awkward banter, Daniels actually just pleaded with the court to let his son off a fraud conviction.

- Ruth Madoff now has to announce any expenditures over $100, which when you’ve been living in a Manhattan penthouse is usually most of them. This constant inconvenience is compounded by exactly the wrong sort of Vanity Fair feature she would want – an in-depth analysis of her history and character by Mark Seal, who has been profiling the Madoffs for the mag and who Ruth apparently hates. It’s all here – the rudeness, the loud voice, the botched surgery. The pre-feminist who books belly-dancers for office parties, the hot-tempered and foul-mouthed party pooper, the “robot” addicted to normality, the MILF, the “fucking social climber”, the woman who was “sort of artificial and frozen—her face, her home.” Ruth claims that many of the depictions of her are inaccurate, but even if you ignore them all the crucial spectre still hangs over her, and it does throughout the article – that she couldn’t have possibly been unaware of the fraud.

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Hot Money | August 6, 2009 12:03PM |