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Featured Document-based feature and analysis
SEC examiners repeatedly suspected that Allen Stanford's offshore bank was running a Ponzi scheme. Their findings met years of resistance inside the agency. The record shows how a regulator can recognize a danger, document it and still leave investors exposed.
SEC examiners repeatedly suspected that Allen Stanford's offshore bank was running a Ponzi scheme. Their findings met years of resistance inside the agency. The record shows how a regulator can recognize a danger, document it and still leave investors exposed.
Faulty accounting data became demands for real money. The people who challenged the system then had to fight for the means to recover what it had cost them.
Woodbridge sold the reassurance of real estate. Its records show how a billion-dollar fraud kept collecting money while investigators fought to see inside.
Businesses complained that the withdrawals kept coming after their financing was paid off. Years of enforcement followed. Inside the contracts, the collection system and the long process of getting relief to the people who paid.
Wells Fargo created accounts customers had never requested. Other failures cost borrowers access to mortgage relief, vehicles, and their own money. The enforcement record shows how long it took to make the bank answer for decisions its customers could not control.
Federal regulators found that TD Bank sent inaccurate consumer information and mishandled disputes. The case exposes a basic imbalance in financial life: an institution can create a damaging record that the person described cannot fix alone.
Before Bernie Madoff's arrest, JPMorgan reported its suspicions in Britain and withdrew hundreds of millions from funds tied to his operation. In the United States, the bank kept moving his money and failed to make the required report. Its own admissions show how the warnings traveled, where they stopped, and what happened to the money while they did.