UPDATED 5:56 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) President Obama formally introduced Mary Jo White to the American people today. White, 65, is Obama’s choice to lead the SEC.
“You don’t want to mess with Mary Jo,” Obama said.
White is the first woman ever appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Today marked another first for her: She is the first woman ever to have led a U.S. Attorney’s Office to be nominated to lead the SEC. White, now in private practice as a defense lawyer, has led prosecutions of Mafia figures, terrorists and financial criminals.
The nomination may signal that the President views the SEC as an increasingly important agency in the context of national security, in addition to its traditional role of policing Wall Street and the securities markets.
Obama also renominated former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray, 53, has been leading the bureau for a year under a recess appointment. Obama today called for an up-or-down vote by the Senate, which has been squabbling over the upstart bureau.
The Federal Trade Commission has announced a major sweep involving numerous companies and defendants — and a new partnership with Craigslist, Microsoft, Monster.com and CareerBuilder to combat employment and work-at-home fraud.
Meanwhile, the agency said it was working with AARP’s Legal Counsel for the Elderly to keep America’s senior citizens’ pocketbooks out of the clutches of scammers.
Dubbed “Operation Bottom Dollar,” the sweep includes seven new civil cases against the operators of deceptive and illegal job and money-making scams, 43 criminal actions by the Department of Justice and 18 actions by state attorneys general.
A separate action by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service is part of the sweep, and the FTC announced updates in four previous cases. “Operation Bottom Dollar” specifically targets “con artists who are preying on unemployed Americans with job-placement and work-at-home scams,” the FTC said.
“Employment and business opportunity fraud causes terrible hardship to those who are suffering the most in these difficult economic times,†said Assistant U.S. Attorney General Tony West. “The Justice Department is committed to prosecuting those who defraud through false promises of employment or financial success.â€
The days of getting away with posting bogus job and money-making offers online are coming to an end, said David C. Vladeck, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.
Using terse language, Vladeck said scammers should not get too comfortable with the money they’ve stolen.
“If you falsely advertise that you will connect people with jobs or with opportunities for them to make money working from home, we will shut you down,” Vladeck said. “We will give your assets to the people you scammed, and, when it’s appropriate, we’ll refer you to criminal authorities for prosecution.â€
Monster.com, Careerbuilder, Bing and Craigslist will display FTC consumer education material to people who are using the companies’ Web sites to look for jobs, the FTC announced.
Charged in Operation Bottom Dollar were:
Government Careers Inc. – Jon Coover; Richard Friedberg; and Rimona Friedberg. Abili-Staff, Ltd. – Pamela Barthuly; Jorg Becker; and Equitron LLC. Darling Angel Pin Creations Inc. – Shelly R. Olson and Judith C. Mendez; d/b/a/Angel Pin Creations.
Entertainment Work Inc. – Jason Barnes and Racquelle Barnes; d/b/a Resource Publishing Co. Independent Marketing Exchange Inc. – Wayne Verderber, II, d/b/a National Data Management, N.D.M., Global Mailing Services, G.M.S., Independent Mailing Services, Independent Mailing Services Inc., I.M.S., Independent Shoppers Network, Independent Shoppers, Success At Home, Success-At-Home Mailing, IMEX, IMEX, Inc., and Continental Publishing Company.
Preferred Platinum Services Network – Rosalie Florie; d/b/a Home Based Associate Program and PPSN, LLC. and Philip D. Pestrichello, individually. Real Wealth, Inc. – Lance Murkin; doing business as American Financial Publications, Emerald Press, Financial Research, National Mail Order Press, Pacific Press, United Financial Publications, Wealth Research Group, and Wealth Research Publications.
“What makes job scams particularly insidious—and what makes today’s efforts so important—is that these scams most often exploit honest consumers who are trying to make an honest living,†said Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray.
“Instead of making money, victims end up losing hundreds if not thousands of dollars,†Cordray said.
Other agencies involved in “Operation Bottom Dollar” include AARP’s Legal Counsel for the Elderly; the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Tampa Field Office; Better Business Bureaus of Southern Arizona, West Florida, New Jersey, the Southland (Southern California), and Coastal, Central, & Southwest Texas; U.S. Attorneys offices for the Southern District of New York, New Jersey and Western District of Missouri; the attorneys general of Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania; Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Service; Washington State Department of Financial Institutions, Securities Division; Los Angeles County Department of Consumer Affairs; Ocean County New Jersey Department of Consumer Affairs; and the Tucson Police Department.
Assistant Attorney General Tony West will be on hand at a FTC news conference Wednesday in Washington, D.C.
Still pushing work-at-home schemes on the Internet? The Federal Trade Commission has a message for you.
On Wednesday, the FTC will announce a major “law enforcement sweep cracking down on job and work-at-home fraud fueled by the economic downturn,” the agency said.
Investigators will release “[s]till shots from the Web sites of some of the operators charged in this law enforcement sweep,” as well as a consumer-protection video.
The FTC disclosed few details about the sweep, but it is known that officials from the the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service will attend the news conference.
Speaking on behalf of the Justice Department will be Assistant Attorney General Tony West of the Civil Division. West was appointed to the post by President Obama in January 2009.
Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray also will be present at the news conference.
West, a law-enforcement veteran knowledgeable about high-tech crimes, is a graduate of both Harvard and Stanford . He has served as a prosecutor on both the state and federal levels, including a five-year stint as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California.
As a state Special Assistant Attorney General, West advised former California Attorney General Bill Lockyer on high-tech crime, identity theft, antitrust litigation, civil rights, police-officer training and police misconduct.
Although the FTC did not release specific details about the crackdown, work-at-home schemes come in many forms. Fraudsters, for example, often use high-traffic Internet sites operated by famous companies to post “job” listings for jobs that don’t actually exist.
In some instances, the “jobs” have proven to be multilevel-marketing “opportunities” in which participants must pay a fee to become a sales rep and to recruit others for a chance to increase “earnings.” In other cases, the “jobs” have proven to be scams such as stuffing envelopes, entering data and labeling postcards.
Such scams frequently target people of limited means.
“Work-at-home scams prey on some of the most vulnerable in our society — the economically disadvantaged, the unemployed, the disabled, and the elderly — who are trying to supplement their income by working from home,†U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said earlier this month.
Bharara is U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Of New York. On Feb. 3, Bharara and postal inspectors announced the arrests of Philip Pestrichello, 38, and his wife, Rosalie Florie, also 38, in a work-at-home scheme that operated in New Jersey.
In the alleged Pestrichello/Florie scheme, participants were targeted in advertisements that assured them the companies were ethical and “NOT a gimmick or some shady ‘get rich quick scheme.’”
Participants further were told “Our company has a rock-solid reputation,” prosecutors said.
A check revealed that Pestrichello had spent three years in federal prison for operating a previous scheme and had repeated run-ins with regulators dating back to the early 1990s.
