Exhausted...

A young Swedish woman who sued her former Wall Street executive boss over lurid allegations of sexual conquest, betrayal and stalking was awarded $18 million by a federal jury.

Hanna Bouveng, 25, accused Benjamin Wey, a Chinese-born American Wall Street financier, and CEO of New York Global Group, in an $850 million lawsuit of using his power as owner of the Group to coerce her into four sexual encounters before firing her after discovering she had a boyfriend.

Bouveng, who was raised in Sweden, testified that soon after Wey hired her, the CEO began a relentless quest to have sex with her. She says he fired her six months later after she refused any more sexual contact and he found a man in her bed in the apartment he helped finance.

Wey, 43, also sought to defame Bouveng by posting articles on his blog accusing her of being a "street walker," a "loose woman" and an extortionist, her lawyers say.

Wey walked into a Stockholm cafe in April 2014 where she was working a few months after she was fired from Global Group, her attorney told jurors. "The message was: 'Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I am going to find you and I am going to get you," Ratner said.

The married financier denied ever having sex with Bouveng. He portrayed her as an opportunist. Wey testified that Bouveng knew nothing about finance before he hired and began mentoring her. She betrayed his generosity by embracing a party-girl lifestyle that left her too exhausted to succeed.  Apparently she did... Just a thought.

Spies everywhere.

When blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng arrived in the United States he was given a fellowship at New York University, use of a Greenwich Village apartment, and a pile of gifts from supporters, including smartphones and an iPad, at least two were bugged.

Chen accused NYU of bowing to pressure from China by ending the fellowship. The allegations are vigorously denied by NYU.

Bob Fu runs the Christian group ChinaAid, which supports underground churches and victims of forced abortions,  and his wife presented the I-Pad gifts. 

"These people supposedly were out to help him and they give him a kind of Trojan horse that would have enabled them to monitor his communications secretly,".

The spyware issue was not publicized at the time and has only surfaced because of the recent scrutiny of NYU's arrangement with Chen. 

So, it's unclear if the software was added by ChinaAid, spies infiltrated NYU's tech department, or the entire incident was made up. The bugged Apple equipment certainly isn't as exciting, but what it lacks in innovation it makes up in intrigue.

I think it is a habit.  Just a thought.

Lorena Bobbitt again

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Investigators determined that the appendage of a 32-year-old man had "completely disappeared" following December attacks in the central province of Henan, government-owned media outlet HNR said.

Fan's wife took the radical step of chopping off his .... after she found out he was in a relationship with a 21-year-old woman.

Fan "rushed to a hospital" after the incident, and doctors re-attached his penis.

But his wife crept into a ward as he slept to claim the organ again.
The two subsequently clashed outside the facility, with a naked and bleeding Fan repeatedly beating his wife, until police arrived.

The double attacks appeared to have strengthened the romance between Fan and his mistress, with the two deciding to marry.
She was quoted as saying: "It doesn't matter if he turns out to be infertile, he has five children anyway."

The story may be, as reported, is fake. Just a thought.

Wise Up...!

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After an eight-month probe started when police received an anonymous tip, search warrants were served in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino Counties. Authorities sought evidence of suspected visa and tax fraud. A court affidavit today claimed the website You Win USA Vacation Resort was used to specifically attract pregnant Chinese women.  The women paid $15,000 to $50,000 for housing, food and transportation to medical services as well as visas allowing them to stay in the US legally. The healthcare cost wasn't mentioned, and assumed not paid.

"People who come from China to the United States for the sole purpose of having their children born as American citizens," said Claude Arnold of ICE and Homeland Security in Los Angeles. "These people are told to lie, how to lie, so that their motives for coming to the US wouldn't be questioned."

Authorities also said, according to The Associated Press, that the women were instructed to hide their pregnancies under loose clothing and told to lie about the reasons behind their traveling.

Linda Trust, a resident of one complex involved in the raid, said she'd seen groups of pregnant Chinese women and people bringing food to them.

"I saw a man that had like a big dolly thing piled to [the] ceiling with diapers," Trust told ABC station KABC-TV in Los Angeles.

The alleged ringleaders are accused of pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars and could face criminal tax fraud, money laundering and conspiracy charges.

Federal agents with the Departments of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement estimated that since 2013, 400 babies born at one hospital had been linked to the alleged scam.

Immigration, Immigration and Immigration. Money, Money, and Money.

Just a thought.

...... Like.

According to multiple press reports, Chinese authorities have executed Liu Han, a former mining tycoon once worth more than $6 billion. He was the former chairman of Sichuan Hanlong Group, a mining conglomerate. The government prosecution led to the collapse of his ambitious business empire and brought attention to his links to a top target of China’s broad crackdown on corruption.

A billionaire who lived large, Mr. Liu had built an investment empire around his private Hanlong Group based in Sichuan province that included resources businesses that stretched beyond China to Australia and the U.S.

Authorities found him guilty of running a "mafia-style" gang responsible for multiple murders, assaults, gun-running, theft and embezzlement.

Liu, 49, was a fixture in the Chinese business press, calling attention to his diamond watches and fleet of Bentleys, Ferraris and Rolls-Royces,

Liu had business ties to the son of disgraced national security chief Zhou Yongkang, who was stripped of his Communist Party membership after being accused of bribery and "violating the party's political, organizational and confidentiality discipline." Zhou is the highest-ranking official so far to be targeted by President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign.

The government has arrested dozens of wealthy Chinese businesspeople and officials as part of the campaign, and has started tracking the fortunes of the wealthy overseas. 

   Just a thought.

Greed or just ...?

A minor Chinese official rose to infamy after anticorruption detectives discovered more than $20 million worth of renminbi in cash, 37 kilograms of gold bars and 68 property ownership documents in his family home, according to The New York Times' Sinosphere blog. Ma Chaoqun was arrested with his brother in February, and five other family members also have been apprehended.

But the official's mother, said her son is honest and that the bounty belonged to her deceased husband, a doctor who accrued the wealth by dabbling in side business ventures.

She said her son was the victim of a vendetta plot, planned by his boss to prevent him from exposing an alleged embezzlement scheme. The mother said she packed the cash into more than 40 boxes after her husband died in 2012 and stored them in a closet in the family home. "My husband thought it was too much trouble going to the bank to get money," Zhang said, "Some of the money hadn't been touched for years and was growing moldy,".

Ma was the general manager of a state-run water supply company in northern China. He had a negative reputation among the locals who depended on water service. Residents told Xinhua that Ma demanded money for water services. If the payment was too low, water would be cut off. 

A low level official, huh. You'll be the judge.

Just a thought.

Tang & Fang.

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Two female thieves, named Tang Shuiyan and Fang Yunyun, were caught trying to break into the home of an official in Hefei, Anhui Province.   The duo established their name by stealing from officials only.

Tang had been arrested on a burglary. She fled and later joined Fang [2009] in her stealing rampage. Three days before they were arrested, Fang broke into the home of the deputy director of the banking watchdog in Anhui and made off with pre-paid shopping cards, valued at 1.5 million yuan.

Tang had once worked for a telecoms company, where she stole the information of her desired victims, including home address and phone number. Before her “unannounced visits,” she would call to make sure no one was home or in the office.

For instance, Tang once blew the whistle on her two victims, ex-head of Rural Credit Cooperatives in Guizhou Province, and ex-director of the Transportation Department in Guizhou. Her expose led to the duo’s being investigated for disciplinary violations and later indicted for taking bribes.

The duo would take photos of the stolen items and send them to an accomplice, to be used as a warning to victims against calling the police. Since most of the stolen properties were predictably ill-gotten gains  their value way exceeded the owners’ official salaries most victims had chosen to remain silent.               Just a thought.

All direction.

Hired at St. John’s after graduating from its master’s program. Three years later, she was named a dean. 

 Dr. Chang associated with a whirlwind of characters: Catholic priests, Chinese gangsters, American lawmakers, a Taiwanese general and a fantastically corrupt city politician, to name a few.

She had been married three times. One husband was involved in organized crime; another told the police before succumbing to gunshot wounds that she was behind it.  Police suspected her as having a role in the murder of her first husband.

She offered honorary degrees to people of wealth or influence, then soliciting donations. Two such honorees were Taiwanese industrialists who were later charged with multimillion-dollar frauds.

      

Many of the grants, under her control, went to the children of her friends or associates, including one given in 2004 to the granddaughter of Frank H. Murkowski, a former senator and governor of Alaska.

In 2003, in a letter, she congratulated Mr. Murkowski, who was then governor, on his daughter’s election to the Senate and offered them both honorary degrees.
      

Four years later, she asked him to enlist his daughter, Senator Lisa Murkowski, to write a letter supporting the immigration application of “a St. John’s honorary alumni chairman." Wang You-Theng, a Taiwanese businessman under investigation for embezzling millions of dollars, was a fugitive, and remains so today.
      

Federal prosecutors accused her of forcing foreign students to perform household labor in exchange for tuition grants, stealing over $1 million from the university and taking $250,000 from a Saudi prince to organize academic conferences that never occurred.   

As her legal troubles mounted, she found friendship among bartenders and casino bus drivers. She would curry favor by lending money to people from Chinese communities in Flushing and to fellow gamblers at the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut, where she was spending more time. She ended her life.

Let us learn of her ways. Just a thought.             

Alibaba... Don't Buy it..!!

Buy Swim Suit.

Investors should steer clear of Alibaba, valuation expert Aswath Damodaran said.

Investors are not getting a piece of a company, but getting a piece of a shell that owns a company where a politburo, basically, sets the board of directors. To pay fair price and get treated as a second-class citizen  is not a good deal.

Investors marry companies and have to be in for the long term. But in this case it is scary that investors have absolutely no power over how this company run, or what happens in the future.

It's a merchandising company that does it really well, has made a lot of money in China, but can't attach a $250 or $300 billion value.

Alibaba became more China-focused in the last year than less China-focused.

It's never been a particularly innovative company.

Jack Ma has power for life?

Add to all this, the Chinese market is to a great extent ambiguous.

Just a thought.

Corruption in Education??

 

The Chinese  government has banned "leading cadres" within the Communist party,  from signing up for costly business training unless they have official approval and pay full fees themselves.

Chinese officials are rushing to pull out after being banned from accepting scholarships as part of a widening anti-corruption campaign.

The decree will be a blow to China's booming business schools, where the cost of such part-time MBAs can be more than $100,000. In some schools, government officials were offered free enrolment to attract wealthy entrepreneurs seeking to build networks.

The head of one business school expressed dismay at the policy. He said all the officials who had enrolled as EMBA students had quit and that many executives from state companies, [20 per cent of the students] were likely to follow suit.

While full-time MBAs have always been the flagships of US business schools, in China these part-time EMBAs, is the degree of choice. However, in recent years some Chinese EMBA programs have been criticized for their high price tags and low quality.
[Lifen Zhang FT]

More to come.... Just a thought.

The Red ... Guo..

RCSC’s troubles started in 2011, when Guo Meimei posted numerous pictures of a lavish lifestyle on Sina Weibo. She claimed to be a manager of the Chinese Red Cross, and her postings sparked outrage from people who saw them as evidence that donations to RCSC were being embezzled.

RCSC denied any affiliation with her, and she admitted in a (and highly publicized) television confession that she had lied about having a position with RCSC.
Still, the damage had been done. As a result of the scandal, donations to RCSC decreased year-on-year.

As thousands in southwest China struggle in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake, the country’s main charity has a plea: forget rumors and scandals of the past and open your wallet now.

Guo Meimei, widely considered China’s most brazen “professional mistress”, came through the same means she achieved fame and notoriety an indiscriminate series of ostentatious and overly revealing internet blog posts.

Ms Guo, 23, was arrested by police with seven others ahead of the football World Cup final, amid a crackdown on the massive illegal online betting on the tournament. Rather indiscreetly, she had been bragging to her legion of nearly two million followers on Weibo – China’s broad equivalent of Twitter – about the big bets she was making. [Fairfax Media-Philip Win].    

It is ALL about ME???          Just a thought.

China's McDonald, No Beef?

Chinese authorities accused Shanghai Husi of intentionally selling meat beyond its shelf life to restaurant companies. Five employees at the Shanghai unit have been detained by authorities.

McDonald's restaurants in China have faced a shortage of hamburgers and chicken products after cutting ties with Shanghai Husi Food Co. Business in Japan and Hong Kong also has been affected.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, McDonald's said that because of the issue with the supplier, businesses in China, Japan and certain other markets "are experiencing a significant negative impact to results." 

A [food] chain is as strong as its weakest  link.

Just a thought.

Corruption,

Zhou Yongkang, China's powerful former security chief, has been under virtual house arrest since late last year. one of his former aides was just expelled from the ruling Communist Party.

Zhou is  the highest-profile figure caught up in crackdown on corruption. He is the most senior Chinese official to be ensnared in a graft scandal since the party swept to power in 1949.

Chinese authorities have seized $14.5 billion in assets from relatives and associates of Zhou, and they have called in more 300 of Zhou's relatives, political allies, proteges for questioning. [BBC]

Power, Position and Money.. the rest is history.

Just a thought

Liew's Crime Spree?

U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey S. White sentenced Walter Lian-Heen Liew to serve 15 years in prison, to forfeit $27.8 million, and to pay $511,667 in restitution for stealing trade secrets from du Pont de Nemours & Company and then selling them to a state-owned Chinese company.

The sentencing judge described it as a“white collar crime spree” that included violations of the Economic Espionage Act, tax evasion, bankruptcy fraud, and obstruction of justice.The jury found that Liew filed false tax returns for USAPTI and Performance Group and made false statements and oaths in bankruptcy proceedings for Performance Group.

The court indicated that “the 15 year sentence was intended, in part, to send a message that the theft and sale of trade secrets for the benefit of a foreign government is a serious crime that threatens our national economic security.

Good Going.   Just a thought.

Family...

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 A former General Motors Co (GM.N) engineer was sentenced to a year and a day in prison and her husband was sentenced to three years for conspiring to steal trade secrets for use in China, federal prosecutors said.

Investigators accused Du of copying more than 16,000 GM files soon after the automaker in January 2005 gave her a severance offer. They said Qin later claimed, while pitching his services, to have invented some of the stolen GM technology.

Both defendants [Du and Qin] are U.S. citizens, and their case is part of a crackdown  on trade secret theft, whether involving China or other countries.

U.S. corporate victims of trade-secret theft have included General Motors, Ford, DuPont, Dow Chemical, Motorola, Boeing and Cargill as well as lesser-known companies.

The White House issued a report outlining a new strategic plan to combat trade secret theft from U.S. businesses, stating that “Trade secret theft threatens American businesses, undermines national security, and places the security of the U.S. economy in jeopardy.”

Just a thought.

Trade Secret's theft?? !!

    

The plan was for Kang Gao to do his exit interview with Two Sigma Investments, [a $21 billion quantitative hedge fund in New York], and jump to Citadel LLC, a rival firm in Chicago.  He ended up in jail.

He’s accused of stealing Two Sigma secrets and faces a potential four-year prison term.

The prosecutions come as Wall Street is increasingly protective of intellectual property. That include trading models, software codes, and strategies which have become more valuable as firms seek a millisecond advantage over rivals. 

Gao is the fourth Wall Street analyst or programmer to be ensnared in a crackdown by the D.A., on intellectual property theft from financial firms. That is only the beginning.

Just a [New] Thought.