Word: frauds
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Last week, testifying in a raspy Sicilian accent, Conforte said that in December 1978 he paid Claiborne $30,000 to help quash grand jury subpoenas for two of his prostitutes who had 5 been called as witnesses in a probe of voter fraud. Three months later, Conforte said, he again met with Claiborne, who suggested that he could get a federal appeals court to overturn Conforte's tax conviction. Conforte testified that the judge told him, "We need $100,000 to get things started." With that, Conforte produced $55,000 in bills and stuffed them in Claiborne...
...business came under the eye of the FBI, the U.S. Post Office and the Internal Revenue Service. Since then, in an investigation dubbed Dipscam, more than 20 diploma mills have been closed down and three operators have been sent to jail. Last week John Blazer pleaded guilty to mail fraud for sending out degrees from his bogus universities of East Georgia and the Bahama Islands; he received a two-year prison term. And in Arkansas last year, George C. Lyon, 79, was given a year in prison and fined $2,000 after selling FBI Agent Allen Ezell five phony degrees...
There are problems with bringing charges, the FBI admits. While an investigation into mail or wire fraud can take up to two years, an alert diploma salesman can move on to a new location almost overnight. Charles Alfred Durham, 54, of Seneca, S.C., who has been charged with mail fraud in connection with three diploma mills, has a clever defense: that the diplomas, costing up to $940 for a doctorate, were only "expensive novelties." Says Durham's lawyer, Daniel Day: "People who bought these diplomas knew exactly what they were getting, and I don't think...
...year-old Bedford, N.Y., woman was a victim of an increasingly common scam: telephone credit card fraud. Last week such cases seemed to grow larger and more outlandish by the day. Philip Rubin, 71, of Boca Raton, Fla., received a statement demanding $176,983. Said he: "I was more than a little surprised." Even that was topped by a bill presented to the Michigan Association of Governmental Employees for calls charged to its new, but not yet distributed, credit cards. It came...
...calls to their home phones. But so many calls were being billed to unwary customers that operators now usually phone a person at the number given to get approval. Says Scott Smith, a spokesman for San Francisco-based Pacific Bell: "Credit cards are becoming the sole source of telephone fraud...