Law Enforcement | WPN World People News

An El Cajon, on December 30, 2016. , California tax return preparer pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, to three counts of aiding and assisting in the preparation of a false tax return, announced Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Caroline D. Ciraolo, head of the Justice Department’s Tax Division, and U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy for the Southern District of California.

Everyone knows that the holiday season is well under way when the giant Christmas tree is lit at Rockefeller Center in New York City. What is less well known, however, is the connection between Rockefeller Center and the birth of America’s civilian foreign intelligence efforts.

United Shore Financial Services LLC (USFS) has agreed to pay the United States $48 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by knowingly originating and underwriting mortgage loans insured by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Federal Housing Administration (FHA) that did not meet applicable requirements, the Justice Department announced on December 28. USFS is headquartered in Troy, Michigan.

Charges were unsealed against six individuals, all of whom have pleaded guilty for their involvement in schemes to bribe Mexican officials in order to secure aircraft maintenance and repair contracts with government-owned and controlled entities, and two for conspiring to launder the proceeds of the schemes.

The last defendant in a domestic and international, multimillion-dollar cigarette tax fraud scheme has been sentenced, the Department of Justice announced on December 23.

Two Malaysian nationals have been arrested and charged with possessing more than 100 kilograms of methamphetamine in NSW following an operation on 23 December 2016.

During his trial on public corruption charges in 2013, former U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer Hector Rodriguez admitted that he had been receiving bribes of cash and luxury items for two years in return for admitting illegal aliens into the U.S. through his inspection lane at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego, California.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Teva), the world’s largest manufacturer of generic pharmaceutical products, and its wholly-owned Russian subsidiary, Teva LLC (Teva Russia), agreed to resolve criminal charges and to pay a criminal penalty of more than $283 million in connection with schemes involving the bribery of government officials in Russia, Ukraine and Mexico in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

The current senior vice president of trade marketing of a leading packaged seafood company has agreed to plead guilty for his role in a conspiracy to fix the prices of packaged seafood such as canned tuna sold in the United States, the Department of Justice announced.

Odebrecht S.A. (Odebrecht), a global construction conglomerate based in Brazil, and Braskem S.A. (Braskem), a Brazilian petrochemical company, on December 21, pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a combined total penalty of at least $3.5 billion to resolve charges with authorities in the United States, Brazil and Switzerland arising out of their schemes to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to government officials around the world.