Reputed mobsters charged with taking over company (AP)

CAMDEN, N.J. ? Federal prosecutors say members of a Philadelphia-area mob have turned to a modern crime ? pillaging the assets of a mortgage company ? in a sign that organized crime is evolving to include more white-collar crime.

Thirteen people ? including lawyers and an accountant ? were charged in a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday. Most of them were arrested in raids throughout the morning in New Jersey, Florida and Texas. Among them were Nicodemo S. Scarfo, the son of imprisoned Philadelphia-southern New Jersey crime family boss Nicodemo D. "Little Nicky" Scarfo, five lawyers and a certified public accountant.

They face charges including racketeering, wire fraud, money laundering, false statements on a loan application, securities fraud. Maximum penalties range from five years in prison to decades.

"The criminal activity is evolving," said Michael Ward, agent-in-charge of the FBI in Newark. "It's going from the back alleys to the boardrooms."

Authorities say the plot started in April 2007, when the younger Scarfo and his associate Salvatore Pelullo, who has previously been convicted of financial crimes, decided to take over FirstPlus Financial Group, a publicly traded mortgage company based in Irving, Texas. Authorities said it was a company with a lot of cash but not much sophistication.

The indictment charges Scarfo and Pelullo used threats to help wrest control of the company. Pelullo is accused of telling a member of the FirstPlus' board that if he didn't go along with the plan, "your kids will be sold off as prostitutes."

The indictment says he later told others who were charged in the scheme to get the company's board to agree to hand control to his and Scarfo's new directors ? and he wanted it done immediately. He allegedly told them: "I don't care if they're in a funeral parlor, I don't care if they're in a (expletive) hospital on a respirator, we'll send somebody there. I want their vote, I want their signature, and I want it done by the close of the day today."

Authorities say the elder Scarfo, serving in a federal prison in Atlanta, was apprised of the plot, but that he was not charged because he's expected never to be released.

In one of several wiretap transcripts used in the indictment, the government said the younger Scarfo, 46 of the New Jersey shore community of Galloway, told his father about the plot on the phone.

"Honest to God, we're good six to 10 months off from being able to help everybody," Scarfo said.

His father responded, according to the transcript: "I wanna know when it's complete."

After getting control of FirstPlus, Scarfo and Pelullo are accused of having it buy Rutgers Investment Group and Globalnet Enterprises, shell companies they owned so they could take out money. After that, authorities said, they signed a series of consulting contracts to pay themselves even more.

In less than a year, authorities said, they took $12 million and spent it on multiple homes, including one for Scarfo's ex-wife; weapons and ammunition, a plane, an Audi, a $217,000 Bentley, $30,000 in jewelry and an 83-foot, $850,000 yacht they named "Priceless."

Scarfo appeared in U.S. District Court in Camden on Tuesday in a worn gray sweat shirt and blue sweat pants, spoke only to say that he understood the charges. But the public defender representing him, Lisa Evans Lewis, said he has no job, no income and no assets other than $125 in a checking account ? and that he'd need a court-appointed lawyer. He couldn't fill out a financial affidavit to prove his need, though, because doing so might violate his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

Bail hearings and arraignments for him and some of the other defendants were scheduled for Friday.

U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman wouldn't say how exactly authorities got onto the plot, but he said it ended with a series of raids in 2008.

Since then, FirstPlus has filed for bankruptcy, blaming the alleged criminals for wrecking the firm.

Fishman said the alleged conspirators were planning one more "piece de resistance:" They wanted to pump up the stock price of FirstPlus and sell off the company.

He said that was their exit strategy.

"We had a different exit strategy."

___

Reach Mulvihill at http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/crime/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111101/ap_on_re_us/us_mob_financial_fraud

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Protest drummers seen as both poisonous, inspired (AP)

NEW YORK ? To some, the drummers in the Manhattan park that's become the epicenter of Occupy Wall Street are the protest's energizing force.

But others, including some fellow activists, call the percussionists "poisonous people" whose relentless, pounding beat is now limited to four hours a day. The drummers were the subject of meetings among neighbors complaining about them, too.

And on a rainy night last week, someone stabbed holes into several drums with a knife. More instruments were found broken up and dumped a few blocks away.

Such acts miss the point of the drumming, says Kris Lew, a Manhattan paralegal who shows up daily to hit a cowbell for the group.

"This is the energy that keeps the movement going," she says.

She has an unlikely supporter ? a neighborhood resident.

"It contributes to the positive feeling of the protest," says attorney Mark Scherzer.

Calling themselves the Pulse, the drummers first appeared in the park almost three weeks ago, led by John Eustor, a musician from Asbury Park, N.J.

At first, the beat would stretch from morning to evening and longer ? a relentless, pounding rhythm that has become a sort of soundtrack for the few hundred people who moved into the park about a month ago. They've set up a tent community to contest the nation's biggest income inequality since the Depression, blaming it on Wall Street financial practices.

The boisterous ensemble is set up at the edge of the park, attracting an ever-moving crowd of spectators.

"We're here to motivate people, to unite people," says Eustor, 46, who was laid off from a health insurance company and is looking for work. "This is how protesters get their anger out, their aggression, and they leave refreshed."

But in apartment buildings across the street, some residents have had it with the show.

"There is drumming. There are trumpets. There are bugles. There are tambourines. There's yelling and shouting and chanting late into the night," says Ro Sheffe, who lives nearby and is a member of a community board that passed a resolution limiting drummers.

But the resolution is not legally binding, so the drummers doubled that limit and pound out their beats twice a day for two hours at a time. That's a compromise no one seems to be challenging, for now.

Susanne Moss, 69, a psychotherapist and amateur drummer who lives north of the city, came down Friday to take a look at the encampment. On that day, instruments included a giant natural seashell, blown like a horn, and empty plastic paint cans.

She called the drumming circle "a positive thing. It lends the protest a lot of energy."

Still, Moss is in favor of the limited schedule because a block away, the drumming sounds like "horrible noise; it's only when you get near that it sounds great."

The Internet Working Group, one of dozens of volunteer groups at the protest encampment in Zuccotti Park, recently hosted a video discussion titled "Surviving Poisonous People in Decentralized Groups."

To some participants, such people include the Pulse.

Not so, says Lew, who used her lunch break from her paralegal job at a nearby office to join the drummers on a recent bustling weekday afternoon.

"They make me feel safe and inspired," she said after an hour of striking a cowbell.

"We're all races, ages, religions, nationalities," Eustor said.

Drummer Zak Cunningham created his own instrument by lifting the round metal lid of a garbage can and striking it with two wooden drumsticks.

Cunningham, 22, the son of corporate executives in New Jersey, is a college philosophy major heading for graduate school.

These days, when he sleeps in the park, "and I wake up and don't hear the drums, there's something missing."

But Scherzer, the attorney, says the hours they're allowed to play "seem quite reasonable ? as long as it does not extend past 6 p.m., when people come home from work."

For those who oppose the drumming, he offered a counterargument.

"It's only drumming, in an area where there's already an incredible amount of ambient noise," he said. "This doesn't add much."

That includes the ever-present din of construction for the new World Trade Center.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/stocks/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111030/ap_on_re_us/us_wall_street_protests_drummers

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Six pets die in east-side Lorain house fire ? The Chronicle-Telegram ...

LORAIN ? A Saturday night fire destroyed a home at 426 Delaware Ave., on the east side killing two dogs and four cats inside the home.

Firefighters were called at 9:36 p.m. and arrived about two minutes later to find flames shooting out of the rear and side of the home which his near Colorado Avenue, said Assistant Fire Chief Roy Cochran. The fire was extinguished at 12:18 a.m. Sunday and caused about $50,000 in property damage. The house next door at 422 Delaware Ave., sustained about $20,000 in heat damage.

The resident of 426 Delaware and her two children were not home when the fire began. Cochran said they will stay with relatives. The cause of the fire remained under investigation Sunday night.

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Source: http://chronicle.northcoastnow.com/2011/10/31/six-pets-die-in-east-side-lorain-house-fire/

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Parallel circuits: real and virtual networks

A new editorial project reminds the Monitor's language columnist how computer networks are a rich source of metaphor.

We are all our own network administrators.

Skip to next paragraph

When I mentioned to a friend a while back that my latest editorial project was on "networking," there was a little half-beat pause in the conversation.

"Networking? Do you mean with people? Or computers?"

It was an utterly reasonable question.

We have a friend in common who is a well-known expert in social networking, and she's been into it way before Facebook. She coaches people in the techniques of "working a room," reading name tags, shaking hands, trading business cards.

(And yes, all you good people to whom I owe answers on LinkedIn and Facebook and whatever that other one was that I signed up for and really haven't gotten the hang of yet: I know you're out there. I do promise to get back to you!)

On the other hand, our networking is often digital in this age of technological self-reliance, when computer technology is supposedly within the grasp of us all.

At home we have to make sure that our computers talk to our routers and all the other gizmos they need to; away from home, we fret about "connectivity," whether at a coffee shop or other public place.

We're all, it seems, necessarily into both kinds of networking nowadays.

But the book in question, just to end the suspense, is on computer networking. And as I've worked on it, I've been reminded what a rich source of metaphor geekspeak is for situations in our "real," rather than virtual, lives.

For a start, there's "bandwidth." It's used broadly as a metaphor for capacity in a general sense: "Do you have the bandwidth to get to that this afternoon?" But more specifically, it's a great metaphor for the breadth and capacity of a channel between two people. Sometimes the two work together: "That message was too important to send by e-mail."

"Open shortest path first" sounds like a good life lesson, if not an actual law of physics, but capitalized ? Open Shortest Path First ? it turns out to be the formal name of a networking protocol.

I was amused to learn about the "Hot Standby Routing Protocol." It's "designed specifically," my author writes, "to support and provide network resilience" ? to help a message cut a path through to its destination even if some of the network links are broken. But I can imagine a "hot standby" being a reference to that cute new guy you'd like to go to the dance with if you can get the message to him that your usual date is out of town that weekend.

Another term from the book that drew a chortle was "optimistic transmission," in which "the transmitting node assumes its transmissions will all be successful."

The idea that a mere gizmo can be optimistic is intriguing: Does hope spring eternal within microchips as well as human hearts?

And now that I'm onto the concept, I want to apply it to real life: If I try to convey a carefully framed constructive criticism and hope it will be received in the spirit in which it is given, is that an example of optimistic transmission?

"Global Load Balancing Protocol" sounds like an overstressed multitasker's fantasy come true. I don't really know what it means for a computer network. I don't need to know. I just love the name.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/lS8A76z2eLo/Parallel-circuits-real-and-virtual-networks

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Analysis: Three ways to invest in China without fear (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Everyone's obsessed with the euro zone these days, and every little rumor sends global stock markets into wild gyrations. But here's a little secret: If you really want to know what could blow up your portfolio for years to come, forget Europe. What you should really be concerned about is a potential Chinese bust.

Investors have long taken for granted the growth of China's eye-popping gross domestic product, and indeed the nation's emergence has been one of the most stunning stories in economic history. But recent numbers show some widening economic cracks: The Chinese stock market is near its two-year low; third-quarter GDP growth slowed to 9.1 percent, a continued deceleration after years of double-digit gains; and the government's stockpiling of foreign-exchange reserves has been slowing to a crawl.

"Some of the leading indicators, including credit growth and property sales, have shown signs of weakness in recent months," says David Cui, a China strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research who was ranked first in Institutional Investor's 2011 All-China Survey. "As a result, we believe the risk has risen considerably. Many of these risks are intertwined -- which makes any outbreak anywhere dangerous."

Ah, real estate. Just as it took down the American economy, now it has the potential to do the same for our friends across the Pacific. Bearish observers single out the twin trends of easy credit and rampant overbuilding -- sound familiar? -- that have led to "ghost cities," a blizzard of new developments and skyscrapers that have been erected and now lie virtually empty.

Surely that can't be sustainable. Some Chinese officials have talked smugly about having abolished the usual business cycle of boom and bust, after 30 years of impressive growth. But no country is immune to economic troubles, and sooner or later, China's engine will start to sputter.

One investor on the front lines of a potential Chinese slowdown is David Fedirchuk, a Canadian filmmaker living in Sydney, Australia. Although he considers himself only a "small-time" stock trader, as he starts amassing retirement savings for his growing family, the married dad of two is very worried about what's coming down the pike.

"A Chinese bust would be devastating," says Fedirchuk, 40, who runs a production company called Mum's Spaghetti. "Right now the mining sector is keeping Australia afloat, and if China no longer gobbles up resources, we have only ailing retail and manufacturing sectors to rely on."

That's why, like any good chess player, Fedirchuk is already thinking a couple of moves ahead. A Chinese slowdown would likely lead to a Sydney property bust -- which is why he's already put his home on the market.

But back here in the States, what's an investor to do? After all, the U.S. is China's largest trading partner, with $385 billion in two-way trade in 2010, an almost 30 percent jump in a single year. We're also its largest export destination, and its fourth-largest source of imports. Sorry to say that if the Chinese economy goes down hard, there won't be many places for equity investors to hide.

That said, here are a few ways worried investors could adopt a defensive crouch:

HEDGE YOUR BETS

"I would be looking to the options market on ticker FXI (Ishares Xinhua China 25 (FXI.P)) to hedge an existing exposure directly, or to initiate a short exposure," says Stephen Solaka, managing partner of L.A. money managers Belmont Capital Group. "So if you were long FXI, I would 'collar' the position." Collaring is a put option that protects your shares from large downward moves, thereby locking in profits.

KNOW YOUR MULTINATIONAL

Some companies are more exposed to the Chinese market than others. Miners like Freeport-McMoRan (FCX.N), heavy machinery producers like Caterpillar (CAT.N), major importers like Wal-Mart (WMT.N), automakers like General Motors (GM.N) and restaurant companies like Yum! Brands (YUM.N) have all benefited from the Chinese boom -- and would be vulnerable to a slowdown.

AVOID SPECULATING

Most mom-and-pop investors shouldn't be trying to pick individual stocks half a world away, especially when strong winds are gathering. Be especially careful, says Bank of America's Cui, "when investing in banks, property and investment-led sectors including resources, steel, cement, machinery, contractors and dry bulk shipping." If you don't want to give up your exposure to the massive Chinese market - after all, 9 percent annual growth still sounds pretty stellar to American ears -- a broad-based mutual fund like Matthews China (MCHFX.O) (MCHFX) should at least cushion your investment from plunges in individual stocks and sectors.

(Editing by Jilian Mincer and Beth Gladstone)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111031/bs_nm/us_usa_funds_china

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Jobless veterans say military experience is not valued (Reuters)

NAPERVILLE, Ill (Reuters) ? When Matthew Burrell left the Army after eight years of service, he landed a job as a public relations contractor in Iraq. With a salary of $170,000, he figured military experience had finally paid off.

But five months after returning home to Chicago, 33-year old Burrell is unemployed and said his job search has been strange. Despite having six years experience as a public relations officer in the Army, companies treat him as if he just graduated from college.

"I can tell you for a fact that definitely in my field in public relations and marketing, private sector companies do not value (military experience)," Burrell said.

Burrell feels he is more than qualified for a job in the corporate PR world. But Burrell, along with many of what the Department of Labor says are 235,000 unemployed veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, has run into a frustrating problem.

Many U.S. companies, and sometimes veterans themselves, do not know how to translate military experience into civilian job skills. There is a disconnect between companies demanding a college degree and veterans' giving confusing descriptions of their military experience to civilian employers.

MILITARY JARGON

That disconnect has contributed to veterans having an unemployment rate 2.6 percent higher than the general population, according to September's Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment report. As U.S. involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars winds down, lawmakers and organizations of all stripes have launched efforts to help veterans find work.

President Barack Obama this week announced measures, including $120 million in total tax breaks to companies that hire veterans.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it hopes to get 15,000 veterans hired through 100 job fairs around the country for veterans this year. One of those job fairs was held recently in Naperville, a Chicago suburb, giving 86 companies the chance to meet more than 600 veterans.

One problem is that veterans need to articulate more clearly to companies their experience, said Kevin Schmiegel, vice president of veteran's employment programs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Hiring managers who have not served in the military are often bewildered by the jargon used by soldiers and weapons specialists, said Becky Brillon, who directs a program at the Community Career Center in Naperville.

A military job title might be listed like this: "25 Romeo visual and media equipment operator and maintainer."

"If somebody was artillery, or a sharpshooter or a sniper, you have to tone that down in the civilian world. It's more about being detail-oriented, precise and focused," Brillon said.

CREDIT FOR SKILLS

But on the other side of that coin, private employers should give more credit to the experience and skills veterans acquire in the military, Schmiegel said.

Veteran unemployment could fall dramatically if companies were willing to give jobs that normally require credentialing or a college diploma to veterans with military experience in the same role, Schmiegel said. He also said companies should offer training to veterans to help connect military experience to workplace skills.

Some military jobs, like a mechanic or technician, are more easily transferred to a private sector job than others.

David Berry served as a medic in the Army 25 years ago, but did not enter the private-sector medical field because of how much extra training he would need, he said.

Berry said he was performing a range of medical treatments in the military that would have required at least an associate college degree to get a similar job in the private sector.

"The private sector has its own set of rules and they don't all correspond with what the military says," Berry said. "I didn't get anything from the military saying, 'He's qualified, and we back this person up for this position because he's done this, this and that.'"

The credentials and certificates that the military does give out for certain forms of training still do not seem to carry much weight.

Rick Combs, a 27-year old who retired as a Sergeant in the Army, says he was given management training in the military as part of becoming a Sergeant. So far, that training has not translated into a comparable private-sector job.

"You can come in, and slap something down that says, 'Here, the military says I can lead people. Give me a department and I will make it dance for you,'" Combs said. "I haven't had the opportunity on the civilian side yet."

Combs said he's going back to school to become a network technician, an area he worked in for the Army.

Schmiegel, from the Chamber of Commerce, said something must be done for veterans to find jobs or the country's voluntary armed forces will not find as many willing recruits.

"We are telling (recruits) right now that when they leave the service four years from now that they're going to be better off. That they're going to have a better job. That they're going to be more marketable. And the fact is, right now they're not," Schmiegel said.

(Editing by Greg McCune)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/economy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111029/us_nm/us_economy_jobs_veterans

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