U.S. Seeks to Grab $300 Million in Uzbek Telecom Bribe Probe

  The Justice Department is seeking to seize $300 million claimed to be the proceeds of an international bribery conspiracy involving two Russian phone companies, as the U.S. joins a group of European nations in a telecom corruption probe. The U.S. claims VimpelCom Ltd., part-owned by Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, and Mobile TeleSystems OJSC used […]

Former head of Miami-based CompUSA agrees to SEC settlement

Financial regulators have accused the former head of CompUSA of engineering about $400,000 in kickbacks from the company’s suppliers. Federal investigators said Miami-based Gilbert Fiorentino allegedly “demanded” as much as $10,000 a month from one supplier to Systemax, the New York-based company that bought the CompUSA brand and eventually parted ways with Fiorentino over the […]

Miami-based Brightstar expanding role in wireless communications

Brightstar Corp., a leading middleman in wireless communications, celebrates its 15th birthday this fall, and like other teenagers, it’s getting bigger and adopting new interests. Miami-based Brightstar has become one of the world’s largest distributors of mobile telephones and much more, expanding its middleman role in recent years to encompass other types of wireless devices […]

Yahoo and its CEO: What’s the worst that could happen?

Chief Executive Officer Scott Thompson is accused of lying about his college education. Tempest in a teacup, or scandal in the making? Yahoo chief executive Scott Thompson has been accused outright of lying on his resume in an already brewing scandal dubbed “Resume-gate.” Carol Bartz: “LOL.” The whole debacle appears on the face of it […]

Did Facebook pay just $83M for that giant pile of IBM patents?

Social-networking giant’s amended S-1 sheds light on how much it plunked down for patents in first quarter. News today that Facebook is spending $550 million to buy 650 patents held by Microsoft came just weeks after it made what seemed to be an even bigger purchase from IBM in which it spent an undisclosed sum […]

Indicted Fort Lauderdale brothers facing new federal fraud charges

Already charged with running one of Florida’s biggest investment scams, Fort Lauderdale brothers Joel Steinger and Steven Steiner were arrested again Wednesday in connection with a new fraud conspiracy. A federal prosecutor known as Steinger a “serial” prison for allegedly conspiring along with his brother to create dummy companies that bilked $three million from health […]