Scams

Scams

by Mike Masnick




FBI Agent And Analyst Team Up To Extort, Defraud

from the fun-fun-fun dept

It sounds like the plot to a bad movie. A former FBI agent used confidential government information and tools while investigating fraudulent behavior to alert a so-called "analyst" of problems with certain companies. That analyst would then write bad things about those companies while (oh yeah) also extorting money from them to get him to stop writing about them. Since the companies were already being investigated by the FBI for wrongdoing, many probably felt it was better to pay up than to report the extortion attempts. The defense, by the way, on all of this, was that the FBI agent was simply trying to expose the corporate fraud he found. Of course, if that were true, wouldn't he actually do something as an FBI agent rather than leak it to someone who was extorting those companies?

2 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
 

Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

  1. Jan 24th, 2005 @ 9:00pm

    Old News, In a Way...

    by Anonymous Coward

    Okay, this is a bit of ankle biting, BUT...

    I read about this when they were arrested. Since this link is story about their conviction, the arrest and original articles that generated was probably 1-2 years ago (which is why I thought when I read this, "This sounds very, very familiar).

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  2. Jan 25th, 2005 @ 9:22am

    Conflict of Interest

    by dorpus

    Actually, the government has strict rules about allowing employees to profit themselves or other companies from confidential information. There are FBI agents who have lost their jobs for using bureau cars for personal reasons. I imagine the agent is in a lot of trouble.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

Add Your Comment

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Plain Text HTML Save me a cookie
  • Plain Text: A CRLF will be replaced by break <br> tag, all other allowable HTML is intact
  • HTML: No formatting of any kind is done without explicitly being written in
  • Allowed HTML Tags: <b> <i> <p> <a> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>
Close
Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Plain Text HTML Save me a cookie

Search Techdirt
And now, a word from our Sponsors..



Subscribe to Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Related Stories
Close
E-mail It