The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "Financial Fraud" ...
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Platts: Russian Gas Giant Mines U.S. Energy Data
Russia’s state-owned natural gas company says the U.S. shale-gas boom is economically unsustainable — and it’s buttressing its claim with financial data collected by an American consulting firm located less than 20 miles from the White House. Moscow-based Gazprom, the world’s largest gas company, is working with Pace Global Energy Services, a consulting firm in Fairfax, Virginia, to analyze how much money U.S. gas companies are spending on hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. Gazprom, citing the Virginia company’s data, says the true costs of U.S. shale-gas production are upwards of 150% higher than the revenues its practitioners have been reaping in the last few years. Gazprom says this will ultimately lead to the demise of fracking-based shale-gas drilling in the US and other countries that are considering adopting it. But Gazprom’s critics say the company and its unlikely Washington-area ally are spreading “myths and misconceptions” about the U.S.-led shale-gas gas boom so that European and Asian countries will not develop their own shale plays, and will instead continue to buy conventional Russian gas.
Tags: Oil; gas; natural resources; fraud; oil wells
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Bales: Army suspect in Afghan shooting was liable in financial fraud
On the day that tips arose about a U.S. soldier who may have strafed two Afghan villages, I left the office for a flight to Tacoma. Within 48 hours of the soldier’s being identified as Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, I and two colleagues broke the news that the emerging hagiography of Bales drafted by family and attorneys had more to it than the story of a soldier who enlisted at the ripe of 27 driven by outrage over the 2001 terrorist attacks—and then broken down by an unrelenting cycle of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Our story started with pure spidey senses: Bales’ s family and lawyer said he had left a stockbroker’s career to enlist, as they explained his call to serve. Yet he had not finished college and clearly had financial troubles, I had determined. And he was active in brokerage in the late 1990s in Florida I learned by checking assorted online records—which raised my suspicions about the quick-money penny stock trading that was commonplace then. Based on those instincts, while also doing the running daily story from Bales’ Army base in Washington state, I had checked some online brokerage records and enlisted Julie Tate to look at others and run through civil and criminal filings in Ohio (Bales’s home state and then nationally). Within an hour, I had found one suspicious record and Julie had found others and we were off on a 30-hour run of investigative reporting and boots on the ground interviews that yielded the breaking news of Bales’s more complicated—and less laudatory—past in the period just before he joined the Army. We located and I interviewed an elderly couple who had lost substantial savings in accounts managed by Bales and received copies of detailed financial records that corroborated their claims and showed Bales as the account manager. We also peeled back corporate records for a now-shuttered firm run by Bales and his brother with backing from a longtime friend and reached him to further flesh out the checkered professional history of the Staff Sgt. at the center of an explosive, fast-moving and intensely competitive story. The story demanded intense investigative reporting that netted notable results in far far less than 30 days of a breaking event.
Tags: U.S. soldier; Afghanistan; military draft; terrorist attacks; deployment
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The Great Mortgage Cover-Up
These stories reveal one of the hidden causes of the financial crisis- how corporate codes of silence helped lenders to flood the nation with toxic mortgages. They document evidence that major banks and lenders systematically muzzled whistle blowers who tried to fight against forged documents, falsified appraisals, and other frauds in the mortgage industry.
Tags: financial crisis; mortgages; forged documents; crisis
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"Fiesta Bowl Under Fire" "BCS The Money. The Games"
Discovery of violations of state and federal campaign finance laws at the Fiesta Bowl and widespread financial mismanagement, including employees being reimbursed for taking luxurious out-of-town trips and visits to strip clubs. The investigation of the BCS found that public universities lose money playing in BCS games; bowls spend heavily on gifts for schools' top athletic officials; pay for the highest executives at the BCS bowls more than doubled since they reunited in the late 1990s; and three of the top bowls accepted large government subsidies even as their revenue and assets have grown.
Tags: BCS; Fiesta Bowl; college; football; fraud; financial mismanagement
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Burning Questions: Arson or Accident?
Investigation which found that insurance companies with significant financial interests in the outcome of criminal arson investigations are in fact taking the lead in such probes- with the result that property owners are accused of setting fires that are almost certainly accidents.
Tags: Arson; Insurance Fraud
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The Monster How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America -- and Spawned a Glboal Crisis
"The Monster" investigates the history of the subprime mortgage business by unraveling the corporate histories of the industry's two most important players, Ameriquest and Lehman Brothers. The book documents the widespread fraud and law-breaking that were largely to blame for the financial system's meltdown.
Tags: Lehman Brothers; Ameriquest; subprime mortgage; lender
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Florida's Insurance Nightmare
The Herald-Tribune's series about the Florida property insurance market gives Floridians their first look at the risk of the insurance companies on which they rely. "In print and online, readers can see detailed financial information of more than 100 insurance carriers, the capital they have to weather a disaster, the degree to which they are overexposed, and the extent to which they are leveraged. It is the only public source to alert consumers whose homes might be in danger."
Tags: property insurance; fraud; hurricane; Florida; insurance fraud; National Association of Insurance Commissioners; Florida Office of Insurance Information;
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Barry Minkow 2.0
The LA Weekly found that Barry Minkow was duping investors for the second time, while the media looked the other way. Using thousands of pages of court documents, public companies' financial reports, and real estate records, the Weekly discovered a pattern of Minkow shortening stocks his Fraud Discovery Institute was about to issue critical reports on, sending the stocks plummeting.
Tags: Barry Minkow; fraud; extortion; libel; SEC
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"Krugman and Depressions in America"
In this report, Professor Paul Krugman analyzes the causes of the U.S. financial collapse. The story also explains "how the crisis was experienced in the U.S." Complicated economic topics covered and are explained to a public who may not have a background or much experience in dealing with economic issues.
Tags: Great Depression; economic collapse; unemployment; fraud; poverty; Bernie Madoff; financial institutions
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Durham insider loans pile up
Tim Durham “is one of Indiana’s highest-profile businesspeople” and appeared to be rising to the top of the super rich. But behind his image, a story of deception and lies is revealed. After an investigation of his company, Fair Finance Co., revealed this deception and he was accused of securities fraud. Also, he was alleged to be using a Ponzi scheme, “using money from new investors to pay off previous purchasers of investment certificates”. Now, Durham and his company face a number of lawsuits.
Tags: financial; finances; economy; Ohio; securities regulators; business; wealth; investors