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 "late trading" ...
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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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Mutual Fraud
With the help of one whistleblower, the New York State Attorney's office began to investigate one of the largest financial scandals on Wall Street. The scandal involves mutual fund traders who buy and sell mutual funds after the closing price is set at the New York Stock Exchange at four o'clock in the afternoon. The plan, called "late trading," allowed traders to get the four o'clock price hours later if they knew whether the market would go up or down the next day.
Tags: Wall Street; market timing; mutual funds; whistleblowers; Securities and Exchange Commission; investment; late trading; Janus; Invesco; Bank of America
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The cell game: Sam Waksal's fast money and false promises -- and the fate of ImClone's cancer drug
This book is a behind-the-scenes look at ImClone and the biotech company's CEO, Sam Waksal. ImClone's drug Erbitux promised a revolutionary way to treat cancer. Bristol-Myers Squibb signed an unprecedented $2 billion deal to market the drug. Waksal lived a life of luxury. But by late December 2001 the FDA rejected Erbitux because ImClone's science was "sloppy" and "incomplete." Waksal tried to cash in before his stock plummeted on the news. He forged signatures and traded his family's shares on inside information, an unfolding scandal that also ensnared Martha Stewart, a friend of Waksal. He is now in jail.
Tags: BOOK; ImClone; Erbitux; Waksal; cancer drug; insider trading; FDA; SEC; DOJ
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The Secret History of the Credit Card
Frontline/New York Times Television looks into how the credit card industry manages to increase their profits while average Americans increase their debts. The investigation reveals "tricks of the trade" which increase profits and hit consumers with late fees and penalties. The biggest "trick" of them all is universal default where, after monitoring the customer's financial activity, the companies raise that person's interest rate, based on whether or not they think the customer has become risky.
Tags: credit card industry; universal default; MBNA; OCC; interest rates
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Nicked at Night: Even After the Market Closes, Stock Prices Can Take Wild swings
The Journal reports on the "after-hours" market where "millions of shares are routinely traded after the markets close, seven days a week. While this after-hours trading takes place largely beyond the view of the millions of average investors who have fueled the market, it can have a huge impact on the prices they pay when traditional trading resumes."
Tags: Motorola; Instinet; stock exchanges; late trading; small investors; SEC
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ImClone Systems
An investigation by The Street.com revealed questions over ImClone Systems handling of its drug Erbitux, long before an early morning raid in June 2002 that ended with the company's CEO, Sam Waksal, handcuffed by police. In late 2001, The Street.com reported on a sweetheart loan that went to Waksal during negotiations with Bristol-Myers. It also reported that something was amiss with the Erbitux application two weeks before the Food and Drug Administration rejected the application. Throughout 2002, while others focused on the insider trading scandal involving Waksal and Martha Stewart, The Street.com remained focused on ImClone and "the trouble it was having getting Erbitux back on track.
Tags: ImClone Systems; Sam Waksal; insider trading; biotech; financial; Food and Drug Administration; Erbitux; online; CD
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Black Mass, The Irish Mob, The FBI, and a Devil's Deal
"Black Mass tells the story of two boys-- John Connolly, and James "Whitey" Bulger-- who grew up together on the streets of South Boston. Decades later, in the late 1970's, they meet again. By then Connolly was a major figure in the FBI's Boston office and Whitey had become godfather of the Irish Mob. What happened between them -- a dirty deal to trade secrets and take down Boston's Italian Mafia in the process-- would spiral out of control, leading to murders, and drug dealing, and racketeering indictments. And ultimately, to Bulger making the FBI's most wanted list."
Tags: BOOK; organized crime; corruption; double agents; underworld; mafia; snitch; informant; bugs; racketeering
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The Cop, the Gangster and the Beauty Queen DRUG SMUGGLING
A car crash last November revealed unsavory ties between the Turkish government, the country's neofascist right and the CIA. In These Times investigates how Grey Wolves, a neo-fascist terrorist group that has stalked Turkey since the late' 60s, helped smuggle heroin from Turkey to North America. The CIA tolerated Turkish drug and weapons trading in the hopes of encouraging pan-Turkish militants to incite anti-Soviet passions among Muslim Turkic minorities in the U.S.S.R. (April 28, 1997)
Tags: Terrorism International arms trade Abdullah Catli "Pizza connection"