The first case to offer protection to a person under the whistle-blower provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has finally ended after five years. The ruling by the Department of Labor’s Administrative Review Board went against an administrative law judge’s recommendation in support of the whistleblower. As a result, former Cardinal Bancshares CFO-turned-whistleblower David Welch will [...]

The SEC filed a civil suit yesterday against two lawyers, including a former enforcement official for the commission, charging that they had played important roles in a penny stock fraud that cost investors at least $160,000 in 2005. The commission charged that David B. Stocker, an Arizona lawyer, issued repeated legal opinion letters to justify [...]

Several Nature’s Sunshine shareholders scored a partial victory when a federal judge denied most of the company’s efforts to dismiss a consolidated class action lawsuit. The lawsuit accused the company and several executives of filing misleading Sarbanes-Oxley Act certifications, Form 10-Q earnings reports and press releases with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to illicit [...]

The SEC has settled charges against California-based software maker Mercury Interactive to the tune of $28 million. According to the SEC, former senior officers of the software maker perpetrated a fraudulent and deceptive scheme from 1997 to 2005 to award themselves and other employees undisclosed, secret compensation by backdating stock option grants, failing to record [...]

Beazer Homes USA Inc., a homebuilder under investigation by the FBI for potential fraud has fired its chief accounting officer for violating the company’s ethics policy by attempting to destroy documents. According to a filing with the SEC, “Michael T. Rand has been terminated for cause . . . due to violations of the company’s [...]

Federal securities regulators will throw their weight behind investors in a big-money dispute that could resolve whether shareholders can sue bankers who enabled their corporate clients to engage in fraud, two people familiar with the decision said yesterday. The SEC has asked the U.S. solicitor general to file court papers supporting investors in an upcoming [...]

Comverse Technology’s former General Counsel, William F. Sorin, has been sentenced to 366 days in prison for securities backdating, in a plea-bargain made with the Brooklyn district attorney. Sorin was also ordered to pay $52 million in damages, as compensations to stock holders who suffered losses by the securities backdating, which took place in 1998-2002. [...]

The SEC has filed and settled a FCPA books and records and internal controls violations charge against El Paso Corporation. At issue is that the NYSE-listed Texas energy company, during 2001 and 2002, indirectly paid nearly $5.5 million in illegal surcharges to Iraq in connection with its purchases of crude oil from third parties under [...]