Guilty Plea for Man Behind Creative E-Trade Scam
Court Alerts
A California man has pleaded guilty to opening tens of thousands of bogus online brokerage accounts and then pocketing tiny test deposits made by companies like E-Trade Financial and Charles Schwab.
Michael Largent, 23, of Plumas Lake, Calif. pleaded guilty Thursday to computer fraud charges in connection with the scam, which ran between November 2007 and May 2008.
Largent's arrest was widely covered on the Internet last May, where it was likened to so-called Salami Slicing scams depicted in movies such as Superman III and Office Spaces.
According to prosecutors, Largent wrote a script that opened more than 58,000 online accounts at instructions such as E-trade and Schwab. He used fake names, including cartoon monikers such as Hank Hill and Rusty Shackelford to open these accounts and then profited when the brokerage firms would make tiny test deposits to make sure they were linked to his account.
Typically these deposits were between $0.01 and $2 but they added up. In total he made or tried to make more than $50,000 in the scam, the Department of Justice said.
Largent is also alleged to have received more than $8,000 in micro-deposits from Google, although he was not charged with this in his May 22 indictment.
He is set to be sentenced on Aug. 13 and faces up to five years in federal prison on two computer fraud charges, a U.S. department of Justice spokeswoman said Thursday.
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Grounds for Divorce in Ohio - Sylkatis Law, LLC
A divorce in Ohio is filed when there is typically “fault” by one of the parties and party not at “fault” seeks to end the marriage. A court in Ohio may grant a divorce for the following reasons:
• Willful absence of the adverse party for one year
• Adultery
• Extreme cruelty
• Fraudulent contract
• Any gross neglect of duty
• Habitual drunkenness
• Imprisonment in a correctional institution at the time of filing the complaint
• Procurement of a divorce outside this state by the other party
Additionally, there are two “no-fault” basis for which a court may grant a divorce:
• When the parties have, without interruption for one year, lived separate and apart without cohabitation
• Incompatibility, unless denied by either party
However, whether or not the the court grants the divorce for “fault” or not, in Ohio the party not at “fault” will not get a bigger slice of the marital property.