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FBI Agent And Analyst Team Up To Extort, Defraud

Scams

from the fun-fun-fun dept

Mon, Jan 24th 2005 5:07pm — Mike Masnick
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?
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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 24 Jan 2005 @ 9:00pm

    Old News, In a Way...

    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).

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    dorpus, 25 Jan 2005 @ 9:22am

    Conflict of Interest

    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.

    [ link to this | view in thread ]


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