The Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused Mr. Baker in a civil lawsuit last year of having defrauded at least 700 investors by hiding trading losses.
A small independent film distributor has been indicted for defrauding at least 22 people of $3.9 million over seven years, the Manhattan district attorney said yesterday.
State Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer, left, is suing Mikhail Fisun of Brooklyn, accusing him of defrauding at least 50 people with a phony mail-order course for earning a high school equivalency diploma.
The next year, he was named in a civil case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission that accused him and nine others of selling timeshares as part of a Ponzi scheme that defrauded at least 600 investors in 30 states out of more than $28 million.
In most cases, though, there was no active intent to defraud — or, at least, not one that could be demonstrated in a court of law.
"This could very well lead to investors' being able to establish intent to defraud or, at a minimum, recklessness, on the part of analysts and a brokerage firm.
The primary weapon used in disclosure cases is the agency's Rule 10b-5, which requires proof of the legal term "scienter" – meaning a subjective intent to defraud or at least recklessness.
If not for a new computer system that caught Ms. Villacorta's improper credits, Ms. Robins said, she "would almost certainly have continued to defraud Saks Fifth Avenue at even greater financial and emotional cost to the company".
