Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
America’s largest supermarket chain is absorbing a staggering hit from a wave of retail crime and rising costs, with a reported $112 billion in losses tied to theft and shrink now colliding with a plan to close 60 Kroger stores and cut 9,000 jobs. The scale of the pullback, described by some observers as a…
The arrest of a California health care executive at the jet bridge of an outbound flight has turned a complex white-collar case into a vivid symbol of betrayal. Prosecutors say the CEO tried to leave the United States for Nigeria with the proceeds of a $7 million scheme that siphoned money meant for sick and…
The collapse of a sprawling subprime auto empire has erased 65 US dealerships almost overnight, taking roughly 90% of the group’s retail footprint with it and leaving thousands of borrowers and workers in limbo. At the center of the wreckage is Tricolor Holdings, a once fast-growing lender and used car chain now accused of orchestrating…
A Nigerian-born health executive is accused of quietly siphoning roughly $7 million from a program meant to care for United States military veterans, allegedly using a flood of bogus invoices to turn public money into personal profit. Prosecutors say the CEO, who ran a small California home health company, generated about 10,000 claims for services…
A massive cyberattack on a key banking technology provider has quietly put the identities of roughly 400,000 people at risk, turning a behind-the-scenes vendor into the epicenter of a financial privacy crisis. For those caught up in the fallout, the story is not only about stolen data but also about whether they can force the…
SpaceX has quietly taken one of the most consequential steps yet in the global fight against online fraud, cutting connectivity to 2,500 Starlink terminals that investigators say powered a sprawling cybercrime machine worth billions of dollars. The move severs a critical digital lifeline for scam compounds across Southeast Asia that preyed on victims around the…
Minnesota’s unemployment scandal is no longer a contained bureaucratic embarrassment, it is part of a sprawling pattern of alleged fraud that now touches jobless benefits, social services and assisted living programs across the state. As federal investigators move in and political pressure intensifies, the question is shifting from whether money was misused to how deeply…
Federal investigators say a group of small neighborhood markets were never really in the grocery business at all. Instead, they allege, the stores were built and run primarily to siphon money from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, turning benefits meant for food into a steady stream of illicit cash. The case, which officials have described…
Federal agents in Houston spent months quietly tracking a pipeline of advanced artificial intelligence hardware slipping out of the United States and into China, only to see the political ground shift beneath them just as they moved in. While prosecutors detailed a $160 million smuggling scheme built on fake invoices and shell companies, President Donald…
Starbucks has agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars to New York City baristas and shift supervisors after admitting to hundreds of thousands of violations of the city’s scheduling protections. The settlement, which follows a sweeping investigation into how the coffee chain handled work hours and predictability pay, turns a local labor law into…