The VLW Blog

Former Franklin lawyer J. Edward Moyler Jr. today was sentenced to one and a half years in prison for stealing more than $4 million from his client accounts. Most of the money came from the estate of a well-known Franklin woman.
Although Moyler is under order to pay back the missing money, prospects for restitution are [...]

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A former Virginia resident has joined other disillusioned devotees of a nationwide chain of Yoga facilities who claim the organization robbed them of their free will and took control of their minds and their money.
Andrew Myers is suing various entities affiliated with the Dahn Yoga chain in a 77-page lawsuit in Alexandria federal court, asking [...]

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U.S. District Judge Robert Doumar sentenced a former Newport News mortgage broker to 20 years in prison for running a mortgage fraud scheme out of his house.
According to the Daily Press, Richard N. Garries had been found guilty of 24 charges, including wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, making false statements and concealing [...]

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A former claims manager for the Virginia Birth Injury Fund has been indicted on federal charges related to the alleged embezzlement of more than $800,000 from the fund.
Iris F. Allen, 44, of Richmond worked for the fund from 2004 until earlier this year.
The indictment alleges 12 counts of embezzlement, 11 counts of health care fraud, [...]

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A Florida man is headed to federal prison for more than seven years for running a bait-and-switch operation that advertised power scooters for Medicare patients.  Instead of the jaunty power scooters they saw on television ads, the victims were stuck with bulky power wheelchairs, and the government was stuck with thousands more in costs.
When arrested [...]

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Virginia investors who claim they were defrauded into buying overpriced real estate in coastal Carolina have lost their bid to sue seven banks in their federal mortgage fraud lawsuit.
In a 36-page memorandum order, U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee last month dismissed the banks from the consolidated action where 127 plaintiffs accuse developers of artificially [...]

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Former attorney Kristina M. Cardwell wept as she was sentenced Monday to 5½ years in prison for participating in a $1.3 million real estate fraud at the Norfolk law office of Troy Titus.
Cardwell, 38, told U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson her 2½-year-old daughter was all she cared about as she apologized for her crimes, according [...]

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Financier Ed Okun - convicted in a $126 million fraud - may hear from his former wife at his sentencing hearing this week.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Carol May, who was married to Okun for a brief period in the 1970s, had not heard a word about her ex-husband in several decades.
However, she will be [...]

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Michael Comer, the treasurer of a homeowners group at a Charlottesville-area gated community, is accused of taking more than $666,000 from the organization’s accounts.
Comer had been missing since July 1, when he failed to show up for a meeting to discuss an audit of the Glenmore Community Association’s finances, reports The Daily Progress. His disappearance [...]

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The Alexandria trial of a former Lousiana Congressman is the first under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
He is first and only U.S. public official to be charged under the act, and one of only two individuals in the past five years to go to trial on the charges, reports The Times-Picayune. On Friday, the other [...]

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