The U.S. Attorney's Office announced that 36 people were charged with running a "systematic scheme to defraud private insurance companies of more than $279 million under New York’s no-fault automobile insurance law," calling it the "largest single no-fault automobile insurance fraud ever charged." How? By allegedly setting up over 100 fake medical clinics to bill insurance companies for imaginary injuries and treatments. more ›

Westport, Connecticut man Mark Hayward has been arrested and charged with first-degree larceny and third-degree forgery after attempting to market dirt he said was from the original Yankee Stadium. Oldest scam in the playbook! more ›

Police say that a billionaire real estate heiress is so dependent on e-mail that a hacker managed to pose as her and e-mail her secretary to wire $548,625 to bank accounts before anyone wised up. A source told the Post, "[Candia] Fisher relies on e-mails all the time. So it’s easy for someone to learn lots of things about her if they get access to them." more ›

Hey, con artists, you don't need a bag with a broken bottle or broken glasses anymore—all you need is to ask some of NYC's 50 million tourists for their credit cards and they'll give them to you. One man managed to pull a scam outside a midtown hotel where he asked tourists to "borrow" their credit cards. more ›

The investigation SAT cheating ring across Long Island schools has resulted in more current and former students being targeted. Yesterday, Nassau County DA Kathleen Rice announced 13 more individuals face charges: Four are accused of taking tests while nine paid for people to take their SATs for them. more ›

Numerous waiters, past and present, at some upscale restaurants are accused of taking customers' credit card information, buying items, and re-selling them for cash. NBC New York's sources say, "Several suspects are from top city restaurants like Smith and Wollensky, Capital Grille and Wolfgang Steak, as well as Morton’s in Stamford and the Bicycle Club in New Jersey" and that the crime ring "targeted customers who often paid with American Express Black cards and other high-limit credit cards." more ›

Two Romanian men were busted for allegedly stealing close to $18,000—in one night—from ATMs from a JPMorgan Chase bank in Queens, all thanks to some handy tricked-out Dunkin' Donuts gift cards. more ›

A big-time scam artist was busted and fined close to $1 million for allegedly running a fake talent agency promising nonexistent work for aspiring models and actresses over the course of nearly six years, the Department of Consumer Affairs announced yesterday. That's a whole lot of useless headshots. more ›

Three years after the NY Times reported on rampant disability fraud among Long Island Rail Road employees, the federal authorities have arrested ten people for their roles in perpetrating the billion-dollar scam. According to the Times, "Most of the people — those charged in the case include seven former railroad workers accused of making false pension claims, the two doctors and a former federal railroad pension agency employee who helped the workers file the claims — were taken into custody in the early morning hours at their homes by F.B.I. agents and state investigators, the people said." more ›

How much are people willing to pay for SAT scores between 2170 and 2220? According to the Nassau County DA's office, 19-year-old Samuel Eshagoff, a Great Neck High graduate, accepted payments of $1,500-2,500 from six students to take their SATs for them. Eshagoff, who went to University Michigan and then transferred to Emory University, was arrested and charged with "Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, six counts of Falsifying Business Records in the Second Degree, and six counts of Criminal Impersonation in the Second Degree," while the six kids who hired him were charged with misdemeanors. more ›

With the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks around the corner, the AP reports there are 9/11-related charities where nothing has been done. One of the most galling examples is Kevin Held, an Arizona man who raised $713,000 for a 9/11 memorial quilt "big enough to cover 25 football fields" yet "there are only several hundred decorated sheets packed in boxes at a storage unit." A lot of the money has gone to... Held, because charity starts at home, right? more ›

Did they see it coming? A fortune telling family located in NYC and Florida was busted yesterday and charged with swindling $40 million over the past 20 years from impressionable customers. According to the indictment, the Marks family has been convincing customers that "money is the root of all evil" while purging their marks of all their valuables. But hey, those $1.8 million in gold coins the family accumulated aren't going to just magically purge themselves of evil! more ›

A 76-year-old Brooklyn man was taken for a $300,000 ride when two women convinced him to invest his money in gold coins, but there was never any gold involved: According to the Post, "drifters...married to brothers in a gypsy clan" Reeva Johnson, 24, and Holly Mitchell, 23, were busted on charges including grand larceny when one of the elderly man's friend got suspicious. more ›

Following the tragic earthquake and tsunami in Japan earlier this year, Lady Gaga was quick to come out with a We Pray For Japan bracelet, which she sold to raise money for victims. But now the performer is facing a class action lawsuit that alleges she deliberately raised the cost of shipping and handling in order to turn a profit for herself. more ›

A Washington Heights doctor faces up to 15 years in prison for allegedly running a $700,000 scam in which he falsely diagnosed his patients with HIV in order to fraudulently bill Medicaid. Suresh Hemrajani, 57, was arraigned today on felony charges of grand larceny, fraud and falsifying business records. According to Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Hemrajani would immediately prescribe medications for the patients on their very first visits, and send the bill to Medicaid. The investigation is still ongoing, but prosecutors believe that the patients participated willingly in the scam. more ›

A career grifter who pulled a carpet knife on a Swedish naval official and his father in Midtown was sentenced to 20 years in prison yesterday. Louis Parson has a long history of violent crimes, and a prosecutor said, "Mr. Parson is a dinosaur. He's still living in the '70s and '80s when scam artists and people of his ilk wandered around New York City scamming and robbing tourists and citizens." more ›

This is just another reminder that just because somebody is wearing a uniform doesn't mean they are trustworthy. Police are on the lookout for a pair of men who robbed five households since December, gaining access to their apartment buildings by posing as workers (the Daily News says the water department, NY1 says Con Ed). One 80-year-old victim said, "When [my landlord] opened up the door, he let them right in—he didn't ask for ID or anything. Afterwards he said 'What just happened?'" more ›

Bernard Madoff has given his first behind-bars interview to NY Times reporter Diane Henriques, who is writing a book about his massive Ponzi scam, and he now says that other institutions—banks and hedge funds he wouldn't name— had to know his too-good-to-be-true returns were all smoke and mirrors. Madoff said, "They had to know. But the attitude was sort of, 'If you’re doing something wrong, we don’t want to know.'" more ›

The Awl points us in the direction of blogger Caroline, and the sad, all-too-typical story of her experience with an emergency locksmith one late night. Caroline called an emergency locksmith at 1 a.m. when she couldn't get into her apartment, and was handed an exorbitant $613 bill, which he demanded she pay in cash on the spot. We can attest to the ridiculous pricing, since we had a similar experience last Fourth of July (the price goes up even higher on holidays, of course). But after Caroline called the locksmith's bluff about bringing in the cops, what happened next is a bit surprising: by her account, the officer who arrived treated her like shit. more ›

We already knew not to trust anyone we meet on the internet, but alleged New Yorker "Dylan Sorvino" might take the cake for biggest douchebag on the web: Sorvino is accused of using pictures of a dead war hero to seduce the women he met online. He used photos of Sgt. Roberto Sanchez, a 24-year- old US Army Ranger killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2009 after five tours of duty, for his Facebook profile, while pretending to be in the Army. Sanchez's family was alerted to the scam this week. "This guy went on the Ranger battalion Web site looking for a fallen soldier to use. My son died for this country. How can anyone do that? It's so heartless," said Sanchez's mother, Wendy Holland. more ›

One of our favorite classic scams is the "You broke my glasses" scheme, where someone tells an unsuspecting mark that he/she has broken a pair of glasses and must pay. Variations include "You broke my bottle" routine and "you made me drop my insulin shot." Now someone is going to prison for trying to con clueless rubes—according to the Daily News, Naim Jabbar was sentenced to seven years for getting caught last year. more ›

After Mark Madoff committed suicide by hanging himself with a dog leash from a pipe in his Soho apartment—with his two-year-old son sleeping in another room—on Saturday, more details about his recent state of mind have emerged. A friend tells the Daily News that the 46-year-old son of the infamous Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff was stressed out about not being able to find a job and impending lawsuits. And another family friend claims that Ruth Madoff is blaming Bernie for their oldest son's death; Ruth allegedly believes that Mark "would not have died if it weren't for what [Bernie] had done." more ›

When you're a feng shui master whose bold attempt to seize the $4 billion estate of a late client-turned-lover essentially made all of Hong Kong hate you, is it karma when you get taken for a ride by a Queens limo driver? Well, that's what happened to Tony Chan, an infamous Hong Kong "boy toy", who was charged nearly $800,000 after taking a car service from Teterboro Airport to NYC. more ›

File this under why-we-can't-trust-anyone-anymore: the Post sinks its teeth into the tragic story of panhandler Robert McMahon, the one-armed Vietnam vet who can be seen hobbling for change along Ocean Parkway in his combat fatigues. Except that he's not really a Vietnam vet. And he has both of his arms. more ›

Last week, 50 of the worst taxi drivers were arrested for egregiously scamming passengers by overcharging them with out-of-city rates when the fares were just traveling within NYC. The lead offender, Santiago Rossi, pocketed over $11,000; he told the Post, "I did it for the gas money," and said the first overcharged was by accident but "It became a habit." He complained about the meters, "Why didn't the TLC know about the vulnerabilities [of the meters]?" and called the arrests "the TLC's way of not accepting any of the blame for what was happening. They're going to blame the cab drivers and then wash their hands like Pontius Pilate." more ›

Internet trolls who live with their parents just got a knock to their sterling reputations, as John Egan, a 32-year-old sports fan who lived with his parents in Stuyvesant Town, is now the subject of a Manhattan DA's office investigation after scamming rich divorcees out of their fortunes. But how can you blame them for falling for a mug like this? more ›

The Manhattan DA's "cybercrime" unit is warning internet users citywide that the e-mail you got from your 2nd cousin saying his wallet got stolen by a one armed man while he was on vacation in Portugal is probably a scam. In the "stranded traveler" scam, hackers assume the identity of a friend or relative and claim to be in a "compromised situation," most likely in a foreign country. We're not sure about you, but if any of our relatives were dumb enough not to book a return ticket, they could stay in Europe or wherever. more ›

The Queens DA's office charged two women with attempted grand larceny as a hate crime after they allegedly targeted elderly men. In one instance, they claimed they were a mother and daughter who needed money to buy the daughter a black market kidney. A 79-year-old victim said, "They stole my money - $800. I let them in here. They went into my drawers... They asked me to help them out with something. They gave me false names. They took money from me. I forgot what they asked for," and the Daily News reports, "The duo were tripped up when Queens Savings Bank recently notified an 84-year-old victim it had received his letter asking the bank to close out his account and send more than $50,000. He went to cops." more ›

In his continuing quest to bully, shackle, and disturb the semi-law-abiding citizens whom he hopes to one day lord over, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced lawsuits today against several immigration services agencies who fleeced thousands from Haitians displaced by last January's earthquake with unlawful immigration advice. The monster. more ›

The Great Taxi Scandal rages on! The number of taxi drivers who may lose their licenses for overcharging unwitting passengers out-of-town rates has climbed to more than 1,000. The increase, from the previous figure of 633, is due to several hundred scamming drivers being offered the option to pay a heavy fine to retain their licenses, to the tune $5,000. more ›