Dirty medicine
By Katherine Eban
Fortune
May 15, 2013

The epic inside story of long-term criminal fraud at Ranbaxy, the Indian drug company that makes generic Lipitor for millions of Americans.

1. The assignment

On the morning of Aug. 18, 2004, Dinesh Thakur hurried to a hastily arranged meeting with his boss at the gleaming offices of Ranbaxy Laboratories in Gurgaon, India, 20 miles south of New Delhi. It was so early that he passed gardeners watering impeccable shrubs and cleaners still polishing the lobby’s tile floors. As always, Thakur was punctual and organized. He had a round face and low-key demeanor, with deep-set eyes that gave him a doleful appearance.

His boss, Dr. Rajinder Kumar, Ranbaxy’s head of research and development, had joined the generic-drug company just two months earlier from GlaxoSmithKline, where he had served as global head of psychiatry for clinical research and development. Tall and handsome with elegant manners, Kumar, known as Raj, had a reputation for integrity. Thakur liked and respected him.

Like Kumar, Thakur had left a brand-name pharmaceutical company for Ranbaxy. Thakur, then 35, an American-trained engineer and a naturalized U.S. citizen, had worked at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) in New Jersey for 10 years. In 2002 a former mentor recruited him to Ranbaxy by appealing to his native patriotism. So he had moved his wife and baby son to Gurgaon to join India’s largest drugmaker and its first multinational pharmaceutical company.

When he stepped into Kumar’s office that morning, Thakur was surprised by his boss’ appearance. He looked weary and uneasy, his eyes puffy and dark. He had returned the previous day from South Africa, where he had met with government regulators. It was clear that the meeting had not gone well.
The two men strolled into the hall to order tea from white-uniformed waiters. As they returned, Kumar said, “We are in big trouble,” and motioned for Thakur to be quiet. Back in his office, Kumar handed him a letter from the World Health Organization. It summarized the results of an inspection that WHO had done at Vimta Laboratories, an Indian company that Ranbaxy hired to administer clinical tests of its AIDS medicine. The inspection had focused on antiretroviral (ARV) drugs that Ranbaxy was selling to the South African government to save the lives of its AIDS-ravaged population. (more…)

Submitted by Peter Markus:

The Mind of a Con Man
By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
New York Times
April 26, 2013

One summer night in 2011, a tall, 40-something professor named Diederik Stapel stepped out of his elegant brick house in the Dutch city of Tilburg to visit a friend around the corner. It was close to midnight, but his colleague Marcel Zeelenberg had called and texted Stapel that evening to say that he wanted to see him about an urgent matter. The two had known each other since the early ’90s, when they were Ph.D. students at the University of Amsterdam; now both were psychologists at Tilburg University. In 2010, Stapel became dean of the university’s School of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Zeelenberg head of the social psychology department. Stapel and his wife, Marcelle, had supported Zeelenberg through a difficult divorce a few years earlier. As he approached Zeelenberg’s door, Stapel wondered if his colleague was having problems with his new girlfriend.

Zeelenberg, a stocky man with a shaved head, led Stapel into his living room. “What’s up?” Stapel asked, settling onto a couch. Two graduate students had made an accusation, Zeelenberg explained. His eyes began to fill with tears. “They suspect you have been committing research fraud.” (more…)

Notre Dame Football Star Manti Te’o Says Dead Girlfriend Was Hoax
ABC World News
by Colleen Curry and Dan Harris
January 16, 2013

The star of Notre Dame’s championship football team said the widely-reported death of his girlfriend from leukemia during the 2012 football season was apparently a hoax, and said he was duped by it as well.

Manti Te’o, who led the Fighting Irish to the BCS championship game this year and finished second for the Heisman Trophy, said in a statement today that he fell in love with a girl online last year who turned out not to be real.

He said during the season that his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, died of leukemia in September on the same day Te’o's grandmother died, triggering an outpouring of support for Te’o at Notre Dame and in the media.

“While my grandma passed away and you take, you know, the love of my life [Kekua]. The last thing she said to me was, ‘I love you,’” Te’o said at the time, noting that he had talked to Kekua on the phone and by text message until her death. (more…)

EFF creates the “Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents”
by Cory Doctorow
BoingBoing.net
December 20, 2012

Broadcast.com founder Mark Cuban and Minecraft creator Markus Persson have donated $500,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation to endow the “Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents,” which will be occupied by an attorney tasked with hunting down and destroying crappy patents that have been recklessly granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office to unscrupulous “inventors” who claim to have invented things that were obvious and/or already extant; and to pay for activists to fight for substantive patent reform:

Read more here.

From Larry:

Ukraine Crushed in $1.1bn Fake Gas Deal
by Jen Alic
oilprice.com
29 November 2012

Certainly the folks at Gazprom are having a good snicker, reveling in the mockery that has been made of what should have been a landmark Ukraine-Spain gas deal that would have loosened Russia’s gas grip on Kiev.

Everyone wondered how Russia would respond to Ukraine’s attempt at gas independence. But this is what happens when you mess with Gazprom.

It was a horrible moment for Ukraine on Monday—all the more horrible because the whole event was televised—when the historical $1.1 billion deal it was about to sign with Spain’s Gas Natural Fenosa turned out to be fake. (more…)

Submitted by Peter Markus:

The True Story Behind Operation ‘Argo’ to Rescue Americans From Iran
by Antonio Mendez, Matt Baglio
The Daily Beast
September 17, 2012

The true story behind the new movie “Argo” about how CIA operatives posing as a Hollywood production rescued 6 Americans hiding in Iran during the 1979 embassy crisis. An excerpt from Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio’s new book, Argo.

On Nov. 4, 1979, thousands of Iranians stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage, including three CIA officers. The crisis lasted 444 days—a drawn-out drama dubbed “America Held Hostage” on television. But during the tumult, six American consular officials managed to slip by the Iranian mob.

As they hid out in the homes of two Canadian diplomats, the Secret Six dreamed up escape plans worthy of Robert Ludlum, and perhaps just as outlandish.

That is, until the CIA appeared with a plan even crazier than anything they had imagined: a scheme to have them pose as a crew of politically clueless filmmakers from Tinseltown scouting locations for a sci-fi film. (more…)

Submitted by Mike I: Another Egyptian magic moment… maybe a side effect of the Arab Spring?

‘You’ve been kidnapped’: Egyptian TV show ‘terror pranks’ celebrities
By Dina Al-Shibeeb
Al Arabiya
29 July 2012

An Egyptian show is taking entertainment to another level by duping celebrities into believing they have been abducted by terrorists.

The show, “Ramz, the desert’s fox” aired on Al-Hayat TV channel at the start of Ramadan, begins at Cairo’s Terminal 2 airport where a tourist bus arrives to take the celebrity who is the target of the prank.

Video from Jewish News One

The unsuspecting celebrity believes that he or she is being transported on bus to participate in a program to be filmed at the tourist center, the Red Sea city of Ghardaka, to boost the country’s dwindling tourism sector. (more…)

How the Drudge Report, With Its Condoleezza Rice ‘Scoop,’ Again Rules the Media
by Lauren Ashburn
The Daily Beast
July 15, 2012

His Condi Rice item went viral despite its utter implausibility. Lauren Ashburn on why the press is held captive by the conservative blogger’s thinly sourced gossip.

The headline screamed across the homepage of the Drudge Report: ROMNEY NARROWS VP CHOICES; CONDI EMERGES AS FRONTRUNNER.

Matt Drudge—the shadowy, fedora-wearing Internet gossip machine who has boasted from day one that he is a conservative—crowed that his sources revealed former secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is at the top of the veep list. He even went so far as to punctuate the scoop with an exclamation point!

Bull. I’m a good enough poker player to know a campaign bluff when I see one. The claim is so ludicrous as to be laughable, and Drudge must know it considering his reported alliance with the Romney campaign.

Yet in typical fashion, the media—knowing the claim had little basis in reality—went along for the ride. The Today show, Good Morning America, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, even The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, along with plenty of others, took the bait and devoted countless minutes and column inches to the tale. (more…)

Assembly line news for a digital age
by Edward Wasserman
Miami Herald
July 16, 2012

However droopy the rest of the news business might be, dishonesty has become a growth industry, with a steady churn of mini-scandals involving theft, pillage, and fiction. The latest flap over media fakery concerns Journatic, a six-year-old company that sells news organizations what’s called hyperlocal coverage, once known as community news.

Journatic’s approach to journalism is unusual, and it came to light in a recent report on This American Life (TAL), the public radio magazine. TAL’s chief informant was a cheerful but disgruntled Journatic employee named Ryan Smith.

The Journatic that Smith described is a globalized, Internet-based informational assembly line: U.S. data sources are scraped for micro-news of appeal to neighborhood-sized audiences — home sales, death notices, Little League scores, police blotter entries, honor rolls, school lunch menus, company press releases.

Sometimes raw items are shipped overseas (to the Philippines, for instance) and shaped by low-paid freelancers, then polished by various stateside editors, and finally channeled to client publications, which print them in neighborhood news sections or post them online.

Other times source materials are handed off to piecework U.S. journalists who are told to make a call or two, add live quotes, and re-file for clients far away. (more…)

Thousands fall victim to utility payment scam
by Scott Bauer
Associated Press
July 12, 2012

Taneisha Morris, 33, of Detroit, who was scammed on paying a utility and satellite television invoice is shown in Detroit, Thursday, July 12, 2012. A national scam touting a new federal program from President Barack Obama is taking advantage of electric utility customers in several states. The scammers are telling utility customers that President Obama or the federal government will provide credits of up to $1,000 to help offset utility costs. Around the country, the scam has also been spread through text messages, social media and fliers. The scam artists are asking for customers to provide credit card and Social Security numbers. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – As much as President Barack Obama wants your vote, he’s not actually offering to pay your monthly bills.

But thousands of Americans have been persuaded otherwise, falling victim to a fast-moving scam that claims to be part of an Obama administration program to help pay utility bills in the midst of a scorching summer.

The scheme spread quickly across the nation in recent weeks with help from victims who unwittingly shared it on social media sites before realizing they had been conned out of personal information such as Social Security, credit card and checking account numbers. (more…)

Italy confiscates $6 trillion in fake US bonds
Washington Post
February 17, 2012

Milan – Swiss authorities have confiscated $6 trillion in counterfeit U.S. bonds at the request of Italian prosecutors, authorities in Italy said Friday.

Eight people were arrested in Italy and placed under investigation for fraud and other crimes.

The bonds, carrying the false date of issue of 1934, had been transported in 2007 from Hong Kong to Zurich, where they were transferred to a Swiss trust, according to prosecutors in the southern Italian city of Potenza.

Watch the newscast:

(more…)

The Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax
by Brad Johnson
thinkprogress.org
February 14, 2012

The first in a series of posts about the Heartland Institute’s inner workings, from internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green.

Internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green reveal that the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank funded by the Koch brothers, Microsoft, and other top corporations, is planning to develop a “global warming curriculum” for elementary schoolchildren that presents climate science as “a major scientific controversy.” This effort, at a cost of $100,000 a year, will be developed by Dr. David E. Wojick, a coal-industry consultant.

“Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective,” Heartland’s confidential 2012 fundraising document bemoans. The group believes that Wojick’s project has “potential for great success,” because he has “contacts at virtually all the national organizations involved in producing, certifying, and promoting scientific curricula.” The document explains that Wojick will produce “modules” that promote the conspiratorial claim that climate change is “controversial”:

(more…)

Mrs. Lincoln, I Presume? Well, as It Turns Out …
by Patricia Cohen
The New York Times
February 11, 2012

For 32 years, a portrait of a serene Mary Todd Lincoln hung in the governor’s mansion in Springfield, Ill., signed by Francis Bicknell Carpenter, a celebrated painter who lived at the White House for six months in 1864.

The story behind the picture was compelling: Mrs. Lincoln had Mr. Carpenter secretly paint her portrait as a surprise for the president, but he was assassinated before she had a chance to present it to him.

Now it turns out that both the portrait and the touching tale accompanying it are false.

(more…)

Among many great discoveries that can be attributed to the Chinese is that Western consumers will buy shit if it’s chocolate covered and packaged as an upscale brand. Our longtime fakes and frauds columnist W.J. Elvin takes a look at one little slice of the Chinese counterfeit market, collectible and rare coins, an area in which he dabbles with commercial and journalistic interest.

China: The Alice’s Restaurant of Fake Collectible Coins
by W.J. Elvin III
July 28, 2011

Seems kind of weird for a Wag-the-Dog culture like ours to be getting all righteous with the Chinese over a bit of fakery.

I’m talking about fake Apple stores in China, a scam so marvelously done that even some of the employees believed they were working for Apple.

Latest reports indicate those shops have been shut down. But, to give China its due, that story was just one little blip on the fake-o-rama radar.

Most fake stuff coming into the U.S. originates in China where, so we hear, not only factories — entire towns are devoted to producing counterfeit popular merchandise.

Those folks get down to it, even making money by making money.

How do you do that? (more…)

Update, 7/22/11: China’s Fake Apple Store Sparks Customer Ire; Staff Remains Defiant

Submitted by W.J. Elvin III: Love it that maybe the employees don’t even know they’re not working for Apple…

China’s Fake Apple Stores Mimic Real Thing–Down To Product Displays
by Steven Hoffer
The Huffington Post
July 20, 2011

The following is perhaps the greatest Chinese knock-off of all time.

A blogger living the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming, in Yunnan province has discovered bit-for-bit rip-offs of the iconic and well-branded Apple retail stores.

The BirdAbroad blog describes a store housing display cases filled with what appear to be Apple products, that unmistakable Apple Store design, “classic Apple store winding staircase” and even Apple “employees” wearing blue t-shirts ready to assist customers with all of their Apple troubleshooting needs.

But, of course, there’s more to this store than meets the eye. Bird writes, “this was a total Apple store ripoff. A beautiful ripoff – a brilliant one – the best ripoff store we had ever seen (and we see them every day). (more…)