While the October 2005 bankruptcy law change favored creditors and heavily concentrated on weeding out people who abused the Chapter 7 bankruptcy process, bankruptcy fraud seems to be the next target in line.
Federal officials in Alabama recently formed a Bankruptcy Fraud Working Group as a means to increase communications between federal agencies and bankruptcy officials during the development of bankruptcy fraud cases. This move comes in lieu of a woman in North Alabama being indicted on charges that she lied about what happened to $75,000 as part of her Chapter 7 bankruptcy estate.
More recently in Wisconsin, a former country district attorney and her husband received separate prison terms after being found guilty of bankruptcy fraud, conspiracy and money laundering in November. Mary K. Arthur and her husband Ronald were convicted of hiding hundreds of thousands of dollars while preparing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and sentenced to one and four-and-a-half years in prison, respectively.
A bankruptcy attorney in your area can explain how increased efforts to curb bankruptcy fraud may affect people who are legitimately filing for bankruptcy.
This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Bankruptcy News and Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.