Developments

A federal judge today sentenced Melissa Stamp to 20 months imprisonment for her role in a bankruptcy fraud involving the concealment of cash and other assets.  Stamp was indicted October and pled guilty in December.  Stamp and her husband, Michael Stamp, owned Stamp Farms and Northstar Grain, LLC, two Decatur businesses that filed for bankruptcy in 2012 after securing more than $65 million in financing from Wells Fargo Bank.

Updating a story we reported here, Margaret Diekemper was sentenced to two years of probation and a $500 fine for her role in a bankruptcy fraud scheme in the Southern District of Illinois following a plea agreement reached with the government last November.  Diekemper was also prohibited from any contact with her husband - whose sentencing hearing is scheduled for next month.  Federal prosecutors asked U.S.

In a previous post (here) we commented that the Judicial Conference of the United States had certified to the House of Representatives that impeachment proceedings may be warranted against U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Porteus (E.D.

Eunice Roper-Allen, of the Allen Funeral Home, who was indicted last month in the Central District of Illinois, has entered a not guilty plea to charges that she concealed assets in her bankruptcy case and defrauded a funeral home client by falsifying a decedent's funeral expenses.

The trial of Louis Rivas on a multitude of bankruptcy and non-bankruptcy criminal charges arising from the collapse of his foreign curency exchange firm, The Forex Project (discussed in this post), has been re-scheduled to July 20, 2009.