David Fleck (Anti-Fraud Attorney since 1997)

The man convicted this week of stealing two Harlem brownstones isn't new to this. He pleaded guilty to a foreclosure scheme in Queens back in 1999, and his companies later pleaded guilty to filing false deeds in another Queens scam. After 25 years working fraud, I can tell you the repeat player is the rule, not the exception. The deed is easy to forge, cheap to record, and lucrative enough to keep coming back to.

Google made Read Along free this week for every school on Google Workspace for Education. It listens as a kid reads aloud and helps in real time when they stumble over a word. For a teacher with thirty readers at thirty different levels, that's a second set of ears in the room. Small feature, big impact in real classrooms.

Ten years in prison, and $66 million in restitution ordered. The restitution number in this week's Medicare case is the one worth sitting with. It's what the government hopes to claw back from money that's already gone, spent, in this scheme partly on Rolls-Royces. Recovery runs for years and rarely comes back whole.

Source: justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/f…

The homes in this week's Detroit sentencing weren't picked at random. The scheme went after owners already in tax-foreclosure trouble, then quietly routed their properties through fake "interim owners" before selling them off. Fraudsters find owners who are distracted, distressed, or alone.

Google shipped a small image tool this week called Nano Banana 2 Lite that turns a text description into a picture in about four seconds, for roughly three cents. A companion model turns those images into short video, edited in plain English. Making a decent image or a quick clip is now something a small-business owner or a teacher can do on a coffee break.

Source: therealdeal.com/new-york/2026/…

One detail from the Harlem deed-theft conviction this week is worth knowing, because it's how these frauds actually work. To take the second brownstone, the thief approached a tenant and pretended to offer him a job, just to get his signature. Then he copied that signature onto a forged deed and moved the building into a company he controlled.

Source: docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/models…

Claude Sonnet 5 became the default for free and paid users this week.

Source: justice.gov/opa/pr/telemed…

Here's the engine of this week's $136 million Medicare case: a nurse practitioner signed orders for braces and drugs Medicare patients didn't need, then sold the signed orders to marketers for about $90 each.

Source: justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/f…

The Detroit deed-theft case sentenced this week needed two things to work: a forged quitclaim deed, and a bribed insider to feed fake driver's licenses and utility bills into the county's system so the foreclosures would pause and the homes could be sold.

@Polymarket No worries. Claude will build my own versions of Word and Excel apps for me.

JUST IN: Microsoft to replace OpenAI & Anthropic with its own AI models in Excel, Outlook & more.

@FORMERLYaeduko @fanofprincephil In my experience, it is rare to collect restitution. Fraudsters tend to spend the money as fast as it comes in.

@DavidFleckEsq @fanofprincephil And I hope reimbursing the people he stole them from

A jury in New York just convicted a man of stealing two Harlem brownstones with forged deeds, about $4.7 million worth of real estate. One of his victims, an elderly homeowner, spent years in a homeless shelter while he rented the building out as market-rate apartments. He's facing up to 25 years.

Google's study notebooks are rolling out in the Gemini app. A student simply uploads their class materials, takes a short diagnostic, and gets a plan of small interactive lessons that adjust as they go. Google is also adding free full-length GRE and ACT practice tests. Test prep that used to cost real money is now built into a tool a lot of students already carry in their pocket.