The Center for Public Integrity

Seung-Hui Cho had a documented history of court-ordered mental health treatment, so he should have been barred from buying the guns he used to kill 32 people at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007. But five years after the shootings, a federal law designed to close the loophole Cho slipped through still hasn’t accomplished that much.

The so-called Brady Law, passed in 1993, prevented people who’d been judged mentally ill from buying firearms. Trouble is, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) established by the Brady Law hadn’t included thousands of relevant mental health records — and didn’t have any record of Cho’s treatment.

The NICS Improvement Act, signed by President George W. Bush in January 2008 — and supported by the National Rifle Association — was supposed to fix the problem by providing federal grants to help states overhaul their computer systems in order to get more mental health and other records into the NICS system. Under the 2007 law, Congress authorized $875 million over five year for this purpose, but since then only about $50 million has actually been appropriated. The results are disappointing. Published reports say two dozen states have submitted fewer than 100 mental health records to the system, and some 50 federal agencies have failed to provide records either.

A lack of access to mental health records was just one of many data gaps and loopholes that have plagued the NICS system. The litany of problems was detailed last spring by a Center for Public Integrity investigation.

AUGUSTA — Maine has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations run by legislative leaders or the spouses of high-level state officials since 2003. But because of a loophole in ethics law, the public didn’t know about it.

That won’t happen again.

A bill to require disclosure of state contracts with legislators and executive branch officials has sailed to approval through the House and the Senate.

The bill, L.D. 1806, now awaits the signature of Gov. Paul LePage, who said Thursday he will sign it.

“It is reasonable to ask our elected leaders to disclose who is paying them. It is good for the health of our democracy and the people of Maine,” said LePage.

“This will increase trust in the system and ensure that people have the opportunity to take appropriate action and make decisions accordingly.”

LePage proposed the bill after a January investigation by the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting revealed that organizations run by top legislators or the family members of executive branch officials had received $235 million in state contracts between 2003 and 2010.

In some cases, lawmakers served on the committees that controlled the spending that went to their organizations.

But the spending was never disclosed to the public in state ethics filings.

Sen. Kevin Raye (R-Perry) the senate president, was the lead sponsor of LePage’s bill. He said Thursday that the bill’s passage “means a greater degree of transparency” for citizens, who will be able to spot potential legislative conflicts of interests.

“They can be more confident that they’re aware of the circumstances surrounding individual legislators and their votes in the legislature,” said Raye.

A federal judge ordered Wells Fargo to pay $3.1 million in punitive damages over its mishandling of a homeowner's loan, according to a report in the Huffington Post.

The opinion was issued by Elizabeth Magner, a federal bankruptcy judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana. Manger described Wells Fargo's behavior as "highly reprehensible" in its five-year fight with the homeowner.

The plight of the homeowner was raised in a Jan. 27 story on iWatch News. 

In an emailed statement published in the Huffiington Post, Wells Fargo spokesman Tom Goyda said "we believe that there are numerous factual and legal problems with the opinion and are reviewing our options regarding an appropriate legal response."

Meanwhile the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, is reportedly considering new rules to require lenders to provide borrowers with more information about the status of their loans.

On Saturday, April 7, 2012, one of the most extraordinary broadcast journalists in American history died at the age of 93. Mike Wallace piqued those in power for more than half a century, nowhere more famously than on the CBS News program "60 Minutes," between 1968 and 2008.

I first met Mike in 1984, when he called me out of the blue one day and asked if I had any interest in working for "60 Minutes." I had been an off-air investigative reporter at ABC News in Washington for more than six years, and I was restless. Within weeks, I had quit my job and moved my wife and daughter to the New York area. I worked as a producer for Mike Wallace at "60 Minutes" for roughly five very exciting and very difficult years, before quitting abruptly in late 1988. Why I broke a four-year contract and left — and how and why I later started the Center for Public Integrity — is a story for another day.

But my favorite investigative exposé with Mike at "60 Minutes" — and there were many great, poignant moments in which the powerful wilted under the lights and his fearless, tenacious questions — was actually my last piece as an associate producer to him, working closely with Lowell Bergman, eight years older than me, who I had met and worked with at ABC back in 1979. I proposed that we produce an investigative segment about a corrupt public school superintendent in Appalachia.

U.S. authorities have located international fugitive Kyung Ho Song in his native South Korea, more than a decade after he fled Illinois to avoid being tried for drunken driving and reckless homicide in an accident that killed a 43-year-old single mother.

The search for Song was reactivated last spring after the Chicago Tribune contacted prosecutors and police about the dormant case. Even though U.S. authorities discovered Song’s location in December, they have yet to formally request help from South Korean officials, and it is not clear when or if Song might be extradited back to Illinois.

His case provides another glimpse into the gaps and lack of coordination in the criminal justice system that allow border-crossing fugitives to avoid prosecution.

Law enforcement officials would not comment on why there was no progress in the case for so many years, but one official suggested that it languished because of a lack of communication among the police, county prosecutors, federal agents and Justice Department officials. All played some role in pursuing Song, but none seemed to take stewardship of the extradition effort and push the case.

The Tribune's “Fugitives From Justice” series, an examination of more than 200 international fugitives cases from northern Illinois and thousands more nationwide, spotlighted Song's case in November. Tribune reporters then teamed up with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to try to locate Song. 

Independent of authorities, Tribune and ICIJ reporters in recent weeks found Song in a glass and concrete high-rise apartment in Yongin, a quiet residential suburb about an hour and half’s drive from the capital city of Seoul.

During four interviews, the once-prosperous shoe store owner, who is now 73, bemoaned how his life had unraveled since his flight.

“I am such an unlucky guy,” Song said.

In the aftermath of receiving an F grade on the State Integrity Investigation for corruption risk, Maine’s governor and state leaders plan to take legislative action. Maine ranks 46^th among the 50 states.

Gov. Paul LePage said in a statement that his office has been reviewing data from the State Integrity Investigation and already introduced a bill earlier this year to improve the state’s lax financial disclosure requirements. The proposed legislation calls for legislators and executive branch officials to report whether their outside private organizations received state contracts.  

“This is the direction we need to move in to improve Maine’s grade,” LePage said. “It’s clear that many states struggle with this issue. However, it is an issue that I will continue to work on improving on behalf of the Maine taxpayer.” The bill has been approved in committee, but has not yet reached the Legislature for a vote.

As reported in the State Integrity Investigation, the state doled out millions — nearly $253 million between 2003 and 2010 — to organizations affiliated with lawmakers and public officials. None of that information was disclosed, nor was it required to be.  

The Federal Trade Commission today took up a case that had thwarted state authorities for years, accusing an Internet payday lender with ties to Indian tribes of illegally deceiving borrowers.

The agency is asking a federal judge in Nevada to order AMG Services of Overland Park., Kan., to stop the deceptive practices and pay back borrowers who its says got cheated.

“The defendants have deceived consumers about the cost of their loans and charged more than they said they would, said Malini Mithal, the FTC’s assistant director of financial practices. “The FTC is trying to stop this deception and get refunds for consumers.”

While the company has won arguments in state courts that it has tribal sovereign immunity, allowing it to make loans even in states that restrict or forbid payday loans, that protection doesn’t apply to the federal courts. Court records suggest the business has made more than $165 million, charging interest rates as high as 800 percent on small loans. Borrowers have complained in droves about the lender’s tactics. Law enforcement authorities have received more than 7,500 complaints about the business, the FTC says.

Among the defendants in the lawsuit is Scott Tucker, a professional race-car driver from Kansas City, Kan. Tucker became a millionaire from the payday-lending business he started more than a decade ago. When state investigators started digging into the company’s practices, Tucker came up with a plan to sell the business to three Indian tribes while continuing to run the company and to collect most of its profits, according to recent court records filed in Colorado.

The Center for Public Integrity and CBS News jointly investigated and exposed Tucker’s involvement in the tribal payday lending business in September.