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A former San Francisco computer engineer convicted of locking other city officials out of the city's network has been ordered to pay nearly $1.5 million in restitution.

A judge also ordered 45-year-old Terry Childs on Tuesday to forfeit the $11,000 he had on him when he was arrested as a down payment toward the money he owes his former employer, San Francisco's Department of Technology. A jury convicted Terry Childs last year of changing the passwords to the city government's computer network in July 2008. Following a 12-day stalemate, Mr. Childs finally surrendered the new passwords to then-Mayor Gavin Newsom during a jailhouse visit.

To read more go to http://www.ap.org/

With the legal sparring between Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and SunCal taking a new, nasty turn in California, Lehman is turning to a New York bankruptcy judge to block the real-estate developer from attempting an "end-run" around the court's previous rulings.

Lehman Brothers is accusing SunCal of playing "Russian roulette" in its cross-country legal fight with Lehman and is asking Judge James Peck of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan to enforce the automatic stay in its Chapter 11 case. That request, if granted, would bar the California developer from challenging more than $100 million in claims Lehman has asserted against the SunCal projects in their California bankruptcy cases.

Lehman's filing Tuesday in New York came the same day as SunCal took control of three other developments it had begun with Lehman's backing that had been mired in bankruptcy for more than two years. SunCal, which picked up the properties at a bankruptcy auction for $71 million, took the opportunity to criticize Alvarez & Marsal, the restructuring firm unwinding Lehman's estate, for blocking its attempts to bring the California projects out of bankruptcy.

Read more here.

Vallejo, California, officials voted to file for bankruptcy because the San Francisco suburb isn't able pay its bills after costs for police and firefighters soared and the housing market's slide cut into tax revenue.

The city council's unanimous decision last night will make Vallejo the largest California city to file for bankruptcy and the first in the state to seek protection from creditors because it ran out of money to pay for basic services. The decision came after it failed to win salary concessions from labor unions.

The city of 117,000 is facing ballooning labor costs and declining housing-related tax revenue that have left it with a $16 million deficit forecast for the year starting in July. In bankruptcy, creditors will be kept at bay while officials devise a plan to balance the books. City services would still operate.

For more information go to http://www.bloomberg.com/

The federal government is suing Deutsche Bank, accusing the bank of committing fraud by repeatedly lying to the government and for reckless lending practices in underwriting thousands of federally insured mortgages that ultimately cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said the bank "repeatedly and brazenly" took part in shoddy lending practices for mortgages "that were really ticking time bombs." Bharara says sometimes the bank even failed to verify that a mortgage applicant even was employed. "In fact, they often seemed to treat red flags as if they were green lights. ... While the homes the defendants issued loans for may have been built on solid ground, the defendants' lending practices were built on quicksand."

To read more go to http://www.realtor.org/RMODaily.nsf/pages/News2011050402?OpenDocument