A federal grand jury returned an indictment yesterday charging nine people in Israel with operating a 'boiler room' telemarketing lottery scam that targeted elderly victims in the United States.  The wire and mail fraud conspiracy charges allege that unknowing senior citizens were conned into sending millions of dollars for nonexistent sweepstakes lotteries.

Like the Boiler Room movie, this reportedly four (4) year scam suggests there was a high-pressure operation targeting vulnerable victims.

Bernard Madoff's investment victims filed 15,400 claims through July 2, 2009, having been scammed in "the largest Ponzi scheme ever conducted," according to Irving Picard (inset), the trustee appointed by the U.S. bankruptcy court to manage investor claims in the Madoff bankruptcy.

Picard, a lawyer at Baker and Hostetler LLP, noted that Madoff's cohorts "were actively recruiting more than 1,000 customer accounts and infusing [his] Ponzi scheme with billions of dollars."

Can Madoff's investment victims ever hope to see their money again?

The Supreme Court put out a few noteworthy decisions yesterday, covering issues ranging from postconviction DNA testing to age discrimination in the workplace. In one of the key 5-4 rulings, the Court said convicts had no Due Process right under the Constitution to access the state's evidence for DNA testing. The five justices felt that, considering the fact that federal law and 46 states' statutes already cover access to DNA evidence, it was best left to the states to deal with that postconviction issue.

In another close ruling (with the typically liberal-leaning justices in the minority), the Court held that a plaintiff bringing a federal law age discrimination claim must prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that age was the "but-for" cause of the challenged adverse employment action. The ruling noted that the age discrimination statute's language did not track that of Title VII, which deals with other types of discrimination (race, sex, religion, etc.). As a result, age discrimination claims will be gauged under a more scrutinizing light for the plaintiffs, as compared to Title VII.

The California Supreme Court ruled on Monday that only the representatives of a class, and not the entire class, must meet standing requirements under amendments to the state's unfair competition law.

The decision came as part of a long-running class-action suit against cigarette manufacturers, and overturned a ruling by the Court of Appeals which decertified the class because not all of its members met the standing requirements as individuals.