Author: CNN

CNN
 — 

Embattled French Football Federation (FFF) president Noël Le Graët has resigned, the federation announced in a statement on Tuesday.

“Noël Le Graët announced today to the Executive Committee of the French Football Federation his decision to leave his position,” the FFF said in the statement.

It added: “The FFF would like to salute the remarkable sporting and economic results of Noël Le Graët.”

FFF vice president Philippe Diallo has been announced as the interim president until June 10, 2023, the date of the next federation meeting.

Le Graët has been president of the FFF since 2011 and his mandate was due to run until 2024.

Last month, the 81-year-old chose to step down from his role as president “until the completion of the audit performed by the sports ministry.”

According to Reuters, the audit said that Le Graët had displayed “inappropriate behaviour … towards women” and that he no longer had the “necessary legitimacy” to work in French sport.

Le Graët has denied any wrongdoing, Reuters reported. CNN has contacted his lawyers and the FFF for further comment.

Last month, Le Graët also drew the ire of players and politicians for comments about French legend Zinedine Zidane.

In an interview with radio station RMC in January, Le Graët said he “wouldn’t even have taken [a] call” from Zidane when asked whether the World Cup winner had called to express an interest in taking over as the men’s national team coach from Didier Deschamps.

He later apologized to Zidane for the remarks.

Le Graët has been credited with reviving the French team having been in charge of the FFF when Les Bleus won the World Cup in 2018 and lost in the final against Argentina last year.

But he also has a record of making controversial comments, saying in 2019 that he is “totally against” the interruption of football matches as a result of homophobic chants and banners.

“I would not stop the games. I do not want to be held hostage on homophobia. There are security services to ensure that these banners disappear,” Le Graët told radio station France Info at the time.

CNN
 — 

A ransomware attack on the US Marshals Service has affected a computer system containing “law enforcement sensitive information,” including personal information belonging to targets of investigations, a US Marshals Service spokesperson said Monday evening.

“The affected system contains law enforcement sensitive information, including returns from legal process, administrative information, and personally identifiable information pertaining to subjects of USMS investigations, third parties, and certain USMS employees,” spokesperson Drew Wade said in a statement.

The Marshals Service, which handles federal prisoners across the US and pursues fugitives, discovered the hack and theft of data from its network on February 17. The service “disconnected the affected system, and the Department of Justice initiated a forensic investigation,” Wade said in the statement.

The Justice Department subsequently determined it “constitutes a major incident,” according to the statement. A “major incident” is a hack that is significant enough that it requires a federal agency to notify Congress.

A senior official familiar with the matter told CNN that no data related to the witness protection program was obtained during the incident.

The Justice Department’s investigation into the incident is ongoing.

NBC News first reported on the incident.

It’s at least the second significant malicious cyber incident to affect US federal law enforcement agencies in February.

The FBI had to move to contain malicious activity on part of its computer network earlier this month, CNN first reported at the time. FBI officials believe that incident involved an FBI computer system used in investigations of images of child sexual exploitation, two sources briefed on the matter told CNN.

There was no immediate indication that the US Marshals Service and FBI cyber incidents were related.

CNN
 — 

Ohio investigators were trying to identify human remains found decades ago when a tip led them to identify the remains of another person found dead almost 200 miles away, officials said Monday.

Investigators now believe they’ve identified both sets of remains, officials said.

“Old-fashioned detective work, modern DNA technology, and a serendipitous tip that was offered in one case but proved vital in another case have led to the identification of two John Does in northeast and central Ohio,” a release from Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s office reads.

In August, the Mahoning County coroner’s office and Youngstown police released images of a clay facial reconstruction that an artist derived from human remains found in 1987 in Youngstown.

Anthropological analysis suggested the remains belonged to a Black male between the ages of 30 and 44 years. Investigators said at the time they believed the remains had been at the site where they were discovered for three to five years.

Shortly after the images were released, Youngstown police received multiple tips – including one that investigators eventually determined didn’t fit with the Youngstown case, but did connect with a different cold case across the state in Fayette County, the release reads.

In the Fayette County case, unidentified remains were discovered in 1981. The tip has helped the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation to identify the remains as those of Theodore Long, the release reads.

“It gives us some comfort that we no longer have to refer to this person by a location, but instead his name: Teddy Long,” Fayette County Sheriff Vernon Stanforth said.

The Fayette County Sheriff’s Office is investigating Long’s death as a homicide, the release said without elaborating. Details about how authorities believe Long died weren’t released.

At the same time, Youngstown detectives kept working on their 1987 case, and eventually were able to use genetic genealogy to identify the remains as those of Robert Sanders, the release reads.

Genetic genealogy compares unidentified DNA to DNA that was submitted to commercial databases by members of the public. In that comparison, researchers may find relatives of the person whose DNA is unmatched, and investigators can then check to see whether those families have a missing person.

The release did not include further details about Sanders’ death.

Both the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office and Youngstown police are asking anyone with information into either investigation to contact them.

New York
CNN
 — 

TD Bank will pay $1.2 billion to settle a lawsuit alleging its involvement in an infamous $7 billion Ponzi scheme orchestrated by disgraced financier Allen Stanford more than a decade ago.

Toronto-Dominion Bank agreed to pay $1.205 billion to a court-appointed receiver who will in turn pay back victims of the scheme but denied any wrongdoing, the bank said in a statement Monday

Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in prison in 2012 after being found guilty on 13 counts of fraud-related charges in Houston. Prosecutors charged that Stanford sold billions of dollars in fraudulent certificates of deposit administered by Stanford International Bank Ltd., an offshore bank in Antigua, ensnaring thousands of victims.

The lawsuit claimed TD Bank collected these deposits in US and Canadian dollar values and continuously ignored red flags about the Antigua-based bank over the years.

“As has been the case throughout these proceedings, TD expressly denies any liability or wrongdoing with respect to the multi-year Ponzi scheme operated by Stanford and makes no admission in connection to any Stanford matter as part of the settlement,” the Canada-based bank said in a statement.

“TD provided primarily correspondent banking services to Stanford International Bank Limited and maintains that it acted properly at all times,” the bank said.

The settlement announcement comes the same day the banks were scheduled for trial in Houston federal court, averting the trial. Additionally, HSBC will pay $40 million and Independent Bank, formerly Bank of Houston, will pay $100 million, the receivership’s counsel confirmed.

“HSBC is pleased to have resolved this claim, which relates to matters over a decade old, with no admission of any liability or wrongdoing,” the bank said in a statement.

Independent Bank did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a securities filing, the firm denied liability or wrongdoing.

Investors alleged five banks – Trustmark

(TRMK), TD, Bank of Houston (now Independent Bank Group

(IBTX)), HSBC

(HBCYF) and Societe Generale Private Banking, or Suisse – knew or should have known about the alleged fraud perpetrated by Stanford, and that they aided and abetted the disgraced financier in the 20-year scheme.

The latest settlement brings the total recoveries amount to more than $1.6 billion.

“Given all the challenges faced by the receivership since 2009, this is nothing short of a monumental recovery,” said Kevin Sadler, lead counsel for the receiver, in a statement.

TD said it agreed to settle to “avoid the distraction and uncertainty of continuing a long legal proceeding.”

Clients of Stanford, were told that the certificates of deposit they purchased averaged a rate of return 3-4% higher than US CD’s, and that the bank made safe investments in products like stocks and bonds. But the money was actually used to fund the Texas tycoon’s lavish lifestyle, including multiple homes in the Caribbean and US.

Societe Generale reached a settlement of $157 million and Trustmark agreed to pay $100 million earlier this year.

– James O’Toole contributed to this report.

CNN
 — 

The men’s swimming and diving team at Howard University won the 2023 Northeast Conference Championship on Saturday, the team’s first title in more than 30 years, the school’s athletic department tweeted.

The all-Black swim team earned 928 points during five days of competition in Geneva, Ohio, surpassing four other teams by a margin of 169 points, according to the results posted on the Northeast Conference Championship’s website. Howard, one of the oldest historically Black universities in the US, defeated teams from Long Island University, St. Francis College in Brooklyn, and Wagner College.

The Bison team also saw additional awards at the competition, including Miles Simon being named outstanding swimmer and Jordan Walker named outstanding diver.

Howard’s win was described as historic and significant in a sport that is predominantly White.

Simon, a senior at Howard, told CNN that African American athletes represent a very small percent of competitive swimmers in America.

“So, I guess seeing an all-Black swim team win the conference championship shows that, that number could be higher,” Simon told CNN.

The team was a runner-up in the competition last year, but “weren’t satisfied” with that, according to Nicholas Askew, director of swimming & diving at Howard – the only swim program offered at an HBCU.

“Howard can’t be the only place, the only option because we only have so many roster spots. There are so many people we unfortunately can’t have at Howard to be able to swim,” Askew told CNN. “We are so glad to be able to see the success and so prayerful that it will be taken note of by the other HBCU’s to restart their program so we can no longer be the only HBCU.”

CNN
 — 

Without commercial interruptions or rushed acceptance speeches, Sunday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, which streamed on Netflix’s YouTube channel, was one of the more relaxed award events in recent memory.

If you were among the million or so viewers who watched the show, you might have felt a little more like you were in the room than at home. Without a network or linear broadcast partner, the show felt unfiltered, with glimpses of stars mingling between presentations and plenty of speeches sprinkled with curse words that went uncensored.

Seated at a center table near the stage was Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos. The streaming giant will become the new home of the SAG Awards next year, and Sarandos, who appeared beaming at times on Sunday, may have given ratings-challenged award shows a formula for future success: keep it candid.

Award events get pared-down in the public discourse to a few moments of genuine emotion and humor that lend themselves to social media feeds and morning talk shows. The pacing of Sunday’s SAG Awards seemed to allow for more of them.

Here are some of the event’s highlights you may have missed:

The cast of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” took turns celebrating and dancing over their best ensemble win, before ceding the stage to James Hong, one of the film’s stars. The 94-year-old actor spoke with humor and heart about his long career in an industry where he faced much discrimination.

“My first movie was with Clark Gable, but back in those days, the leading role was played by these guys with their eyes taped up, and they talked like this,” said Hong, mimicking the offensive accent that was written for Asian characters at the time. “The producer said the Asians were not good enough and they (were) not box office, but look at us now.”

“I hope I will come back when I’m 100 years old,” Hong said.

“Elvis” star Austin Butler was captured by cameras offering his arm to help escort several honorees like Sally Field and Jennifer Coolidge to the stage.

His “sweetheart” chivalry did not go unnoticed on Twitter.

Deadpan duo Aubrey Plaza and Jenna Ortega had one of the evening’s funnier presentations. The two wondered rhetorically why they were paired together to present the award for best male actor in a TV movie or miniseries.

“We should find the people who did this,” Plaza said, before Ortega joined in and the two said in unison, “and curse their families, and watch as misfortune follows their bloodline for the next seven generations.”

Dark comedy gold.

“Abbott Elementary” creator and star Quinta Brunson was among several actors to include a few, appropriately timed curse words on stage.

“They are the best, and they are so f—ing funny all the time, y’all,” Brunson said of her sitcom cast.

“I’m in awe of all of them at every single turn and we just want to say thank you and [we’re] honored to be in the category with such amazing shows with amazing actors, peers of ours,” Brunson continued. “The peer award hits different though, don’t it? I feel good…So, thank you!”

We didn’t miss the beeps.

Brendan Fraser, who won for best performance by a lead actor for his role in “The Whale,” was one of several winners who had a poignant acceptance speech that had the audience in tears along with him.

“He’s someone who is on a raft of regrets, but he’s in a sea of hope, and I’ve been at that sea and I’ve rode that wave,” Fraser said of his character in the film. “All the actors out there who have gone through that or who are going through that, I know how you feel. But believe me, if you just stay in there and you put one foot in front of the other, you’ll get to where you need to go.”

Ke Huy Quan and Michelle Yeoh’s historic wins as the first Asian actors to win their respective categories charged the room with excitement and brought the crowd to their feet.

Their castmate Jamie Lee Curtis acknowledged her “nepo-baby” privilege as the daughter of two actors during her acceptance speech for best supporting actress, yet it’s hard to fault success when it is so sincerely received.

“I know that so many people in our industry who are actors don’t get to do this job, and you look at nights like this and think, ‘Is that ever going to be possible for me?’ And I know you look at me and think ‘nepo baby,’ that’s why she’s there, and I totally get it,” Curtis said. “But the truth of the matter is I’m 64 years old, and this is just amazing.”

A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

CNN
 — 

“We want to know what led to this, so we can hopefully try and prevent something similar from happening in the future.”

Those words, from Dr. David Relman, an infectious disease expert and microbiologist at Stanford University, reflected the national conversation around the origins of Covid-19 in 2021.

Did it come from a lab? Was it a zoonotic transfer? Something else? Surely, with time, an answer would become clear.

But now, three years removed from the start of a pandemic that is still disrupting daily life, an assessment from the US Energy Department is only adding to the confusion about what really happened in Wuhan, China, in late 2019.

The department has assessed that the Covid-19 pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory leak in China, according to a newly updated classified intelligence report first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Sunday.

Yet two sources said that the department assessed in the intelligence report that it had “low confidence” that the coronavirus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan, CNN’s Jeremy Herb and Natasha Bertrand reported.

Intelligence agencies can make assessments with either low, medium or high confidence; and a low confidence assessment generally means that the information obtained is not reliable enough or is too fragmented to make a more definitive analytic judgment or that there is not enough information available to draw a more robust conclusion.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan acknowledged on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that the intelligence community is divided on the matter, while noting that President Joe Biden has put resources into getting to the bottom of the origin question.

The intelligence community has been split on the matter for years.

For the better part of 2020, advocates of the lab leak theory had to fight against claims they were being xenophobic or racist — in part thanks to anti-Chinese rhetoric from then-President Donald Trump, who embraced the theory.

An inquiry launched by Trump’s State Department, which sought to investigate whether China’s biological weapons program could have had a greater role in the pandemic’s origin in Wuhan, was shut down early on in the Biden administration.

A letter from public health experts published in February 2020 in The Lancet, an influential scientific journal, also set the tone early by declaring the virus to have a natural origin.

But the lab leak theory has gained more traction with time, especially following reports that the intelligence community found evidence that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell seriously ill with a mysterious virus in November 2019 – although it’s not clear whether they contracted Covid-19 and no further evidence has emerged to corroborate that report.

By July 2021, senior Biden administration officials overseeing an intelligence review into the origins believed that the lab leak theory was at least as credible as the possibility that the virus emerged naturally in the wild – a dramatic shift from a year earlier, when Democrats publicly downplayed such an idea.

The latest intelligence assessment was provided to Congress as Republicans on Capitol Hill have been pushing for further investigation into the theory, while accusing the Biden administration of playing down its possibility.

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul said Sunday he was “pleased” the Energy Department “has finally reached the same conclusion that I had already come to.” (The Texas Republican had released a 2021 report that concluded that “the preponderance of the evidence” showed the pandemic originated with a leak from the Wuhan lab.)

“Now is the time for the entire Biden administration to join the Department of Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the majority of Americans by publicly concluding what common sense told us at the start – the COVID-19 pandemic originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, China,” McCaul said in a statement.

Sullivan said Sunday that Biden had directed the national laboratories, which are part of the Department of Energy, to be brought into the assessment.

“Right now, there is not a definitive answer that has emerged from the intelligence community on this question,” Sullivan told CNN’s Dana Bash.

“Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other. A number of them have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure.”

So where does that leave us? Not far from where we started.

Past pandemics have emerged from natural transmission through animals, and it often takes months or years to discover the host that the virus passed through as it adapted to infect humans.

In some cases, as in Ebola, the original natural source has never been identified. And it’s been more than 40 years since the first cases of Ebola.

So why does it matter where Covid-19 came from? As Relman, the Stanford microbiologist, previously noted to CNN, finding the answer can help prevent the next pandemic.

London
CNN
 — 

The European Union has sanctioned a Russian national and the subsidiary of Russia’s Wagner Group in Sudan, Meroe Gold, for facilitating the exploitation of Sudan’s gold wealth, after a CNN investigation into the group’s activities last July.

The EU named a Russian national – Mikhail Potepkin – and Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group subsidiary in Sudan, Meroe Gold, listing them “for serious human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and killings, in several countries, including Sudan,” according a statement published Saturday on the EC’s legal platform EUR-LEX.

“Mikhail Potepkin is the director of Meroe Gold, a front company for the Wagner Group’s operations in Sudan, and is involved in the activities of M-Invest, Meroe’s parent company. He has a leadership role in the Wagner Group in Sudan and has close ties to Yevgeny Prigozhin,” according to a statement from the European Council.

A CNN investigation last July was the first to expose the mechanism by which Wagner and Meroe Gold were operating in Sudan, circumventing US sanctions on the group.

Multiple interviews with high-level Sudanese and US officials and troves of documents reviewed by CNN last summer painted a picture of an elaborate Russian scheme to plunder Sudan’s riches in a bid to fortify Russia against increasingly robust Western sanctions and to buttress Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine.

The evidence also suggested that Russia colluded with Sudan’s beleaguered military leadership, enabling billions of dollars in gold to bypass the Sudanese state and to deprive the poverty-stricken country of hundreds of millions in state revenue.

In exchange, CNN’s investigation found, Russia lent powerful political and military backing to Sudan’s increasingly unpopular military leadership as it violently quashes the country’s pro-democracy movement

Despite Yevgeny Prigozhin’s denials, the European Council has now confirmed CNN’s findings, stating that Meroe Gold continued to operate in Sudan as a “hedge for the Wagner Group’s operations” via a Sudanese shell company.

“Through its affiliation with the Sudanese army, the Wagner Group has secured the right to mine Sudanese gold and export it to Russia,” the Saturday statement by the European Council said.

A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.

New York
CNN
 — 

Analysts have long expected a slowdown in the US labor market, but for the past 10 months, the data has come in better than expected.

That may sound like a good thing for the economy, but as the Federal Reserve attempts to fight inflation, the still-hot jobs market is signaling that more painful interest rate hikes could be ahead.

But lately, some economists have begun to worry that the data on which Fed officials rely is becoming increasingly inaccurate. The number of people responding to labor market and inflation surveys has been declining for years, and the pandemic accelerated that slowdown. That causes more volatility in the incoming data and hence more volatility in markets, economists say.

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, a monthly data set that’s closely watched by the Fed and markets, has seen its response rate fall sharply since the pandemic — it is now just under 31%.

Julia Coronado, founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives and president of the National Association for Business Economics, said earlier this month that the decline in responses made the survey “basura,” the Spanish term for trash.

It’s not just JOLTS — the response rate for the Employment Cost Index, a pay measure also watched by the Fed, has dropped from about 75% in 2012 to under 50% today, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The response rate to the Current Employment Statistics survey, which reports on payroll and wages each month, has fallen from 60% in 2019 to under 45% at the end of 2022.

CNN spoke with Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management about the declining rates. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

This seems like a long-term problem … Is there an easy fix?

With the growth of spam and a decline in the number of telephone landlines there has been a structural decline in response rates and there is no easy solution to this problem, which is getting gradually worse and worse.

To what extent are declining response rates to surveys actually impacting the data we use? Are we talking about major gaps in our reading of the economy?

It is absolutely critical for the Fed and markets that the incoming data is as reliable as possible. For example, is the strong data we have seen in January for employment and retail sales a true description of what is going on? Is it driven by problems with seasonal adjustments, or problems measuring employment and consumer spending in the economic surveys?

Is the Fed aware of this and how do they factor that in as they determine policy?

When the macro data becomes unreliable there is a higher tendency to put weight on anecdotal evidence, which for example can be seen at the moment where the announced tech layoffs seem like a big deal — but they are basically irrelevant when compared with the recent data in the latest employment report for January, where the economy created 517,000 jobs.

The leisure and hospitality sector alone added 128,000 jobs in January, more than all tech layoff announcements combined. Is this a true description of what is going on or is the source of this discrepancy some measurement problems with the data we are looking at?

What kind of volatility does this cause in markets? Why?

With the Fed’s dual mandate of full employment and stable prices it is absolutely critical that the Fed and markets have a true description of what is going on with inflation and unemployment.

▸ Last year was tough for most investors, Warren Buffett included.

Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett’s conglomerate, reported big losses on Saturday. In total, it lost about $22.8 billion in 2022 — with around $53.6 billion in unrealized losses on its investments.

Still, Buffett pointed to the company’s operating earnings in his annual letter to investors — those are the profits that come from businesses and not stock holdings, and are Buffett’s preferred measure of profitability. Those earnings reached what Buffett called a “record” — $30.8 billion in 2022, topping the $27.5 billion in the prior year.

Buffett, meanwhile, sang the praises of share buybacks in his letter.

The 92-year-old “Oracle of Omaha” wrote that “when you are told that all repurchases are harmful to shareholders or to the country, or particularly beneficial to CEOs, you are listening to either an economic illiterate or a silver-tongued demagogue (characters that are not mutually exclusive).”

▸ Goldman Sachs will host its investor day on Tuesday (February 28). This will be a big one for the company’s leaders as they hope to reset after a 2022 that saw the bank’s profits slump by nearly half.

It’s only the second annual investor meeting in 154 years, and comes just weeks after the company said its consumer lending arm has lost almost $3 billion since 2020. The bank has recently undergone a series of layoffs and CEO David Solomon has faced criticism, and a pay cut, from shareholders.

▸ There are fewer US restaurants today than in 2019. It’s not clear when — if ever — they’re coming back, reports CNN’s Danielle Wiener-Bronner.

Last year, there were about 631,000 restaurants in the United States, according to data from Technomic, a restaurant research firm. That’s roughly 72,000 fewer than in 2019, when there were 703,000 restaurants.

That number could fall even further this year, to about 630,000 locations, according to Technomic, which doesn’t foresee the number of restaurants in the United States returning to pre-Covid levels even by 2026.

Chipotle, Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s and KFC-owner Yum Brands, meanwhile, have each donated $1 million to Save Local Restaurants, a coalition opposing a California law that could set the minimum wage at up to $22 an hour and codify working conditions for fast-food employees in the state.

In a time when the economic data has delivered mixed messages or flat out busted expectations, economists’ predictions for the year ahead are growing increasingly opaque, reports CNN’s Alicia Wallace.

The National Association for Business Economics’ latest survey, released Monday, shows a “significant divergence” among respondents about where they think the US economy is heading in 2023, the organization’s president said.

“Estimates of inflation-adjusted gross domestic product or real GDP, inflation, labor market indicators, and interest rates are all widely diffused, likely reflecting a variety of opinions on the fate of the economy — ranging from recession to soft landing to robust growth,” Julia Coronado, NABE’s president, said in a statement.

Nearly 60% of survey respondents said they believe the United States had a more than 50% shot of entering a recession in the next 12 months.

When such a recession would start was another matter: 28% said first quarter, 33% said second quarter, and 21% said third quarter.

New York
CNN
 — 

Twitter’s massive job cuts continued this weekend, as the company cut about 10% of its remaining staff, according to a report in the New York Times.

The latest axing of about 200 jobs takes the company’s headcount down to under 2,000 staffers, according to the Times. That’s down from the 7,500 who worked for the social media platform before Elon Musk bought the company last fall for $44 billion.

The paper reported that the cuts hit product managers, data scientists and engineers who worked on machine learning and site reliability, which, it said, helps keep Twitter’s various features online. The “monetization infrastructure team,” which maintains the services through which Twitter makes money, was reduced to fewer than eight people from 30, according to the report.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment from CNN on the Times report.

Twitter has been losing advertisers since Musk took over. Ad revenue had been responsible for more than 90% of company revenue. Musk’s plans to raise revenue directly from Twitter users by selling verification of accounts has thus far not worked as planned.