A jury in federal court in Miami returned the verdict today in a lawsuit brought by Coquina Investments, based in Corpus Christi, Texas. The panel deliberated about four hours before reaching its verdict after a trial before U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke.

“It was clear cut for us,” the jury forewoman, Shonda Smith, said after the verdict. “We were all surprised at how much stuff they allowed to go through, all the deposits and transfers. At any point, someone could have stopped it.”

Coquina’s lawyer David Mandel on Jan. 17 urged the jury to award US$32-million in compensatory damages and US$140-million in punitive damages.

“They didn’t lift a finger,” Mandel said of the bank in closing arguments. “Once fraud was evident, it was their obligation to report it and stop it.”

Today’s verdict was for US$32-million in compensatory damages and US$35-million in punitive damages, the type designed to punish.

“This Ponzi scheme would have been impossible if it weren’t for TD Bank’s actions,” Mandel said after the verdict, referring to the Miami unit.

Bank Statement

A spokeswoman, Rebecca Acevedo, said the bank is disappointed with the verdict “and is considering all of its options.”

“We still maintain that we were Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler’s bank and that it was Scott Rothstein who defrauded investors,” she said by e-mail, referring to the confidence man’s law firm. “We will continue to defend the bank against claims of wrongdoing.”

In closing arguments on behalf of the bank, Holly R. Skolnick said the Coquina investment firm must have known that returns of 50% in a few months were too good to be legitimate.

“It was obvious to Coquina that these were fraudulent investments,” Skolnick, of the law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP, told jurors. “It had to be obvious. These deals make no sense.”

In its complaint, Coquina said officers of the bank “played an active role in the scheme and facilitated its continued existence” by meeting with victims to create the appearance of a legitimate enterprise.

Fake Cases

While operating the fraud, Rothstein told his victims that they were buying stakes in settlements of cases about which his Fort Lauderdale, Florida, law firm, Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler PA, had amassed evidence and confronted potential defendants in sexual and employment discrimination cases. The settlements were fictional, as were the cases.

He used the bank to make payments to investors that supposedly came from the settlements, and to provide documents “to conceal the truth from the investors, to keep the investors and encourage them to re-invest, and to attract additional investors,” according to the complaint.

Investors regularly met with bank vice president Frank Spinosa, contributing to the “aura of legitimacy,” Coquina said in the complaint.

No Testimony

Spinosa, who is no longer with the bank, refused to testify during the trial, citing his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

The bank is facing three other suits by groups of investors claiming it helped keep Rothstein’s fraud afloat by providing Rothstein with documents that he used to convince investors their money was safe and could be disbursed only to him, when he actually was siphoning money out of the accounts.

Rothstein pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. He is cooperating with authorities and those seeking to recoup losses using lawsuits against third parties.

Seven of his employees and associates have been criminally charged. Five pleaded guilty, and two are awaiting trial.

Bloomberg.com

Raising his Apple price target to US$525 per share from US$500 on Wednesday, RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky said stockpiles of the company’s flagship smartphone were running out in “multiple regions.” The gap between iPhone supply and demand, which Apple has only recently managed to narrow, is a symptom of “unprecedented iPhone sell-through” around the world, Mr. Abramsky said.

He estimates Apple shipped 32 million iPhones during the first quarter of its 2012 fiscal year, which would be nearly double the 16.2 million cellular devices the company shipped during the same period last year. Combined with continued strength in iPad and Mac sales, Mr. Abramsky believes the Cupertino, Calif.-based company will report US$40.2-billion in revenue and US$11 in earnings per share (EPS) after markets close on January 24.

Analysts are generally expecting the world’s largest technology company to report revenues of US$38.7-billion and EPS of US$9.95, suggesting Mr. Abramsky is confident Apple will beat Wall Street’s consensus. Apple failed to meet consensus expectations for the first time in more than five years when it reported Q4 results last October, despite announcing record-breaking quarterly and annual earnings.

Because Wall Street’s expectations were “reset” following the miss, sending Apple shares down 8% after markets closed on October 18, Mr. Abramsky said he expects “a favorable reaction” this time around.

The analyst remains bullish on the stock going forward, reiterating his Outperform rating and expectations of US$32-billion in revenue and US$8 in EPS when Apple reports Q2 F12 earnings in April. Part of his optimism stems from his expectation that Apple will launch a third-generation iPad tablet in March.

Sprouter.com

Kevin O'Connor

Kevin O’Connor became an entrepreneur because of two people: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. The investor and co-founder of DoubleClick and several other companies says he always had an inventive nature, but his dream was to get his PhD and then work for Bell Labs.

“I thought the only road to innovation was via a PhD,” he says. “But around this same time a couple of college drop-outs named Steve and Bill were out there changing the world with the personal computer. I knew then that a PhD wasn’t necessary – and Bell Labs ultimately went bust.”

He was accepted into the PhD program, but declined to work on his own company, a software company he started in 1983.

It was while brainstorming ideas in his basement with co-founder Dwight Merriman in the mid-90′s that O’Connor stumbled upon his big Internet idea.

“After narrowing in a few ideas we explored their potential. Is there a problem and does technology solve that problem most efficiently? That’s as simple as business gets,” he says. He started reading books about advertising theory, and realized that technology could dynamically serve ads to the right user at the right time; it was no longer just a theory.

“Things advertisers were dreaming of doing could be possible on the Internet.” The pair launched DoubleClick in 1995, and it became a billion-dollar company over the course of a decade. Along with CEO Kevin Ryan, now the founder of Gilt Groupe and Business Insider, O’Connor and Merriman grew the company until a private equity firm acquired the company for $1.1-billion in 2005. The company was later acquired by Google for $3.1-billion in 2007.

After being an entrepreneur for 25 years, O’Connor decided to start O’Connor Ventures so he could be on the other side of the investment table.

“I love the challenge of taking on a big problem and identifying the best solution,” he says. “After 25 years of trial and error, I think I have figured out a way to create something out of nothing, creating new ideas and turning them into successful products in the market. I wanted to help other entrepreneurs by sharing some of my processes and insights.”

He says he likes founders who are really passionate about what they’re doing and believe they can change the world. He also says he prefers to invest in companies with at least one founding engineer since tech is so fundamental for the success of the company. “And finally, can the founder afford to take the risk,” he says.

O’Connor Ventures is no longer seeking investments due to O’Connor’s return to entrepreneurship.

“A couple years ago, I became increasingly frustrated and disappointed with the Internet,” he says. “I could find endless amounts of information on any subject but when I had a complicated decision to make, I found myself wasting hours, or even days, compiling information I could compare.”

Or he found sites offering top 10 recommendations, but discovered they were secretly getting kickbacks from the sites they were recommending. So in 2009 he launched FindtheBest.com with the goal of filtering excessive junk and presenting information in a simple, comparable way.

Read more at Sprouter.com.