Here is a roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for.

Gold mine scam alleged –- The presidents of two companies have been indicted on charges that they fleeced investors out of millions of dollars through two schemes, including one in which they made false promises of potential profits through an Alaskan gold mine, the FBI said in a news release. William C. Lange, president of Harbor Funding Group Inc., and Joseph Pascua, president of Black Sand Mine Inc., were also accused of pocketing more than $9 million they charged real estate developers in advance fees for real estate loans that were never funded, the FBI said.

Businesses fleeced by malware –- Cyber criminals have been targeting businesses that post jobs online, the Internet Crime Complaint Center said in a news release. The criminals attach malware to e-mails sent to the businesses, enabling them to obtain company banking information, the news release said. One U.S. business reported an unauthorized wire transfer of $150,000 related to the scheme. Companies should be careful to not open e-mail attachments from unfamiliar senders unless they first run a virus scan, the agency said.

Credit card fraud –- A Chinese national has been sentenced to federal prison for using fraudulently obtained credit card numbers to make purchases at stores in the San Gabriel Valley, the U.S. attorney’s office said. Tong “Steven” Zhang, 24, of Los Angeles was sentenced Jan. 24 to 27 months in federal prison. He and two other men used the stolen numbers to make counterfeit credit cards and then recruited people to use the cards to make fraudulent purchases, prosecutors said.

Foreclosure rescue –- A Tacoma, Wash., man has been convicted of fraud charges for his role in a foreclosure rescue scheme that collected $800,000 from at least 250 victims, the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said in a news release. Jeff McGrue was convicted Jan. 21 on eight felony charges related to making false representations that he could help homeowners avoid foreclosure. Not a single customer was able to save his or her home, prosecutors said. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 180 years in prison, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles. No sentencing date has been set.

-- Stuart Pfeifer 

The starkest example this year of political leaders insisting on being part of the problem, not the solution, doesn't come from Congress, as expected, but rather from here in California, where redevelopment agencies across the state delivered a message to Gov. Brown that can't be printed in a family newspaper.

As my Sunday column reports, Brown has proposed abolishing municipal redevelopment agencies, which ostensibly concern themselves with eradicating blight. In the process they've laid claim to $5 billion a year in property taxes, much of which is consequently withheld from counties and school districts.

Taxpayers at the state level have to make up a lot of the difference, which would be fine if there were any evidence that the redevelopment bodies have actually produced a net gain in real estate values or employment statewide. Here's how much empirical evidence has been produced over the last seven decades: zilch.

It's possible that Brown's death sentence for the municipal agencies (which would have to be passed by the Legislature) is merely an opening gambit. If the redevelopment lobby agrees to pass through more of their $5 billion to local districts, that would represent compromise.

So far, they're hanging tough. Several responded to Brown's proposal by tying up millions in unallocated redevelopment funds, so the state can't reach them--in the city of Los Angeles, the total came to nearly $1 billion. In the words of Jean Ross, head of the California Budget Project: "For them to lock down that money is like their saying, 'We're not willing to be part of a solution'" to the state budsget crisis.

The agencies insist that Brown's plan to redistribute their property tax revenue is unconstitutional and violates Proposition 22, passed last year by the voters to prevent the state from closing its budget gap with local funds. They say Brown's plan is tantamount to "abolishing redevelopment."

This position isn't going to make legislators happy. "They're not being constructive about alternatives," said state Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis), a former mayor and redevelopment official and chairwoman of the new Senate Committee on Governance and Finance. "They're just ginning up hysteria."

The column begins below.

Nobody expected Gov. Jerry Brown's first budget to be a painless affair, not least because he announced in advance that it would be ugly. 

What was surprising, however, was the first ox he chose to gore.

It turned out to be redevelopment agencies. Maybe you're not familiar with this odd corner of government, but you should be. 

That's because local government redevelopment agencies lay claim every year to about $5 billion in property taxes that would otherwise go to school districts, counties and the state. But they've never had to show they're worth the money. In fact, they've never had to show that their efforts produce any measurable net gain in property values or employment in the state, which is the whole point of having them in the first place.

Those squeals of agony you hear? That’s the redevelopment lobby facing its own mortality.

Read the whole column.

-- Michael Hiltzik

-- Teen retailer Pacific Sunwear of California Inc., which has struggled through nine straight quarters of sales declines and losses, will close between 20 and 25 stores at the end of the month, Chief Executive Gary Schoenfeld said in an interview Friday. The locations are all underperforming and the chain has opted to not renew their leases; Schoenfeld didn't specify which stores would be affected.

-- Macys.com is caving to pressure from customers by launching free shipping -- but only on purchases of $99 or more. On smaller orders the company will charge a flat fee of $8, with some exclusions. For beauty products, customers can receive free shipping on purchases of $50 or more.  

Previously, the website would require special codes for free shipping offers or would have free shipping only during promotional periods or holidays.

Macy's said it is now "one of a select few national retailers to offer free shipping within the United States," but the move still falls short of online retailers such as Zappos.com, which offers free shipping every day with no minimum purchase, or Amazon.com, which offers free shipping on orders of $25 or more.

-- The toy industry saw a slight uptick last year, with sales rising 2% over 2009, according to the NPD Group. U.S. retail sales of toys totaled $21.87 billion, up from $21.46 billion a year earlier. Strong fourth-quarter sales, which were up 3% year-over-year, amounted to $10.2 billion, representing close to half of the year's total.
 
Plush and building sets saw the most significant increases at 18% and 13%, respectively. Outdoor and sports toys saw an increase of 9%, and dolls and infant/preschool had increases of 6%. 
 
-- Andrea Chang

With the U.S. economy’s advance in the fourth quarter, some analysts now will be using the term “expansion” to describe future growth instead of “recovery.”

Why? Because the government’s measure of real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product was an annualized $13.38 trillion last quarter, finally surpassing the previous high of $13.36 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2007.

So the recession’s losses have been more than made up, at least as real GDP is calculated.

What hasn’t been made up, of course, are the horrendous job losses of 2008-2009. The unemployment rate, now 9.4%, is nearly double the 5.0% rate of December 2007.

How does GDP hit a new high with 14.5 million people jobless? GDP measures the value of the economy’s output of goods and services, not the size of the workforce that it takes to generate that output.

For GDP purposes, output is measured by what is consumed. Despite the high jobless rate, most Americans still are working, and many still are spending money: Total personal consumption expenditures for goods and services came in at a real annualized rate of $9.43 trillion last quarter, compared with $9.34 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2007.

The country also is exporting more. The value of exports was an annualized $1.71 trillion last quarter, up from $1.62 trillion in the same period of 2007.

And total government consumption -- federal, state and local -- has risen (your tax dollars, along with deficit spending, at work). Governments spent at an annualized rate of $2.58 trillion last quarter, versus $2.46 trillion in the fourth period of 2007.

None of this will be much consolation to the unemployed and underemployed. Still, if you’re hoping to eventually find work, news of rising GDP is better than the alternative.

-- Tom Petruno

Chart credit: Northern Trust

Federal prosecutors have busted central California outlaws they describe as pale-skinned and somewhat smelly, with mug shots worthy of Bon Appetit: 97 wedges of raw-milk Gouda cheese.

On Thursday, U.S. marshals and Food and Drug Administration agents arrived at Tulare County cheese maker Bravo Farms and seized the Gouda, along with piles of Edam and blocks of white cheddar. All told, investigators have locked up more than 80,000 pounds of cheese. Prosecutors say it is all headed for the garbage disposal.

Concerns over the cheese -- now impounded at the farm in Traver -- came out of a recall of the award-winning artisan producer's Gouda due to an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak late last year in California and four other states.

You can read more about what's happened at Bravo Farms Cheese here.

Among other things, the seizure raises questions about the safety measures taken by small food producers -- and whether it's economically feasible (or fair) for them to be held up to the same rules as larger commercial operations.

This issue came up with the recent passage of the federal food safety bill. The law included an amendment that exempted food producers from the new requirements if they had less than $500,000 a year in annual sales, and sold the majority of their food directly to consumers, restaurants and retailers within the state or within 275 miles of where the item was produced.

These producers would, however, continue to be overseen by local and state food safety and health agencies.

To learn more about this issue, check out the video below.

-- P.J. Huffstutter

Gas prices are rising, federal fuel economy standards are getting stricter and BMW is bringing four-cylinder engines back to the U.S.

The German automaker hasn’t said which models will feature the new fours, the first it has sold in America since 1999. It also didn’t say what the expected mileage would be. But the company was willing Friday to talk about performance.

BMW said the new 2.0-liter engine will be turbocharged and have high-pressure direct injection. The engine will produce 240 horsepower and 260 lb.-ft of torque, making it more powerful than BMW’s normally aspirated 3.0-liter inline six.

The engine will start appearing in BMW models later this year.

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-- Jerry Hirsch

Larry Wilcox, the former “CHiPs” TV star who admitted to conspiring to defraud investors by manipulating penny stocks, was sentenced Friday to three years of probation.

Wilcox could have faced up to five years in prison, but the Florida federal judge who heard the case decided to be lenient.

From the Associated Press in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.:

U.S. District Judge James I. Cohn imposed the sentence on Wilcox, 63. Wilcox also must perform 500 hours of community service and pay a fine of $100.

"I think we got an individual who is truly remorseful," Cohn said. "He should not be punished because of his celebrity status."

His attorney, William Richey, said the sentence was "absolutely appropriate" because of his client's lifetime of [community] service.

"The offense for which he pleaded guilty exists as an aberration in what has otherwise been an exemplary life," Richey wrote in court papers, asking the court to consider that Wilcox was depressed and "could barely put food on the table for his family" at the time.

Jon Burstein of the South Florida Sun Sentinel has more from the courtroom here.

Wilcox, who lives in the West Hills area of L.A., starred as Jonathan "Jon" Baker, a California Highway Patrol motorcyle officer, on the hit show "CHiPs" in the late 1970s and early '80s. "CHiPs,” which ran from 1977 to 1983, also starred Erik Estrada as Francis "Ponch" Poncherello.

The Justice Department filed criminal charges against Wilcox and nine other penny-stock promoters in October, alleging that they had agreed to pay kickbacks to investors in classic “pump and dump” schemes: The cooperating investors would buy shares of the promoters’ thinly traded penny stocks, with the goal of driving up the prices in hopes of luring other investors into the shares.

Typically, that’s a way for the promoters to then dump more of their own shares on unsuspecting investors.

What the promoters didn’t know was that the investors they were paying off were government agents operating a sting.

Wilcox had headed a company called UC Hub Group Inc., a penny-stock firm that listed its business as “precious metals, gems, and the oil and gas industry.”

-- Tom Petruno

Photo: Larry Wilcox in his "CHiPs" days, circa 1981. Credit: Associated Press

Republicans have long targeted the Obama administration's troubled mortgage modification initiative as an ineffective government program. And now that they're in position to do something about it in the House, some longtime critics are moving to end it.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, along with Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), announced Friday that they were introducing legislation to repeal the Home Affordable Mortgage Program.

Known as HAMP, the program is run by the Treasury Department using money from the $700-billion financial bailout bill and offers banks cash incentives for lowering mortgage payments of troubled homeowners.

"HAMP is a colossal failure," Jordan said. "In many cases it has hurt the very people it promised to help. It’s one more example of why government interference in the private sector doesn't work and that’s why it should be repealed."

With Democrats controlling the Senate and the White House, the legislation ending the program is unlikely to become law. But Issa and other Republicans have shown they intend to keep a spotlight on its troubles.

Issa focused on the program Wednesday at his first hearing since taking over as chairman of the powerful committee as part of the Republican takeover of the House.

He brought in as a witness Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), who has slammed the mortgage modification program for failing to help anything close to the 3 million to 4 million homeowners the Obama administration promised when it launched the initiative in 2009.

Barofsky told Issa's committee that the program "has to date been a failure." He said there could be more than 10 million foreclosure filings during the course of the program, which is set to run through 2012, yet the Congressional Oversight Panel monitoring TARP estimates the program will result in no more than 800,000 permanently lowered mortgage payments.

Through December, there had been 579,650 permanently modified mortgages under the program. Qualifying homeowners first get a three-month trial with lower mortgage payments. If they make those payments, the modification can be made permanent. Only at that point does the servicer get the incentive payment.

Of the $29.9 billion in TARP money allocated to HAMP, only about $1 billion has been spent.

[Correction: Earlier versions of this post reported that the TARP allocation for HAMP was $50 billion. That is the figure for all the Obama administration's foreclosure prevention programs.

Timothy Massad, the acting assistant Treasury secretary in charge of TARP, defended the program at Wednesday's hearing, noting that even if it does not reach its original goal, it has still helped more than half a million struggling homeowners.

"These are people that make $50,000 a year, so to sort of write it off and say, well, it's a failure, I think is not really appropriate," he said.

[Updated at 4:30 p.m.: The Treasury Department issued a statement on the proposed legislation. It said, "If enacted, this legislation would close the door to struggling homeowners seeking relief in the face of the worst housing crisis in generations. The administration remains committed to reaching eligible homeowners to give them every opportunity to avoid foreclosure and will continue working to make our programs as effective as possible."]

 -- Jim Puzzanghera

Photo: Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista). Credit: Harry Hamburg / Associated Press

Oil prices surged Friday as concerns mounted that anti-government protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Yemen could spread to some of the Middle East's biggest oil producers. Analysts said that the protests could push oil prices to $130 a barrel quickly if that happens.

In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak sent regular army troops and armored cars onto the streets of Cairo and other cities in an attempt to quell mounting violence and mass protests against his 30-year regime. Mubarak also ordered curfews in all Egyptian cities even as demonstrators ignored the moves and remained on the streets.

The protests sent crude oil futures for March delivery up by $3.70, or 4.3%, to $89.34 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Analysts said that traders were busy buying up oil in case the anti-government sentiment spread and disrupted production.

"People are concerned that this could change the face of the Middle East, and no one knows what direction that might take. Will it be liberal and democratic or will it be fundamentalist and Islamic?" said Phil Flynn, an oil analyst with PFGBest Research in Chicago.

Flynn said that the protests were threatening to move oil out of its most recent trading range of $85 a barrel to $95 a barrel.

Fadel Gheit, senior oil analyst for Oppenheimer and Co. in New York, said that oil prices are already inflated by at least $10 a barrel to $15 a barrel and that futures could rise to $120 a barrel to $130 a barrel if there were similar uprisings in a country such as Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil producer.

"It's beginning to look like the fall of the Soviet Union. If it all ends peacefully, prices will come back down, but no one knows what will happen next," Gheit said.

-- Ronald D. White

The quality of Taco Bell’s beef may be called into question, but their sense of humor isn’t.

Fighting back against a lawsuit that alleges the company’s beef isn’t very meaty, the Irvine-based Mexican fast food chain has launched a massive marketing campaign today –- including snarky full-page newspaper ads that declare, “Thank you for suing us.”

The fast-food chain’s ads in Friday’s editions of the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times and other papers is the chain's effort to set the record straight, according to company officials.

“Plain ground beef tastes boring,” the ad states. “The only reason we add anything to our beef is to give the meat flavor and quality. Otherwise we’d end up with nothing more than the bland flavor of ground beef, and that doesn’t make for great-tasting tacos.”

(I’m sure cattle ranchers now can’t wait to run to Taco Bell’s drive-thru window.)

But there’s also a very serious tone to the company’s PR counter-offensive, which includes information on its Facebook page and a YouTube video of Taco Bell President Greg Creed insisting that the meat mix is “88% beef and 12% secret recipe.”

And now, the company -- protesting that its  reputation had been sullied -- is threatening to countersue the plaintiffs and their lawyers.

So, where’s the beef in all this brouhaha?

It started with a class-action lawsuit filed in federal court on Jan. 19, by two law firms on behalf of consumer Amanda Obney. The complaint claims that tests of the chain’s beef filling found only 35% actual meat and 65% things you’d be more likely to find in a food scientist’s laboratory than a suburban kitchen –- such as binders, preservatives, extenders and additives.

The complaint, among other things, claims Taco Bell is falsely advertising its product and wants the company to stop calling its meat mixture "beef."

Taco Bell was quick to jump into this food fight. Creed, in the YouTube video, says its beef is “100% USDA inspected, just like the quality beef you buy in a supermarket and prepare in your home.”

He goes on to explain that the 12% “secret” ingredients include 3% water and 4% Mexican spices and “flavors.” The last 5%, Creed explains, is a combination of caramelized sugar, yeast, citric acid and “other” ingredients.

The company has posted a statement and full list of ingredients. Among the more head-scratching? Soy lecithin, maltodrextrin, sodium phosphates and isolated oat product.

Even Creed seemed a bit unsure Friday why that last item was used. When ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos asked Creed about the ingredient on "Good Morning America," the executive said he wasn’t a food scientist but that every ingredient was “in there for a purpose.”

-- P.J. Huffstutter

Photo: Taco Bell newspaper ad. Credit: Taco Bell

Financial markets worldwide on Friday finally began to pay attention to the uprisings in the Middle East. Stocks tumbled and some investors fled back to gold and other hard assets.

[Updated at 2:45 p.m.: All data below now reflect closing market figures.] 

The biggest reaction was in the oil market: U.S. crude futures, which on Thursday had sunk to a two-month low amid rising domestic inventories, jumped $3.70, or 4.3%, to $89.34 a barrel in New York.

The obvious fear is that the social unrest in Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt could spread to the region’s biggest oil exporters.

Gold, which has been hit by profit-taking all month since reaching a record high of $1,422.60 an ounce on Jan. 3, was up $22.30, or 1.7%, to $1,340.70 in a classic “flight to safety.”

Investors also ran back to U.S. Treasury securities, pushing the yield on the 10-year T-note down to 3.32% from 3.38% on Thursday.

On Wall Street, stocks were dragged lower by worries about the Middle East and by a string of disappointing fourth-quarter earnings reports, including those from Ford Motor Co., Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 166.13 points, or 1.4%, to 11,823.70. Wall Street is putting the Dow-12,000 party hats back in the drawer.

It also didn’t help the market that the government’s first estimate of fourth-quarter U.S. economic growth came in at 3.2%, weaker than the 3.5% consensus estimate, despite a surge in consumer spending.

In Europe, most major stock markets lost between 1% and 1.5%. Many emerging markets were down more sharply, as usual in a broad sell-off. Turkey fell 2.8%, the Mexican market was off 1.6% and Brazil was down 2%.

-- Tom Petruno

Photo: Protests in Cairo on Friday. Credit: Mohamed Omar / European Pressphoto Agency

Nothing stops like an MTA bus.

I know this because I was driving one the other day and nearly sent my instructor flying through the bus’ windshield after he told me to hit the brakes as hard as I could. I get the feeling he underestimated my enthusiasm for driving.

I’ve driven $250,000 luxury sedans around racetracks, one-off prototype vehicles that won’t hit the market for years and ultra-rare carbon-fiber-bodied sports cars. But nothing matches the experience of driving a 16-ton bus around a training course and then slamming on the brakes, turning the instructor standing behind your seat from a patient, brave man to a human-shaped projectile wearing a sweater vest.

This bus was no ordinary, diesel-belching leviathan from the 20th century. Rather, it was powered by a compressed natural gas (CNG) engine. In fact, this month Los Angeles County’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority became the first major transit agency in the country to switch to a bus fleet that runs exclusively on alternative fuels.

That’s 2,221 buses that run on CNG. John Drayton, who’s in charge of buying Metro’s entire fleet, says using natural gas saves L.A. from nearly 300,000 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions over diesel buses. Per day.