Iceberg Slim’s Wife, Collaborator Dies The woman who helped propel bestselling street-fiction author Robert “Iceberg Slim” Beck into literary fame has died. Betty Mae Beck had begun preparing a memoir about her life with Iceberg Slim before she passed away last week due to prolonged illness. Read the rest.  

Georgia Police Chief Denies Luxury Car Scam A former Atlanta-area police chief, fired for allegedly hiding confiscated luxury cars for his personal use, called the investigation into the charges a “witch hunt.” Ex-DeKalb County Police Chief Terrell Bolton is accused of falsifying documents to conceal a $32,000 Range Rover and a $55,000 Mercedes he kept for personal cruising. In addition, investigators said in a lengthy report, Bolton took almost two months of unapproved comp time, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. But Bolton described the allegations as “Mickey Mouse” and blamed the Sheriff’s department of violating his rights. “I never had a chance to address any of those issues before this report was written,” he said. “The report is much ado about nothing. It’s the culmination of a witch hunt.” But Tip Green, the officer who ran the police car pool, said that Bolton told him to “hide” the luxury vehicles, according to the Journal-Constitution. “Bolton said to hide them, and he did not want them showing up in his cost center,” Green told him.

A judge sentenced a southern California woman to more than 12 years in prison Tuesday for orchestrating an $18-million scam that preyed largely on middle-class Black folks, The Los Angeles Times reports. Jeanetta M. Standefor, 40, pleaded guilty in September to operating a company that duped investors into believing they would earn profits by salvaging properties that were on the brink of foreclosure. Standefor funneled some $14 million back to early investors and paid them fat profits to perpetuate the scheme, the Times reports. More than half of the 650 investors lost everything they put in, in some cases their life savings. Standefor pocketed nearly $2 million over a two-year period, remodeling two homes, taking trips, attending sporting events and buying jewelry and luxury cars. “If that’s not living large . . . I don’t know what is,” said Executive Assistant U.S. Atty. Stephanie Yonekura-McCaffery, who prosecuted the case, which was investigated by the FBI. U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson told Standefor that even though she was convicted of a so-called white-collar crime, she was just as guilty as if she’d “taken a gun out and held it to the victims’ heads.”

A Web site purported to be collecting $1 million to help Kilpatrick pay off his fine

Beware, if you were planning to send a donation to help Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pay off his court-ordered $1 million restitution. Somebody has set up a special Web site, purportedly to collect contributions for the disgraced mayor, who was sentenced to four months in prison and five years probation, in addition to the fine and his forced resignation. But a spokesman for Kilpatrick says that hizzoner is not connected to the site in any way. Find out what he had to say at BET.com/News.

Less than three months after being acquitted of child pornography charges, R. Kelly could be headed right back to the courtroom.  According to a South African newspaper, the R&B singer received a busload of cash from a South African woman who’s accused of bilking investors out of $130,000 and depositing the cash into Kelly’s account. Police say Busiswe Zakwe was able to collect the money by promising profits of a nonexistent R. Kelly tour in 2005. However, Kelly says that’s a flat out lie, but the Chicago Tribune reports that authorities have the deposit slip proving the transaction happened. Kelly’s spokesman, Allan Meyer, says his client knows nothing about Zakwe, and he will fully cooperate with authorities who are investigating.

The arrests took place over the past three months in about a dozen cities. Over the past couple of months, federal agents have nailed hundreds of real estate wheeler-dealers, charging them with fraud in a crisis that has crippled the mortgage industry and left thousands of homeowners, particularly African Americans, cribless. Even as the FBI was announcing the arrests of some 400 alleged financial criminals – including housing developers, mortgage lenders and brokers, lawyers, real estate agents and appraisers – Washington Mutual, the nation’s largest savings and loan association, was firing 1,200 people across the country. Many of WaMu’s layoffs will be in its home loan business, Forbes.com reports, as the Seattle-based bank dissolves its riskier loans, such as sub-prime mortgages. The arrests, 60 of which occurred on Wednesday alone in a dozen or so cities, including Chicago, Houston and Miami , were part of a crackdown against fraud that has cost homeowners about $1 billion. “Mortgage fraud poses a significant threat to our economy, to the stability of our nation’s housing markets and to the peace of mind of millions of American homeowners,” Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip said at a news conference. The sting, known as “Operation Malicious Mortgage” has netted 406 people since it kicked off on March 1, he said. While there is a rainbow of Americans crushed under the weight of predatory lenders and their unscrupulous cohorts, nobody has felt the pressure more than African Americans. Studies have shown that Blacks are more likely to be targeted for high-risk loans than less credit-worthy Whites. These sub-prime mortgages, with interest payments that often balloon after reeling in borrowers with relatively low introductory rates, have triggered a cascade of foreclosures, particularly in Black and Latino communities.