LONDON, Nov 17, 2007 (AFP) - An octagenarian couple and their son have been brought to justice in Britain for making a small fortune out of faking artworks that fooled experts for 17 years, newspapers said Saturday.

George Greenhalgh, 84, his wife Olive, 83, and their 47-year-old son Shaun produced counterfeits of works dating back to ancient Rome and Egypt, operating out of a small house in Bolton, north-west England.

MIAMI, Sept 25, 2007 (AFP) - A US judge in Miami on Tuesday sentenced three people to five years in jail after they pleaded guilty to participating in a massive insurance scam in Florida.

Raquel Kohler, Ameer Khan, and Stephen Ziegler had pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy in connection with the alleged billion dollar scam by Mutual Benefits Corp (MBC).

Judge Paul Huck on Tuesday sentenced each of the three to 60 months behind bars and ordered them to repay more than 826 million dollars to defrauded investors.

LONDON, Aug 29, 2007 (AFP) - A judge in London gave the green light Wednesday for Algerian bank chief Rafik Khalifa to be extradited to France, subject to appeal.

Khalifa, 40, exiled in London since 2003 when hundreds of millions of dollars (pounds, euros) were discovered missing from the Khalifa Bank, was arrested in the British capital on March 27.

French officials want him extradited because they are investigating alleged embezzlement in the Khalifa Group and subsidiaries Khalifa Airways, Antinea Airlines and Khalifa Rent-A-Car, registered in France.

NEW YORK, Aug 22, 2007 (AFP) - Hackers have stolen personal details of hundreds of thousands of users of US jobs website Monster.com, according to Internet security firm Symantec.

A total of 1.6 million entries, including information such as names, postal addresses and telephone numbers were stolen, the firm said.

The hackers used a type of virus known as a Trojan horse to access the information from Monster.com's computer servers, probably using stolen login details belonging to employers, Symantec said.

LONDON, Aug 17, 2007 (AFP) - A British member of the European Parliament (MEP) was found guilty Friday of 21 charges of deception by falsely claiming state benefits, with the judge warning he faces jail.

Ashley Mote, a former representative of the right-wing United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in south-east England, was convicted of offences dating back to the late 1980s when a once-successful business he ran collapsed.

HAARLEM, Netherlands, Aug 8, 2007 (AFP) - Six men have been arrested in the Netherlands over an alleged Internet scam that cost an Australian 1.5 million dollars (1.1 million euros), police said Wednesday.

The six, taken into custody last week, are believed to be part of a west African network, police said in a statement. Five of them are from West Africa, including two Nigerians, it added.

TOKYO, Aug 3, 2007 (AFP) - A cable entrepreneur who formed a tie-up to salvage Japan's scandal-plagued Internet firm Livedoor Co. said Friday he was selling his personal shares to a affiliate of Wall Street bank Morgan Stanley.

Usen Corp. president Yasuhide Uno said he saw no need to maintain his shareholding to prop up Livedoor, which was delisted last year in a scandal that briefly sent the Tokyo bourse into a tailspin.

However, Usen said it would keep its business alliance, which brings together Livedoor's Internet portal site and Usen's broadband services.

LONDON, April 6, 2007 (AFP) - A British court will rule later this month whether to extradite to France an Algerian bank chief at the centre of a corruption scandal, lawyers said Thursday.

Lawyers for Rafik Khalifa, who was sentenced by an Algerian court to life in prison in March, argued that he should not be extradited because there were no formal charges against him in France.

A hearing was held at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court, central London, but after legal arguments they decided to put off a decision until August 29.

VERSAILLES, France, July 26, 2007 (AFP) - A Franco-Israeli businessman was sentenced Thursday to five years in jail and ordered with his co-defendants to pay 17 million euros in compensation for conning 430 French soldiers out of their life-savings.

Claude Lipsky, 76, nicknamed the 'crook of the century' for a previous embezzlement case in the 1970s, was found guilty of persuading the soldiers, most of them based in French military bases in Senegal and Djibouti, to invest in a bogus financial scheme between 1986 and 1999.

VERSAILLES, France, July 26, 2007 (AFP) - A Franco-Israeli businessman nicknamed the 'crook of the century' was sentenced Thursday to five years in jail and fined half a million dollars for conning some 400 French soldiers out of their life-savings.

Claude Lipsky, 76, was found guilty of persuading the soldiers, most of them based in French military bases in Senegal and Djibouti, to invest in a bogus financial scheme between 1986 and 1999.