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Business news and market updates

  • What is the Shutdown Fairness Act 2025?

    The Shutdown Fairness Act 2025 is a GOP-backed bill that would pay federal employees who are working during the government shutdown, with Republicans continuing to put pressure on Democrats to reopen the government.

    Senate Majority Leader John Thune earlier this week announced the measure, Senate Bill 3012, as hundreds of thousands of federal workers will miss their paychecks, while the military, while paid Oct. 15, face missing their Oct. 31 paychecks. This as families face food security issues, with SNAP benefits stretched thin.

    Some Philly federal workers are working through the shutdown. It’s ‘awful’ and ‘depressing.’

    Senate Bill 3012, known as the S. 3012, is a measure that would pay federal employees who are working through the shutdown, including members of the military and contractors who support “excepted” work.

    Majority Whip Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, said live on the Senate floor on Thursday, Oct. 23, that there was “no single argument against passing it immediately” since it would pay the troops, Coast Guard, Border Patrol, members of ICE, air traffic controllers, TSA agents at airports, and Capitol police officers in Washington, D.C.

    The bill would provide “such sums as are necessary” to pay non-furloughed workers; however, Democrats have argued that all federal workers, including those on furlough, should be paid.

    Federal shutdown may bring a halt to food assistance for half a million Philadelphians

    The bill, sponsored by GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, applies only to “excepted” federal employees whose work is considered essential during a period of prolapsed funding. Those employees continue to work but cannot get back pay until the shutdown is over. Nonessential workers are placed on furlough, and also get back pay.

    The bill was first proposed by Senate Majority Leader John Thune this week. The legislation requires the backing of Democrats, but some have warned the bill would give power to President Donald Trump.

    “We know what will happen — any agencies that he doesn’t like won’t get paid,” Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, told reporters earlier this week, per CBS News.

  • Women hold 9 CEO positions at Philadelphia’s top 100 public companies

    Women hold 9 CEO positions at Philadelphia’s top 100 public companies

    Women filled more of the top leadership positions at large public companies in the Philadelphia area in fiscal year 2024 than they did the previous year. But workplace parity remains to be achieved.

    “We’re showing measurable but slow progress,” said Meghan Pierce, president and CEO of the Forum of Executive Women, which this week released its annual report measuring women in CEO positions and on corporate boards. “As we look at this data year to year, we are definitely discouraged by how slow progress is.”

    The Forum counted women in leadership positions in fiscal 2024 across the region’s largest 100 public companies by revenue, using data from U.S. Security and Exchange Commission filings.

    Pierce says the forum is using its platform to highlight some factors holding women back in the workforce, such as the lack of paid family leave in Pennsylvania and lack of pay transparency. These are “structural issues that might prevent someone from getting to where they deserve to be,” she said.

    Who are the region’s female CEOs?

    Still, the number of women CEOs in the Philadelphia area more than doubled last year, from four in 2023 to nine last year.

    Three were on the list last year:

    • Ellen Cooper at Lincoln National Corp.
    • Denise Dignam at Chemours Co.
    • Susan Hardwick of American Water Works Co.

    Hardwick, however, recently retired and was succeeded by John Griffith.

    The newcomers are:

    • Lori Koch of DuPont de Nemours Inc.
    • Winnie Park of Five Below
    • Mojdeh Poul of Integra LifeSciences Holdings Corp.
    • Suzanne Foster of AdaptHealth Corp.
    • Natalia Shuman of Mistras Group Inc.,
    • Nicholle Taylor of Artesian Resources Corp.

    Carole Ben-Maimon, of Larimar Therapeutics, was included on the list last year and remains CEO of that company, but Larimar is no longer among the top 100 local public companies by revenue.

    Getting more women in to CEO roles, Pierce said, will require “making long-term investments in women and putting them in the pipeline for those top jobs.”

    More female board members

    On the boards of 100 Philly-area businesses in 2024, women occupied 15 more seats than the previous year, bringing women’s representation on boards up to 30%.

    Despite that progress, six companies still have no women on their boards, an increase from three last year. That number has not increased since 2013.

    “We have to call that out,” said Pierce. “A company with no women on their boards is troubling for us.”

    In 2013, 35 of the 100 companies didn’t have women on their boards.

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    A “troubling” decline in DEI reporting

    This year’s report noted that fewer area companies had chosen to report their DEI policies, racial and ethnic makeup of their boards, and/or of their workforce. In 2023, 87% of the region’s top 100 companies had shared at least some of this information, but that dropped to 62% a year later.

    Pierce said this is “troubling.” She said she expects that number to continue dropping amid President Donald Trump’s curtailing of DEI efforts, “just given the environment that we’re operating in — but maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

    In 2020, local corporations vowed to tackle ‘systemic racism in America.’ Now they are navigating a Trump-led backlash to DEI.

    The Trump administration has called for the end of federal DEI programs, and offered universities greater access to federal funding if they agreed to make certain changes, including removing gender and ethnicity from admissions decisions.

    A recent Gallup and Bentley University report also indicates that fewer people believe DEI should be a top business priority. This year, 69% of people thought DEI was “extremely or somewhat important for businesses to promote,” down from 74% in 2024, the report said.

    Editor’s note: A previous version of this story contained a percentage that could not be verified. It has been removed.

  • Sixers and Comcast hope to open up a block of East Market for ‘pop-ups’ during the World Cup and America 250

    Sixers and Comcast hope to open up a block of East Market for ‘pop-ups’ during the World Cup and America 250

    The companies that own the 76ers and Flyers earlier this year made a high-profile commitment to help transform the long-distressed East Market Street corridor.

    The first development to come out of that promise? Perhaps a mini-soccer pitch. Or a pop-up beer garden.

    The teams recently hired a contractor to demolish buildings they own on the 1000-block of the beleaguered thoroughfare with the goal of eventually erecting a major development that could help revitalize the area.

    But, until then, City Councilmember Mark Squilla said Friday the teams and city leaders hope to “activate” the lots slated for demolition with “pop-up” opportunities related to the FIFA World Cup and the nation’s 250th birthday being hosted in Philadelphia next summer.

    “The goal was: If they could demolish it by then and fill it, we could program an open space on 1000 Market Street,” Squilla said, tossing out the soccer pitch and beer garden ideas as examples. “This will give us an opportunity to try to do something special for 2026 while we’re doing a longterm plan for East Market.”

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    Jacklin Rhoads, a spokesperson for the teams’ development venture, said Friday the demolitions come as the partners “continue to make progress towards future development on East Market Street.”

    “The demolition of these vacant storefronts improves the streetscape and will give us the ability to work with community partners to activate the site ahead of groundbreaking,” Rhoads said. “We are committed to working with the City to help jump start the revitalization of Market East and this is the next step in that process.”

    The teams’ commitment to work together as Market East boosters stems from the controversial and since-abandoned proposal by the 76ers’ owner, Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, to build an arena in Center City.

    The basketball team had pitched that proposal as an opportunity to rejuvenate the blocks east of City Hall. But when the plan crumbled in January — in no small part due to opposition from the Flyers’ owner, Comcast Spectacor — the teams vowed to work as partners both on a new arena in the South Philadelphia stadium complex as well as on a joint development venture for East Market Street.

    The Sixers and Flyers recently hired a joint venture of New York-based Turner Construction Co. and Indiana-based AECOM Hunt to manage construction of the arena, which will be home to the city’s NBA and NHL teams and its planned, as-yet-unnamed WNBA team.

    And the teams have hired Philadelphia- and Norristown-based contractor Pride Enterprises Inc. to demolish the vacant storefronts they own on East Market Street in Center City.

    Tearing down and popping up

    Demolitions are so far only planned for part of the 1000-block, across the street from where the Sixers had previously envisioned building their new home.

    HBSE and Comcast Spectacor — a subsidiary of the Philadelphia-based entertainment, cable television, and internet giant — bought properties on East Market Street in a series of transactions totaling $56 million earlier this year. The buildings were formerly home to Rite Aid, Reebok, and other stores totaling 112,000 square feet.

    The properties currently slated for demolition are 1000-1024 E. Market St. That includes most of the former stores on the block’s south side. The teams also own 920-938 E. Market St., the western half of the adjacent block, but those properties are not currently planned for tear-downs.

    The teams’ plan to flatten the stores, making the space temporarily available for events related to the FIFA World Cup or the nation’s 250th anniversary next summer.

    Squilla said an East Market task force will be announced soon, and that group would have input on what happens at the site assuming it is demolished in time for the 2026 celebrations.

    After that, the teams will redevelop the properties, although plans aren’t finalized, Rhoads said. The teams declined to provide any details about the redevelopment project’s ambitions or scale.

    The city Department of Planning & Development did not respond to a request on the status of the development plans.

    The neighborhoods around East Market, a thriving department store district that has languished for decades, have recently begun to rebound with the development of hundreds of apartments and neighborhood retail to serve new residents.

    Stadium construction vets tapped for South Philly arena

    The new arena in South Philly will replace the Flyers and Sixers’ current home at the recently renamed Xfinity Mobile Arena, which was known as the Wells Fargo Center until this year.

    Currently, Comcast Spectacor owns the building, and the 76ers pay rent. For the next facility, the teams will be joint owners.

    The teams have tapped an outfit with ample experience in stadium and arena construction for the job. Over the past 20 years, Turner-AECOM Hunt joint ventures have built the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the SoFi Stadium and Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, State Farm Arena in Atlanta, and Nissan Stadium in Nashville.

    In Philadelphia, they built the Eagles’ Lincoln Financial Field, the FMC Tower, the One uCity Square office building in University City, and the Chubb Center in Center City, the insurance company offices set to open next year.

    For the South Philly project, the partners, doing business as PACT+, have brought on Philadelphia-based union contractors to do much of the work, including Black-owned general construction company Perryman Construction, construction manager Hunter Roberts Construction Group, and Camfred Construction.

    The teams haven’t said how large the arena will be. HBSE and Comcast Spectacor in June hired a design team at the firm Populous and Moody Nolan.

    David Adelman, the Philadelphia student housing developer and investor who chairs the teams’ development venture, in a statement promised “the most technologically advanced and fan-focused sports and entertainment venue.”

    Adelman earlier said the new arena will open in 2030, and the WNBA team will play its first game there.

    The project “is a chance to build something that becomes part of Philadelphia’s fabric,” said Turner’s Philadelphia-based vice president, Dave Kaminski, in a statement.

    Jason Kopp of AECOM Hunt promised “cutting-edge amenities for athletes, performers, and visitors.”

    Although the teams are making moves related to the new arena, they don’t yet appear to have shared much of their plan with City Council President Kenyatta Johnson, whose 2nd District includes the South Philadelphia stadium complex.

    Building an arena at that location will likely require involve fewer legislative and bureaucratic hurdles than the 76ers’ abandoned Center City proposal. But in Philadelphia, Council members hold enormous sway over their districts, and the teams will likely need Johnson’s support if they want a smooth approval process.

    Johnson was asked Thursday what the teams need to do to meet their proposed timeline for opening the arena in 2030.

    “I have no idea,” Johnson told reporters. “That’s not even on my radar at the moment.”

    Staff writer Mike Newall contributed to this article.

  • Is artificial intelligence our economy’s friend or foe?

    As a professional economist, I have the opportunity to weigh in on many issues. In some of my views I’m highly confident, some less so. When it comes to artificial intelligence and its impact on the economy, I’m less confident.

    Having said this, AI has — at least so far — been mostly beneficial for the economy. It has provided a strong tailwind to economic growth since its commercial introduction with the release of ChatGPT nearly three years ago. Over the past year, an estimated more than one-third of the growth in real GDP — the value of all goods and services produced by the economy — has been powered by AI.

    One could make a strong case that without this tailwind, the economy would be in or near a recession. The higher tariffs, the highly restrictive immigration policy, large cuts to federal government jobs, and the interminable federal government shutdown are stiff headwinds to growth.

    But the economy hasn’t buckled — thanks to AI. It is lifting growth via the massive investments being made to erect the AI infrastructure. This includes data centers that are being feverishly built across the country, electric power capacity that is needed to keep the data centers humming, and the fabrication plants that make the semiconductors powering AI‘s intense calculations.

    Even more important to economic growth is the blockbuster increase in the stock prices of AI companies. Stocks for the “magnificent seven,” the seven most iconic AI companies, are up some 40% over the past year and 300% since the unveiling of ChatGPT. Investors are anticipating huge profits from these companies.

    These gains equate to trillions of dollars in increased stock wealth, owned mostly by well-to-do Americans. The wealthy, with suddenly much larger nest eggs, are able and happily willing to spend more, and that’s what they are doing. Consumer spending by those in the top part of the income distribution is on a tear.

    AI has not eliminated lots of jobs as feared, at least not yet. Most businesses are cautious in their hiring, but that has more to do with the uncertainty created by the wild swings in economic policy, the poster child of which is the up-and-down tariffs. Businesses are also waiting to hear from the Supreme Court about the legality of these policies before making any expansion decisions.

    There is some indication that younger workers, those just entering the workforce, may be feeling the early ill effects of AI on their job opportunities. The unemployment rate for those aged 20-24 exceeds 9%, up more than 3 percentage points during the past couple of years, and is on the rise despite a decline in labor force participation. But even here, it is tough to connect the dots from AI to this group‘s difficulties landing a job.

    Of course, it is still early days in the adoption of AI. Just how disruptive AI will be to the job market depends on how quickly companies adopt it. So far, it has been slow going. Less than one-tenth of U.S. companies, mostly large companies, have begun to meaningfully incorporate AI into their workflows. It stands to reason that the most intensive users of AI would be information-technology companies, but even here, the adoption rate is no more than one-fourth.

    AI adoption by businesses is slow because it is hard. Companies don’t have employees with the right skills, their information-technology systems aren’t set up to take advantage of AI, and they are fearful of releasing AI-driven products and services, given that they might cannibalize their existing offerings. A range of compliance and legal issues must also be resolved before adoption.

    If the history of the adoption of pathbreaking technologies is a guide — for example, electricity and the internal combustion engine more than a century ago, or the personal computer and the internet several decades ago — it’s only when new businesses form and optimize around that technology that its economic impact is truly felt. But this takes years.

    AI’s adoption rate is sure to be faster than that of other technologies, but you get my point. There will be disruptions as AI replaces some jobs, and the nature of work will change as AI assumes some of the more menial tasks done by workers. But all of this should happen slowly enough to allow disrupted workers to gain new skills and new jobs.

    This isn’t to say AI raises no concerns for the economy.

    Most immediately, I worry about those high-flying AI stock prices. If I’m even close to right about slower AI adoption rates, this will come as a disappointment to euphoric investors, and stock prices will quickly come back to earth. Wealthy investors will take it on the financial chin, and so too will the economy.

    And abstracting from the near-term gyrations in the stock market, there is a reasonable concern that the financial benefits of AI will accrue largely to the well-to-do. Our already highly skewed income and wealth distribution will become even more so. The economic and political struggle between the haves and have-nots will intensify, to everyone’s detriment.

    Of course, there are even more dystopic views of where AI is set to take us, and they can’t and shouldn’t be dismissed when thinking about legal and regulatory guardrails.

    But when it comes to the economy, AI should be much more friend than foe.

  • Trump pardons Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, high-profile cryptocurrency figure

    Trump pardons Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, high-profile cryptocurrency figure

    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who created the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange and served prison time for failing to stop criminals from using the platform to move money connected to child sex abuse, drug trafficking and terrorism.

    The pardon caps a monthslong effort by Zhao, a billionaire commonly known as CZ in the crypto world and one of the biggest names in the industry. He and Binance have been key supporters of some of the Trump family’s crypto enterprises.

    “Deeply grateful for today’s pardon and to President Trump for upholding America’s commitment to fairness, innovation, and justice,” Zhao said on social media Thursday.

    Zhao served four months in prison after reaching a deal with the Justice Department to plead guilty to charges of enabling money laundering at Binance. But, in explaining the pardon, Trump said of Zhao, “He was recommended by a lot of people.”

    From May: Your guide to Cryptogate, Trump’s $4 billion corruption scandal that’s 10 times bigger than Watergate | Will Bunch

    “A lot of people say that he wasn’t guilty of anything,” Trump said. “He served four months in jail and they say that he was not guilty of anything.”

    The president added that he didn’t believe he’d ever met Zhao personally, but had “been told” he “had a lot of support, and they said that what he did is not even a crime.” He said Zhao had been “persecuted by the Biden administration.”

    “I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people,” Trump said.

    It’s the latest move by a president who has flexed his executive power to bestow clemency on political allies, prominent public figures and others convicted of crimes.

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the pardon in a statement and later told reporters in a briefing that the White House counsel’s office “thoroughly reviewed” the request. She said the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden pursued “an egregious oversentencing” in the case, was “very hostile to the cryptocurrency industry” and Trump “wants to correct this overreach.”

    The crypto industry has also long complained it was subject to a “regulation by enforcement” ethos under the Biden administration.

    Trump’s pardon of Zhao fits into a broad pattern of his taking a hands-off approach to an industry that spent heavily to help him win the election in 2024. His administration has dropped several enforcement actions against crypto companies that began during Biden’s term and disbanded the crypto-related enforcement team at the Justice Department.

    Former federal prosecutor Mark Bini said Zhao went to prison for what “sounds like a regulatory offense, or at worst its kissing cousin.”

    “So this pardon, while it involves the biggest name in crypto, is not very surprising,” said Bini, a white collar defense lawyer who handles crypto issues at Reed Smith.

    Zhao was released from prison last year after being sentenced for violating the Bank Secrecy Act. He was the first person ever sentenced to prison time for such violations of that law, which requires U.S. financial institutions to know who their customers are, to monitor transactions and to file reports of suspicious activity. Prosecutors said no one had ever violated the regulations to the extent Zhao did.

    The judge in the case said he was troubled by Zhao’s decision to ignore U.S. banking requirements that would have slowed the company’s explosive growth.

    “Better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” was what Zhao told his employees about the company’s approach to U.S. law, prosecutors said. Binance allowed more than 1.5 million virtual currency trades, totaling nearly $900 million, that violated U.S. sanctions, including ones involving Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades, al-Qaida and Iran, prosecutors said.

    “I failed here,” Zhao told the court last year during sentencing. “I deeply regret my failure, and I am sorry.”

    Zhao had a remarkable path to becoming a crypto billionaire. He grew up in rural China and his family immigrated to Canada after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. As a teenager, he worked at a McDonald’s and became enamored with the tech industry in college. He founded Binance in 2017.

    In addition to taking pro-crypto enforcement and regulatory positions, the president and his family have plunged headfirst into making money in crypto.

    A stablecoin launched by World Liberty Financial, a crypto project founded by Trump and sons Donald Jr. and Eric, received early support and credibility thanks to an investment fund in the United Arab Emirates using $2 billion worth of World Liberty’s stablecoin to purchase a stake in Binance. Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency that are typically tied to the value of the U.S. dollar.

    A separate World Liberty Finance token saw a huge spike in price on Thursday shortly after news of the pardon was made public, with gains that far outpaced any other major cryptocurrency, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

    Zhao said earlier this year that his lawyers had requested a pardon.

    It is not immediately clear what impact Trump’s pardon of Zhao may have on operations at Binance and Binance.US, a separate arm of the main exchange offering more limited trading options to U.S. residents.

  • Toys R Us opens new seasonal holiday shops at Deptford Mall and King of Prussia

    Toys R Us opens new seasonal holiday shops at Deptford Mall and King of Prussia

    Toys R Us, the once-beloved children’s retail chain that filed for bankruptcy in 2017 and closed all of its nearly 800 U.S. stores soon after, is now opening more than two dozen flagship stores and holiday pop-up stores across the country by the end of the year.

    The new seasonal stores include two in the Philadelphia area: one at the Deptford Mall in South Jersey, and another at the King of Prussia Mall, according to the company. Toys R Us is already in many Macy’s department stores across the region.

    Before Amazon and Walmart took over the toy scene, the retail giant was the most dominant toy seller in the country, with 25% of all toys sold in the U.S. in 1990 purchased at Toys R Us, according to Bloomberg. The company wooed families with its mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe, and gleaming aisles filled with every kind of toy, from dolls to bikes to board games.

    But after sales fell dramatically and debts piled up, Toys R Us filed for bankruptcy and then shuttered its brick-and-mortar shops. At the time, customers said they would miss being able to look and touch toys in an actual store.

    “I’m going to miss the magic,” one customer told the New York Times in 2018. “I want to cry right now because we had so much fun there.”

    Since then, the company has tried various comebacks, with its parent company WHP Global reopening flagship stores around the country.

    The new holiday and flagship stores this year represent “a significant milestone in the brand’s growth,” the company said in a statement.

    The seasonal holiday shops, opened in partnership with Go! Retail Group, promise kids (and their parents) shelves of popular toy brands, from LEGO and Barbie to Hot Wheels and Paw Patrol.

    Independent toy shop owners in Philly said last season that the simplest toys, from wooden blocks to spinning tops, were proving to be the most popular, perhaps in response to AI-equipped plushies and other futuristic gadgets flooding the market.

  • Executive who bribed Amtrak manager for lucrative 30th Street Station contracts sentenced to 18 months in prison

    Executive who bribed Amtrak manager for lucrative 30th Street Station contracts sentenced to 18 months in prison

    A senior executive of an Illinois-based masonry company was sentenced Thursday to 18 months in prison for his role in a scheme to bribe an Amtrak employee in exchange for lucrative contracts to restore 30th Street Station.

    Lee Maniatis, 58, was one of several senior employees of Mark 1 Restoration who participated in the crimes. But prosecutors said he played a central role, influencing the Amtrak project manager, Ajith Bhaskaran, to sign off on a series of additional contracts worth tens of millions of dollars.

    His prison term will be followed by three years of supervised release. Maniatis has already paid a $278,000 restitution fee, though he will also be required to contribute to a restitution fund of more than $2 million alongside his former associates.

    In all, Maniatis and his colleagues funneled gifts worth more than $323,000 to Bhaskaran between 2016 and 2019, buying him luxury wristwatches and cigars, pricey vacations to India and the Galápagos Islands, Bruno Mars concert tickets, lavish dinners in Center City, and rides in limousines.

    In exchange, Bhaskaran helped secure tens of millions of dollars in extra government-funded work for Mark 1 Restoration, ultimately doubling the cost of what began as a $58 million project to renovate the historic train station’s limestone facade.

    While the firm did legitimate work on the property, most of the gifts were effectively subsidized by the government because Mark 1 falsely inflated its invoices by $2 million to cover the bribes. And Amtrak explicitly prohibits firms from offering gifts in exchange for favorable contracts.

    Prosecutors had ample evidence linking Maniatis to the bribes. Around the time of a January 2017 dinner between Maniatis, a colleague, and Bhaskaran, the Amtrak employee was considering whether to authorize an additional $13.4 million work order for the firm. Maniatis, prosecutors said, gave Bhaskaran a Tourneau worth more than $5,000 during that meeting.

    Bhaskaran approved the contract days later, and “[d]inner was worth it,” Maniatis texted an associate. Later he texted his boss: “$ ding.”

    Maniatis, accompanied by his wife, appeared in federal court in Philadelphia Thursday and teared up as he read a statement to U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone.

    “I’m completely ashamed,” he said. “I was sick about it then, I’m sick about it now.”

    The judge said the former executive’s remorse was palpable. But she said Maniatis had a choice to go to authorities over those three years — and didn’t.

    “Only when federal agents raided his home” in 2019 did Maniatis admit to his wrongdoing, Beetlestone said.

    “He could have resigned,” she continued. “He could have reported it to the FBI.”

    Theodore T. Poulos, one of Maniatis’ defense attorneys, said he still recalls the day after that raid, when the former executive told the lawyer he’d “ruined his life.”

    Poulos said Maniatis had been a victim of “misguided loyalty” to Mark 1’s owner and president, Marak Snedden, who pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit bribery and making a false claim in the scheme.

    Still, U.S. Attorney Jason Grenell said, Maniatis “made a choice” to siphon public taxpayer money to “line people’s pockets.”

    The attorney commended Maniatis for being the first defendant in the case to plead guilty for his crimes, swiftly admitting his guilt while his coconspirators fended off the government’s allegations in court, Grenell said.

    Maniatis is not the first Mark 1 employee to face prosecution.

    Early this month, Snedden, was sentenced in Beetlestone’s courtroom to 7½ years in prison. The admission made Snedden the sixth person involved to face consequences for the scheme.

    Bhaskaran had been charged with unrelated wire fraud in 2019 but died of heart failure a year later.

    Court documents show Bhaskaran had outsized power to approve work on behalf of the transit agency — and that his signature on “substantially overbilled” work routinely corresponded with sumptuous treatment from Maniatis and Mark 1 employees.

    One such instance came in December 2017, when Bhaskaran authorized an additional $5.6 million in work for the firm. That same month, court records show, Maniatis paid $9,500 for him to visit India with a relative.

    Maniatis emailed Bhaskaran tickets the following year priced at $766 for a New Year’s Eve party at Stratus, a rooftop lounge at Kimpton Hotel Monaco — a purchase investigators said Maniatis had made on his own credit card.

    And when Bhaskaran decided that the Tourneau watch was not to his liking, Maniatis was ready to return it and purchase Bhaskaran an even more expensive timepiece, spending $11,294.

    Beetlestone denied Poulos’ request that Maniatis be allowed to spend the entirety of his sentence on probation. He will serve his term at a prison in Lewisburg, Pa.

    “Lack of fortitude is not an excuse for criminal conduct,” Beetlestone said.

    Staff writer Chris Palmer contributed to this article.

  • The wife of Par Funding’s founder was sentenced to one day in prison — the last prosecution of people tied to the fraudulent firm

    The wife of Par Funding’s founder was sentenced to one day in prison — the last prosecution of people tied to the fraudulent firm

    The wife of the founder of Par Funding, a fraudulent and now-defunct Philadelphia-based lending firm, was sentenced Thursday to one day in jail and 60 days of house arrest for dodging about $1.6 million in taxes she should have paid on income derived from the scheme.

    Lisa McElhone apologized for her conduct during a sentencing hearing before U.S. District Judge Mark A. Kearney, saying the spectacular implosion of her husband’s business — and the criminal prosecution of people associated with it — was the “most painful and transformative period of my entire life,” causing her to lose her home and her future, and watch her husband get sent to prison.

    “It’s difficult, if not impossible, to express how overwhelming and life-altering this has been,” she said.

    Prosecutors acknowledged that McElhone — the owner of an Old City nail salon — had almost nothing to do with Par’s day-to-day operations. And the crimes she was charged with paled in comparison to those of others associated with the business — particularly her husband, Joseph LaForte, who ran the cash-advance firm as a Mafia-style criminal enterprise that defrauded investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars, and resorted to loan shark-style tactics in efforts to collect on debts.

    Still, Kearney said, McElhone, 46, did bear some responsibility by failing to question aspects of the life she was afforded that she should have known were too good to be true.

    “These things only stop when good people … stop and say, ‘Hey, you’re asking me to go a step too far,’” he said. “That’s the only way these things stop. Because otherwise, if everyone falls in line, everyone goes to jail.”

    Kearney said McElhone’s one-day prison stint would be Thursday. She will then serve a three-year term of supervised release, he said, and her 60 days of house arrest will begin in January 2026.

    McElhone’s sentencing was notable as the final criminal proceeding for about a half-dozen people charged in connection with Par Funding, which prosecutors have called one of the biggest financial frauds in Pennsylvania history.

    LaForte received the stiffest sentence: a 15½-year prison term that Kearney imposed earlier this year. LaForte founded Par to offer quick loans at high interest rates to borrowers deemed too risky to secure financing from traditional banks, but lied to investors about the company’s financial health to raise more money, used thuggish tactics to threaten borrowers who fell into default, and hid tens of millions of dollars from the IRS for his personal use.

    Others charged included LaForte’s brother, who also received a lengthy prison term for participating in various aspects of the firm’s crimes. And earlier this week, two financial professionals, Rodney Ermel and Kenneth Bacon, were ordered to serve 2½ years and 6 months, respectively, behind bars for helping devise the fraudulent tax structures connected to the crimes.

    Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Newcomer said it was perhaps fitting that McElhone’s penalty was the last to be imposed, given her limited connection to the business.

    “But I think it does speak to the breadth and severity” of Par’s misdeeds, he said, “that even the least-culpable person is still on the hook for a $1.6 million tax loss.”

    Par was founded in 2012 by LaForte, who was legally barred from selling securities because of previous felony convictions for financial crimes.

    One way he got around that was to list McElhone as Par’s chief executive on official documents. Then, LaForte and others he recruited to work for him — including experienced financial professionals — ran radio ads and staged fancy solicitation events to raise more than $500 million, all as they portrayed the business as legitimate and lucrative.

    In reality, prosecutors said, it was losing tens of millions of dollars a year. But to keep the fraud going, some of Par’s executives lied about the business’ financial health to keep raising money, and others threatened to harm or even kill borrowers who fell into default.

    Still, prosecutors said McElhone was effectively uninvolved in the business, spending her workdays instead running the Old City nail salon Lacquer Lounge.

    That doesn’t mean McElhone did not benefit from her husband’s grift. LaForte and his partners extracted cash from Par and spent it on things like a private jet, boats, paintings, expensive watches and jewelry, and homes in the Philadelphia area, Florida, and the Poconos.

    And in the single count to which McElhone agreed to plead guilty last year, prosecutors said she knowingly signed a tax form claiming she and LaForte were living in Florida — where there is no state income tax — even though they spent most of their time that year in their $2.5 million Haverford home.

    That deception led her to avoid paying about $1.6 million in taxes, prosecutors said, an amount she will now be forced to help repay.

    Kearney, the judge, said that others might have been more responsible for the wide array of Par’s wrongdoing — but that she needed to be held accountable for failing to stop the wrongs that unfolded before her.

    “When you get in a relationship with people,” he said, “make sure you keep your identity. Because you don’t want to be the person going to jail for their crimes.”

  • New Sixers and Flyers partnership with Bank of America will include community initiatives

    New Sixers and Flyers partnership with Bank of America will include community initiatives

    It’s the Bank of America Club Level now.

    The Flyers, Sixers, and Xfinity Mobile Arena on Thursday announced a new partnership with Bank of America, which will serve as the arena and teams’ banking partner this season. In addition to naming rights for the Club Level, the deal includes community efforts aimed at benefiting small businesses and youth sports.

    “It just is historic on many levels, in that we’re three iconic brands coming together,” said Comcast Spectator chairman and CEO Dan Hilferty. “We’re focused on being key players in Xfinity Mobile Arena, and Bank of America will partner with us on doing some really, really fun things in the community.” Comcast Spectacor owns both the arena and the Flyers.

    The deal, for which financial details were not disclosed, is “the most significant partnership” Bank of America has undertaken in its 20-plus years in the Philadelphia market, said Bank of America Greater Philadelphia president Jim Dever. Among its focuses is serving as a presenting partner in the Sixers’ small-business initiatives, such as the Spirit of Small Business Program and the Enrich Program, which benefit independent local businesses with aid and promotion.

    “This is an area that’s a prime focus to us, to be able to drive further economic mobility through small business and amplify their mission, and draw more patronage their way,” Dever said.

    The company will also head a youth-hockey-focused initiative in which it plans to donate up to $250,000 worth of hockey equipment to Philadelphia-area schools. Additional programs aimed at youth development and small business support will also be established, the organizations said in a statement, but details remain forthcoming.

    Tad Brown, CEO of the Sixers and Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, said the partnership would allow the organizations to come together to “amplify all of our resources to benefit our fans and the region.”

    Despite its new banking partner, however, Xfinity Mobile Arena will likely remain cashless, and Dever said the organizations were not envisioning ATMs on the premises. Though, the partnership may create a small change for Hilferty.

    “I’m going to have to go elsewhere to get my cash,” he joked. “But that’s OK.”

  • Google unveils quantum computing breakthrough on Willow chip

    Google unveils quantum computing breakthrough on Willow chip

    Alphabet Inc.’s Google ran an algorithm on its “Willow” quantum-computing chip that can be repeated on similar platforms and outperform classical supercomputers, a breakthrough it said clears a path for useful applications of quantum technology within five years.

    The “Quantum Echoes” algorithm, detailed in a paper published Wednesday in the science journal Nature, is verifiable, meaning it can be repeated on another quantum computer. It also ran 13,000 times faster than previously possible on the world’s best supercomputer, Google said. Taken together, the advances point to a broad range of potential uses in medicine and materials science, Google said.

    “The key thing about verifiability is it’s a huge step in the path toward a real world application,” said Tom O’Brien, a staff research scientist at Google Quantum AI who oversaw the completion of this work. “In achieving this result we’re really pushing us toward finding mainstream.”

    Alphabet shares rose as much as 2.4% Wednesday in New York trading before closing up 0.5%.

    The breakthrough brings Google a step closer to harnessing the processing power promised by quantum computing, also being pursued by rivals Microsoft Corp., International Business Machines Corp., and numerous start-ups. It follows Google’s announcement in December that Willow had solved a problem in five minutes that would have taken a supercomputer 10 septillion years.

    Quantum computers use tiny circuits to perform calculations, like traditional computers do, but they make these calculations in parallel, rather than sequentially, making them much faster. While firms have boasted of building quantum platforms that surpass classical computers, their challenge has been to find a useful application.

    Computer scientist Scott Aaronson, who wasn’t involved in the study, wrote in an email that he was “thrilled” by Google’s progress toward outperforming supercomputers in a way which could be efficiently repeated, and thus proved, on a second quantum computer — which had been “one of the biggest challenges of the field for the past several years.” Still, he warned that there was a lot of work ahead.

    “Getting from here to anything commercially useful, and/or to scalable fault-tolerance (which wasn’t used for this demonstration), will be additional big challenges,” wrote Aaronson, who serves as the Schlumberger Centennial Chair of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin.

    The Google team, which includes 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics winner Michel H. Devoret, said it plans to continue to move toward real-world applications by scaling up and improving the accuracy of its machines.