Wave of Investor Fraud Extends to Ordinary Retirement Savers

Regulators across the country are confronting a wave of investor fraud that is saddling retirement savers with steep losses on complex products that until a few years ago were pitched only to the most sophisticated investors.

Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times

Mary Beck and her husband invested $470,000 in a part ownership of a fleet of luxury cars, a venture that later went bankrupt.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Jeremy C. Stein, a Federal Reserve governor.

The victims are among the millions of Americans whose mutual funds and stock portfolios plummeted in the wake of the financial crisis, and who started searching for ways to make better returns than those being offered by bank deposits and government bonds with minuscule interest rates.

Tens of thousands of them put money into speculative bets promoted by aggressive financial advisers. The investments include private loans to young companies like television production firms and shares in bundles of commercial real estate properties.

Those alternative investments have now had time to go sour in big numbers, state and federal securities regulators say, and are making up a majority of complaints and prosecutions.

“Since the crisis, we’ve seen more and more people reaching out into different types of exotic investments that are a big concern to us,” said William F. Galvin, the Massachusetts secretary of the commonwealth.

Last Wednesday, Mr. Galvin’s office ordered one of the nation’s largest brokerage firms, LPL Financial, to pay $2.5 million for improperly selling the real estate bundles, known as nontraded REITs, or real estate investment trusts, to hundreds of state residents from 2006 to 2009, in some cases overloading clients’ accounts with them.

LPL said it agreed, as part of the settlement, to reform its process for selling such alternative investments.

There are few good statistics on the extent of the problem nationally. But cases are mounting in the offices of regulators like A. Heath Abshure, the securities commissioner in Arkansas, where a majority of the 66 open securities cases involve complex investments sold to less sophisticated investors looking for a steady return.

J. Bradley Bennett, chief of enforcement at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, Wall Street’s self-regulatory group, said that for the last two years, 10 staff members have looked at the “proliferation of these products, to understand how they are being sold.”

“It’s got our attention,” he said. “We recognize the trends.”

Brokers promoting bad investments to unsophisticated investors is nothing new. But while the easy prey used to be people looking to get rich quick, the pool has widened to include savers looking for ways to earn the kind of income once reliably available from traditional investments.

Regulators are warning investors that the dangers are unlikely to recede, given the Federal Reserve’s pledge to keep interest rates near zero and the push among financial firms to earn more revenue from so-called alternative investments marketed to retail investors. Brokers are eager to sell these investments because they often bring in higher commissions than standard mutual funds and stocks.

The money that retail investors have in alternative investments in the United States, ranging from baskets of commodities to mutual funds that employ sophisticated trading, more than doubled from 2008 to 2012, to $712 billion from $312 billion, according to McKinsey & Company. Many of the products hold out the promise of higher returns while ostensibly being immune to the volatility of stock markets.

The phenomenon of investors’ actively moving money in pursuit of higher interest rates, known as chasing yield, is reverberating through the economy. Jeremy C. Stein, a Federal Reserve governor, said in a speech on Thursday that he worried that investors desperate for yield could be creating a bubble in widely available investments like junk bonds.

Mary Beck, a furniture business consultant in Pasadena, Calif., said that in 2008, as the stock investments in her husband’s I.R.A. began to fall quickly, the couple moved $470,000 to a new product recommended by their broker.

While the offering was unfamiliar — part ownership in a fleet of luxury cars — Ms. Beck bought the pitch because her broker had been around for years, and the product offered what seemed to be a modest annual interest rate of 7 percent.

“We knew that 12 percent wasn’t realistic, but 7 percent seemed realistic,” Ms. Beck said. “To us, it was a very conservative way to ensure that we’d increase our savings.”

Soon after they stopped receiving interest payments, the Becks lost their money when the venture went bankrupt in 2012. Ms. Beck and her husband have been reconfiguring their retirement and are planning to work longer.

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A delicate new balancing act in senior healthcare

When Claire Gordon arrived at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, nurses knew she needed extra attention.

She was 96, had heart disease and a history of falls. Now she had pneumonia and the flu. A team of Cedars specialists converged on her case to ensure that a bad situation did not turn worse and that she didn't end up with a lengthy, costly hospital stay.

Frail seniors like Gordon account for a disproportionate share of healthcare expenditures because they are frequently hospitalized and often land in intensive care units or are readmitted soon after being released. Now the federal health reform law is driving sweeping changes in how hospitals treat a rapidly growing number of elderly patients.

The U.S. population is aging quickly: People older than 65 are expected to make up nearly 20% of it by 2030. Linda P. Fried, dean of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said now is the time to train professionals and test efforts to improve care and lower healthcare costs for elderly patients.

"It's incredibly important that we prepare for being in a society where there are a lot of older people," she said. "We have to do this type of experiment right now."

At Cedars-Sinai, where more than half the patients in the medical and surgical wards are 65 or older, one such effort is dubbed the "frailty project." Within 24 hours, nurses assess elderly patients for their risk of complications such as falls, bed sores and delirium. Then a nurse, social worker, pharmacist and physician assess the most vulnerable patients and make an action plan to help them.

The Cedars project stands out nationally because medical professionals are working together to identify high-risk patients at the front end of their hospitalizations to prevent problems at the back end, said Herb Schultz, regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"For seniors, it is better care, it is high-quality care and it is peace of mind," he said.

The effort and others like it also have the potential to reduce healthcare costs by cutting preventable medical errors and readmissions, Schultz said. The federal law penalizes hospitals for both.

Gordon, an articulate woman with brightly painted fingernails and a sense of humor, arrived at Cedars-Sinai by ambulance on a Monday.

Soon, nurse Jacquelyn Maxton was at her bedside asking a series of questions to check for problems with sleep, diet and confusion. The answers led to Gordon's designation as a frail patient. The next day, the project team huddled down the hall and addressed her risks one by one. Medical staff would treat the flu and pneumonia while at the same time addressing underlying health issues that could extend Gordon's stay and slow her recovery, both in the hospital and after going home.

To reduce the chance of falls, nurses placed a yellow band on her wrist that read "fall risk" and ensured that she didn't get up on her own. To prevent bed sores, they got her up and moving as often as possible. To cut down on confusion, they reminded Gordon frequently where she was and made sure she got uninterrupted sleep. Medical staff also stopped a few unnecessary medications that Gordon had been prescribed before her admission, including a heavy narcotic and a sleeping pill.

"It is really a holistic approach to the patient, not just to the disease that they are in here for," said Glenn D. Braunstein, the hospital's vice president for clinical innovation.

Previously, nurse Ivy Dimalanta said, she and her colleagues provided similar care but on a much more random basis. Under the project, the care has become standardized.

The healthcare system has not been well designed to address the needs of seniors who may have had a lifetime of health problems, said Mary Naylor, gerontology professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. As a result, patients sometimes fall through the cracks and return to hospitals again and again.

"That is not good for them and that is not good for society to be using resources in that way," Naylor said.

Using data from related projects, Cedars began a pilot program in 2011 and expanded it last summer. The research is continuing but early results suggest that the interventions are leading to fewer seniors being admitted to the intensive care unit and to shorter hospital stays, said Jeff Borenstein, researcher and lead clinician on the frailty project. "It definitely seems to be going in the right direction," he said.

The hospital is now working with Naylor and the University of Pennsylvania to design a program to help the patients once they go home.

"People who are frail are very vulnerable when they leave the hospital," said Harriet Udin Aronow, a researcher at Cedars. "We want to promote them being safe at home and continuing to recover."

In Gordon's case, she lives alone with the help of her children and a caregiver. The hospital didn't want her experiencing complications that would lengthen the stay, but they also didn't want to discharge her before she was ready. Under the health reform law, hospitals face penalties if patients come back too soon after being released.

Patients and their families often are unaware of the additional attention. Sitting in a chair in front of a vase of pink flowers, Gordon said she knew she would have to do her part to get out of the hospital quickly. "You have to move," she said. "I know you get bed sores if you stay in bed."

Gordon said she was comfortable at the hospital but she wanted to go back to her house as quickly as she could. "There's no place like home," she said.

Two days later, that's where she was.

anna.gorman@latimes.com

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For Families Struggling with Mental Illness, Carolyn Wolf Is a Guide in the Darkness

When a life starts to unravel, where do you turn for help?

Melissa Klump began to slip in the eighth grade. She couldn’t focus in class, and in a moment of despair she swallowed 60 ibuprofen tablets. She was smart, pretty and ill: depression, attention deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, either bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.

In her 20s, after a more serious suicide attempt, her parents sent her to a residential psychiatric treatment center, and from there to another. It was the treatment of last resort. When she was discharged from the second center last August after slapping another resident, her mother, Elisa Klump, was beside herself.

“I was banging my head against the wall,” the mother said. “What do I do next?” She frantically called support groups, therapy programs, suicide prevention lines, anybody, running down a list of names in a directory of mental health resources. “Finally,” she said, “somebody told me, ‘The person you need to talk to is Carolyn Wolf.’ ”

That call, she said, changed her life and her daughter’s. “Carolyn has given me hope,” she said. “I didn’t know there were people like her out there.”

Carolyn Reinach Wolf is not a psychiatrist or a mental health professional, but a lawyer who has carved out what she says is a unique niche, working with families like the Klumps.

One in 17 American adults suffers from a severe mental illness, and the systems into which they are plunged — hospitals, insurance companies, courts, social services — can be fragmented and overwhelming for families to manage. The recent shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., have brought attention to the need for intervention to prevent such extreme acts of violence, which are rare. But for the great majority of families watching their loved ones suffer, and often suffering themselves, the struggle can be boundless, with little guidance along the way.

“If you Google ‘mental health lawyer,’ ” said Ms. Wolf, a partner with Abrams & Fensterman, “I’m kinda the only game in town.”

On a recent afternoon, she described in her Midtown office the range of her practice.

“We have been known to pull people out of crack dens,” she said. “I have chased people around hotels all over the city with the N.Y.P.D. and my team to get them to a hospital. I had a case years ago where the person was on his way back from Europe, and the family was very concerned that he was symptomatic. I had security people meet him at J.F.K.”

Many lawyers work with mentally ill people or their families, but Ron Honberg, the national director of policy and legal affairs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said he did not know of another lawyer who did what Ms. Wolf does: providing families with a team of psychiatrists, social workers, case managers, life coaches, security guards and others, and then coordinating their services. It can be a lifeline — for people who can afford it, Mr. Honberg said. “Otherwise, families have to do this on their own,” he said. “It’s a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week job, and for some families it never ends.”

Many of Ms. Wolf’s clients declined to be interviewed for this article, but the few who spoke offered an unusual window on the arcane twists and turns of the mental health care system, even for families with money. Their stories illustrate how fraught and sometimes blind such a journey can be.

One rainy morning last month, Lance Sheena, 29, sat with his mother in the spacious family room of her Long Island home. Mr. Sheena was puffy-eyed and sporadically inattentive; the previous night, at the group home where he has been living since late last summer, another resident had been screaming incoherently and was taken away by the police. His mother, Susan Sheena, eased delicately into the family story.

“I don’t talk to a lot of people because they don’t get it,” Ms. Sheena said. “They mean well, but they don’t get it unless they’ve been through a similar experience. And anytime something comes up, like the shooting in Newtown, right away it goes to the mentally ill. And you think, maybe we shouldn’t be so public about this, because people are going to be afraid of us and Lance. It’s a big concern.”

Her son cut her off. “Are you comparing me to the guy that shot those people?”

“No, I’m saying that anytime there’s a shooting, like in Aurora, that’s when these things come out in the news.”

“Did you really just compare me to that guy?”

“No, I didn’t compare you.”

“Then what did you say?”

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Boeing 787 Completes Test Flight

A Boeing 787 test plane flew for more than two hours on Saturday to gather information about the problems with the batteries that led to a worldwide grounding of the new jets more than three weeks ago.

The flight was the first since the Federal Aviation Administration gave Boeing permission on Thursday to conduct in-flight tests. Federal investigators and the company are trying to determine what caused one of the new lithium-ion batteries to catch fire and how to fix the problems.

The plane took off from Boeing Field in Seattle heading mostly east and then looped around to the south before flying back past the airport to the west. It covered about 900 miles and landed at 2:51 p.m. Pacific time.

Marc R. Birtel, a Boeing spokesman, said the flight was conducted to monitor the performance of the plane’s batteries. He said the crew, which included 13 pilots and test personnel, said the flight was uneventful.

He said special equipment let the crew check status messages involving the batteries and their chargers, as well as data about battery temperature and voltage.

FlightAware, an aviation data provider, said the jet reached 36,000 feet. Its speed ranged from 435 to 626 miles per hour.

All 50 of the 787s delivered so far were grounded after a battery on one of the jets caught fire at a Boston airport on Jan. 7 and another made an emergency landing in Japan with smoke coming from the battery.

The new 787s are the most technically advanced commercial airplanes, and Boeing has a lot riding on their success. Half of the planes’ structural parts are made of lightweight carbon composites to save fuel.

Boeing also decided to switch from conventional nickel cadmium batteries to the lighter lithium-ion ones. But they are more volatile, and federal investigators said Thursday that Boeing had underestimated the risks.

The F.A.A. has set strict operating conditions on the test flights. The flights are expected to resume early this week, Mr. Birtel said.

Battery experts have said it could take weeks for Boeing to fix the problems.

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Big Bear locked down amid manhunt

The bustling winter resort of Big Bear took on the appearance of a ghost town Thursday as surveillance aircraft buzzed overhead and police in tactical gear and carrying rifles patrolled mountain roads in convoys of SUVs, while others stood guard along major intersections.

Even before authorities had confirmed that the torched pickup truck discovered on a quiet forest road belonged to suspected gunman Christopher Dorner, 33, officials had ordered an emergency lockdown of local businesses, homes and the town's popular ski resorts. Parents were told to pick up their children from school, as rolling yellow buses might pose a target to an unpredictable fugitive on the run.

By nightfall, many residents had barricaded their doors as they prepared for a long, anxious evening.

PHOTOS: A tense manhunt amid tragic deaths

"We're all just stressed," said Andrea Burtons as she stocked up on provisions at a convenience store. "I have to go pick up my brother and get him home where we're safe."

Police ordered the lockdown about 9:30 a.m. as authorities throughout Southern California launched an immense manhunt for the former lawman, who is accused of killing three people as part of a long-standing grudge against the LAPD. Dorner is believed to have penned a long, angry manifesto on Facebook saying that he was unfairly fired from the force and was now seeking vengeance.

Forest lands surrounding Big Bear Lake are cross-hatched with fire roads and trails leading in all directions, and the snow-capped mountains can provide both cover and extreme challenges to a fugitive on foot. It was unclear whether Dorner was prepared for such rugged terrain.

Footprints were found leading from Dorner's burned pickup truck into the snow off Forest Road 2N10 and Club View Drive in Big Bear Lake.

San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon said that although authorities had deployed 125 officers for tracking and door-to-door searches, officers had to be mindful that the suspect may have set a trap.

"Certainly. There's always that concern and we're extremely careful and we're worried about this individual," McMahon said. "We're taking every precaution we can."

PHOTOS: A fugitive's life on Facebook

Big Bear has roughly 400 homes, but authorities guessed that only 40% are occupied year-round.

The search will probably play out with the backdrop of a winter storm that is expected to hit the area after midnight.

Up to 6 inches of snow could blanket local mountains, the National Weather Service said.

FULL COVERAGE: Sweeping manhunt for rampaging ex-cop

Gusts up to 50 mph could hit the region, said National Weather Service meteorologist Mark Moede, creating a wind-chill factor of 15 to 20 degrees.

Extra patrols were brought in to check vehicles coming and going from Big Bear, McMahon said, but no vehicles had been reported stolen.

"He could be anywhere at this point," McMahon said. When asked if the burned truck was a possible diversion, McMahon replied: "Anything's possible."

Dorner had no known connection to the area, authorities said.

Craig and Christine Winnegar, of Murrieta, found themselves caught up in the lockdown by accident. Craig brought his wife to Big Bear as a surprise to celebrate their 28th wedding anniversary. Their prearranged dinner was canceled when restaurant owners closed their doors out of fear.

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Well: Think Like a Doctor: A Confused and Terrified Patient

The Challenge: Can you solve the mystery of a middle-aged man recovering from a serious illness who suddenly becomes frightened and confused?

Every month the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to sift through a difficult case and solve a diagnostic riddle. Below you will find a summary of a case involving a 55-year-old man well on his way to recovering from a series of illnesses when he suddenly becomes confused and paranoid. I will provide you with the main medical notes, labs and imaging results available to the doctor who made the diagnosis.

The first reader to figure out this case will get a signed copy of my book, “Every Patient Tells a Story,” along with the satisfaction of knowing you solved a case of Sherlockian complexity. Good luck.

The Presenting Problem:

A 55-year-old man who is recovering from a devastating injury in a rehabilitation facility suddenly becomes confused, frightened and paranoid.

The Patient’s Story:

The patient, who was recovering from a terrible injury and was too weak to walk, had been found on the floor of his room at the extended care facility, raving that there were people out to get him. He was taken to the emergency room at the Waterbury Hospital in Connecticut, where he was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and admitted to the hospital for treatment. Doctors thought his delirium was caused by the infection, but after 24 hours, despite receiving the appropriate antibiotics, the patient remained disoriented and frightened.

A Sister’s Visit:

The man’s sister came to visit him on his second day in the hospital. As she walked into the room she was immediately struck by her brother’s distress.

“Get me out of here!” the man shouted from his hospital bed. “They are coming to get me. I gotta get out of here!”

His brown eyes darted from side to side as if searching for his would-be attackers. His arms and legs shook with fear. He looked terrified.

For the past few months, the man had been in and out of the hospital, but he had been getting better — at least he had been improving the last time his sister saw him, the week before. She hurried into the bustling hallway and found a nurse. “What the hell is going on with my brother?” she demanded.

A Long Series of Illnesses:

Three months earlier, the patient had been admitted to that same hospital with delirium tremens. After years of alcohol abuse, he had suddenly stopped drinking a couple of days before, and his body was wracked by the sudden loss of the chemical he had become addicted to. He’d spent an entire week in the hospital but finally recovered. He was sent home, but he didn’t stay there for long.

The following week, when his sister hadn’t heard from him for a couple of days, she forced her way into his home. There she found him, unconscious, in the basement, at the bottom of his staircase. He had fallen, and it looked as if he may have been there for two, possibly three, days. He was close to death. Indeed, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, his heart had stopped. Rapid action by the E.M.T.’s brought his heart back to life, and he made it to the hospital.

There the extent of the damage became clear. The man’s kidneys had stopped working, and his body chemistry was completely out of whack. He had a severe concussion. And he’d had a heart attack.

He remained in the intensive care unit for nearly three weeks, and in the hospital another two weeks. Even after these weeks of care and recovery, the toll of his injury was terrible. His kidneys were not working, so he required dialysis three times a week. He had needed a machine to help him breathe for so long that he now had to get oxygen through a hole that had been cut into his throat. His arms and legs were so weak that he could not even lift them, and because he was unable even to swallow, he had to be fed through a tube that went directly into his stomach.

Finally, after five weeks in the hospital, he was well enough to be moved to a short-term rehabilitation hospital to complete the long road to recovery. But he was still far from healthy. The laughing, swaggering, Harley-riding man his sister had known until that terrible fall seemed a distant memory, though she saw that he was slowly getting better. He had even started to smile and make jokes. He was confident, he had told her, that with a lot of hard work he could get back to normal. So was she; she knew he was tough.

Back to the Hospital:

The patient had been at the rehab facility for just over two weeks when the staff noticed a sudden change in him. He had stopped smiling and was no longer making jokes. Instead, he talked about people that no one else could see. And he was worried that they wanted to harm him. When he remained confused for a second day, they sent him to the emergency room.

You can see the records from that E.R. visit here.

The man told the E.R. doctor that he knew he was having hallucinations. He thought they had started when he had begun taking a pill to help him sleep a couple of days earlier. It seemed a reasonable explanation, since the medication was known to cause delirium in some people. The hospital psychiatrist took him off that medication and sent him back to rehab that evening with a different sleeping pill.

Back to the Hospital, Again:

Two days later, the patient was back in the emergency room. He was still seeing things that weren’t there, but now he was quite confused as well. He knew his name but couldn’t remember what day or month it was, or even what year. And he had no idea where he was, or where he had just come from.

When the medical team saw the patient after he had been admitted, he was unable to provide any useful medical history. His medical records outlined his earlier hospitalizations, and records from the nursing home filled in additional details. The patient had a history of high blood pressure, depression and alcoholism. He was on a long list of medications. And he had been confused for the past several days.

On examination, he had no fever, although a couple of hours earlier his temperature had been 100.0 degrees. His heart was racing, and his blood pressure was sky high. His arms and legs were weak and swollen. His legs were shaking, and his reflexes were very brisk. Indeed, when his ankle was flexed suddenly, it continued to jerk back and forth on its own three or four times before stopping, a phenomenon known as clonus.

His labs were unchanged from the previous visit except for his urine, which showed signs of a serious infection. A CT scan of the brain was unremarkable, as was a chest X-ray. He was started on an intravenous antibiotic to treat the infection. The thinking was that perhaps the infection was causing the patient’s confusion.

You can see the notes from that second hospital visit here.

His sister had come to visit him the next day, when he was as confused as he had ever been. He was now trembling all over and looked scared to death, terrified. He was certain he was being pursued.

That is when she confronted the nurse, demanding to know what was going on with her brother. The nurse didn’t know. No one did. His urinary tract infection was being treated with antibiotics, but he continued to have a rapid heart rate and elevated blood pressure, along with terrifying hallucinations.

Solving the Mystery:

Can you figure out why this man was so confused and tremulous? I have provided you with all the data available to the doctor who made the diagnosis. The case is not easy — that is why it is here. I’ll post the answer on Friday.

Friday Feb. 8 4:13 p.m. | Updated Thanks for all your responses. You can read about the winner at “Think Like a Doctor: A Confused and Terrified Patient Solved.”

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Rules and Regulations: Post your questions and diagnosis in the comments section below.. The correct answer will appear Friday on Well. The winner will be contacted. Reader comments may also appear in a coming issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Correction: The patient’s eyes were brown, not blue.

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Venezuela Devalues Currency Amid Shortages and Inflation

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela announced Friday that it was devaluing its currency, a step that had long been deemed necessary but could push the spiking inflation even higher.

The devaluation, which lowered the currency’s value against the dollar by nearly a third, was aimed at solidifying government finances and easing a tight market for dollars that has choked back imports and led to shortages of basic goods.

The move had been widely anticipated, but it had been unclear whether officials would make what could be a politically risky decision with President Hugo Chávez still out of the country after undergoing cancer surgery in Cuba on Dec. 11.

If Mr. Chávez were to die or were too ill to continue as president, a special election would have to be called, and many analysts thought that the government might try to postpone a devaluation until after that occurred.

“It is a sign of pragmatism that they carry out a devaluation even though we’re all aware there is some likelihood of a presidential election being held soon,” said Francisco Rodríguez, an economist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “This shows that they’re willing to correct basic economic distortions.”

The currency, the bolívar, will be set at 6.3 to the dollar. It had been set at 4.3.

Venezuela’s finance minister, Jorge Giordani, said that Mr. Chávez, who has not been seen or heard in public for more than eight weeks, had approved the measures.

“Here is the president’s signature if you want to recognize it or if you still have doubts,” Mr. Giordani said, holding up a document during a televised news conference.

The devaluation will help the government balance its books by giving it more bolívars for the dollars it earns selling oil on the world market. Venezuela’s economy is highly dependent on oil, with petroleum sales making up about 95 percent of total exports. The country is the fourth-largest foreign oil supplier to the United States.

Government spending soared last year during the campaign to re-elect Mr. Chávez, leading to a large deficit, even though, at more than $100 a barrel, the price of oil is very high.

Pressure to devalue had been building for months, as the black market exchange rate rose to more than four times the official rate. The imbalance was evident in the prices of many goods. A Big Mac at McDonald’s costs 70 bolívars, or $16.27, at the official pre-devaluation rate.

But the devaluation will also make imported goods more expensive, which will probably make inflation worse. Inflation for the 12 months ended on Jan. 31 was 22.2 percent, one of the highest rates in Latin America.

Surging inflation could cause political problems for the government. But the exchange rate had reduced the dollars available to importers, leading to shortages of goods like sugar, chicken and toilet paper. Many analysts believe that voters blame the government more for shortages than for inflation.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 8, 2013

An earlier version of this article reported that Venezuela had devalued its currency by nearly one-half.

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FBI searches Las Vegas home of fugitive

Federal and local authorities served a search warrant at the Las Vegas home of an ex-police officer sought in connection with a series of shootings in Southern California, but said the suspect was not located.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller confirmed agents and Las Vegas police searched the home Thursday as part of the ongoing investigation into Christopher Jordan Dorner, 33, but did not elaborate as to what was recovered. The surrounding neighborhood was cleared as a precaution, she said.

No one was home at the time, Eimiller said.

PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

Several law enforcement agencies are involved in the ongoing manhunt for Dorner and alerts have been issued all across California and in Nevada, warning Dorner was considered "armed and extremely dangerous." Dorner was believed to be carrying multiple weapons, including an assault rifle.

In California, a SWAT team clad in military fatigues spent Thursday afternoon combing the mountain community of Big Bear after Dorner's burned-out truck was found on a forest road. Authorities were going door-to-door and checking all vehicles coming and going from the mountain.

Dorner, who was fired from the LAPD in 2009, is suspected of shooting three police officers, one of whom died, in Riverside County early Thursday.

PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

He also is suspected of killing a couple who were found shot in a car in Orange County earlier this week. One of the victims was the daughter of a former LAPD captain named in a lengthy online manifesto that law enforcement officials attributed to Dorner.

The Los Angeles Police Department had dispatched units across the region to protect at least 40 officers and others named in the document, which threatened "unconventional and asymmetrial warfare" against police.

Dorner received awards for his expertise with a rifle and pistol, according to military records obtained by The Times. He received an Iraq Campaign Medal and was a member of a mobile inshore undersea warfare unit.

Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz, calling the attack on his officers a "cowardly ambush," said Dorner is suspected of opening fire with a rifle about 1:30 a.m. Thursday as he pulled up to two police officers waiting at a traffic light.

The attack was carried out about 20 minutes after Dorner wounded an LAPD officer in a shooting in nearby Corona, police said.

Early Thursday, two women delivering the Los Angeles Times in Torrance were shot by Los Angeles police who were headed to the home of a police captain named in the manifesto.

The women, shot in the 19500 block of Redbeam Avenue, were taken to area hospitals, Torrance Police Lt. Devin Chase said. One suffered a minor wound, and the other was struck twice and listed in stable condition, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck told reporters.

"Tragically," Beck said, "we believe this is a case of mistaken identity."

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California boy to be arraigned in “swatting” prank on actor Kutcher

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Prosecutors charged a 12-year-old boy on Thursday with making a false emergency call that sent police swarming to the home of actor Ashton Kutcher in a “swatting” prank.

The name of the boy, who was arrested by Los Angeles police in December, was withheld due to his age. He was scheduled to be arraigned in a juvenile court in Los Angeles on Friday.

The trend toward placing false emergency calls is known as “swatting” because SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) officers often are sent to the purported crime scenes. Authorities say such situations can be dangerous due to the risk of a misunderstanding between police and occupants of a building.

The boy has been charged with two felony counts each of making false bomb threats and computer intrusion in connection with the October 3 emergency call that drew police to the Hollywood Hills home of Kutcher, star of the sitcom “Two and a Half Men,” and a similar call on October 10 that sent police to a Wells Fargo Bank.

Authorities have accused the boy of having reported men armed with guns and explosives in Kutcher’s home and that several people had been shot. Dozens of emergency personnel were sent to the house. Kutcher was not home at the time.

Swatting calls in recent months have also sent police to the homes of singers Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Bill Trott)

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Title Post: California boy to be arraigned in “swatting” prank on actor Kutcher
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Bucks Blog: Avoiding Valentine’s Day Flower Woes

It’s that time of year again, when people rush to send bouquets of roses to that special someone. Last February, I wrote about the post-holiday howling and hand-wringing over flowers that were ordered online but went undelivered — or were delivered late — for Valentine’s Day.

With all that in mind, the Web site Cheapism.com, devoted to recommendations that can save you money, has this suggestion: You may pay less, and get better results, by avoiding big name Web sites and calling a local florist directly to have it handle the delivery.

Using a local florist for delivery of a dozen red roses runs about $50 or less, depending on the location, and you’ll generally get more thoughtful service than with a big name online floral site, said Cheapism’s founder, Max Levitte. His staff contacted about 10 local florists in several states, including New York, California, Illinois and Nebraska, as well as the Society of American Florists, for pricing information. (Some shops tack on delivery charges of as much as $15, however, so it’s best to ask about such details up front.) They also scanned hundreds of online user reviews, on sites including Yahoo Shopping, Viewpoints, Epinions, ResellerRatings and TrustPilot.

Using a major online flower service will run from $59 to $86 with standard delivery, Cheapism found. And over all, Mr. Levitte said, the major floral services received poor marks for customer satisfaction on online review sites.

Unhappy customers are more likely to write about their experience than happy ones, he said, but his researchers took that into account: “We read online reviews for a living,” he said, adding in a follow-up email, “We try and focus on reviews that aren’t just scathing, but offer valuable information.” Still, the volume of negative online reviews about the major floral Web sites was hard to ignore, he said, making the direct call option worth a try.

If you contact a shop, Mr. Levitte said, you may be able to negotiate a lower price, since you are eliminating the transaction fees the shop would usually have to pay if filling an order for a national Web site. “You may be able to get a better deal if you go directly to the florist,” he said.

In addition, by contacting the florist yourself, you can ask exactly what blooms it has available, which can help reduce the risk of disappointment that can occur when ordering online, and the arrangement delivered bears no resemblance to the one pictured when you ordered it.

(Consumer Reports did a small test in 2011 and found that 1-800-Flowers scored the best at delivering arrangements that actually resembled the photos. The report also advised buyers to avoid mixed bouquets, which allow more potential for substitution.)

To find a florist near where you want the flowers delivered, you can try the Society of American Florists’ directory. Or, you can enter the recipient’s address into Google maps and search for nearby florists. Some have ratings on Yelp.com.

But beware of search-engine shenanigans, according to the Consumerist’s “Garden of Discontent,” which features outraged consumers’ tales of flower deliveries gone awry. When I typed in a search request for florists near my home address, the top item, above the list of local florists, was ProFlowers, a national retailer.

Still prefer the ease of online flower shopping? I have successfully ordered from the big services, but I always try to schedule delivery the day before a major holiday, to minimize the chance of a missed delivery. Most people are delighted to get flowers early, but they are quite unhappy when they arrive late. Some sites even offer a discount or waive service charges if you choose early delivery.

Do you send flowers for Valentine’s Day, and, if so, where do you buy them?

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