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Mayoral candidate John Liu.

On Thursday, two of John Liu's former aides were found guilty in an illegal scheme to raise funds for Liu's mayoral race. Want the simplest breakdown? Read on.

So, who are these people?

Xing Wu (Oliver) Pan is a real-estate developer and was a campaign fundraiser for mayoral hopeful John Liu, and Jia (Jenny) Hou served as Liu's campaign treasurer. Hou, the daughter of one of Liu's friends, was a mere 25 years old when she was charged, and paid just $27,678 by the Liu campaign while she was treasurer, according to the Daily News. Both Pan and Hou were convicted of engaging in a plot to funnel large funds from individual donors through "straw donors" and get matching funds from the city.

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Oh fraud, how could we live our lives without it! Here now comes a list of financial crime cases out of federal court in Manhattan and Brooklyn that we have had the keen pleasure to follow so far this year.

And as we read, we must pause from time to time in awestruck admiration at the inventiveness of some of these people. What a wonderful contribution they have made to society!

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A pretty good government corruption story out of the federal prosecutors' office in Brooklyn: The director of construction at the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development has been arrested for taking annual $10,000 bribes over 5 years to provide inside information to contractors seeking city work.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn says Michael Provenzano, who made $96,000 last year and oversaw a hug construction portfolio, and a former HPD official, Luis Adorno, were arraigned yesterday in Brooklyn, along with three real estate developers. The scheme not only allowed developers to get contracts, but also let them ignore prevailing wage rules and pay their employees less than required by the city.

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Sam Levin

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, at a press conference on Iran, in March.

Public Advocate and mayoral hopeful Bill de Blasio has gotten some headlines recently about his campaign against car companies that do business with Iran.

In March, he created the website IranWatchList.com, designed to target companies that work with Iran and in some cases allegedly sell directly to Iran's military. We noted at the time that his involvement in the foreign policy matter was a likely appeal to Jewish voters as he preps for the 2013 mayoral race.

Well today, de Blasio is out with another website that it about another fairly not-local issue: Wal-Mart and its covert political spending.

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Patrick Alcindor could spend up to 13 years behind bars for scamming Medicaid -- charging for pricey prescriptions which he never filled, according to the Manhattan District Attorney.

Alcindor, who ran the ring out of a Harlem pharmacy, got caught in March 2010 paying an undercover cop for these scripts, including HIV/AIDS medicines and anti-psychotics. The former pharmacist was convicted of attempted larceny and tampering with evidence charges Feb. 10, but just sentenced today.

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At least 31 are dead across Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Alabama after tornado storms ravaged the Midwest and South, essentially destroying towns. Today, the rescue effort continued, as parts of the South remained on tornado watch. "It's just nuts right here," National Weather Service meteorologist John Gordon told CNN during the storms. Indiana State Police Sgt. Jerry Goodwin told a CNN affiliate that they have "complete destruction." [CNN]

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Renata Shamrakova is on the hook for bilking her former boss, Nicky Hilton's Ex-Hubby Todd Meister -- out of more than 900,000 bucks, and she has just been indicted in a Manhattan court.

The 27-year-old personal assistant is said to have made unauthorized charges on her employer's credit card and bank accounts, according to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance.

From what the D.A. says, it sounds like Shamrakova had quite a bit of fun with Meister's Amex. From March 2011 to January 2012, she added her name to his credit card, and then opened a platinum account in her own name. She then used the plastic to pay for trips Aruba, Canada, Italy, India and France, cops say.

She also had a lot of food delivered to her with one of these accounts.

The charges include grand larceny in the second and third degrees, identity theft in the first degree, and possession of stolen property in the fourth degree.

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It sure looks like a good way to be a criminal in this town is to pretend to be a cop.

Cops say these men pulled up to a Rosedale Pay-O-Matic check cashing store at 247-12 South Conduit Avenue around 8:10 a.m. on Tuesday, identified themselves as detectives, and made off with cash. Then, they hit the road in a late 1990s Ford Expedition with a "broken rear passenger window that was covered by black plastic and secured with silver-colored duct tape." (Classy.) The truck might have had Virginia license plates.

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America, being the land of opportunity and all that, certainly generates more than its share of brilliant scammers, but Eric Stein may be a candidate for the con-man hall of fame, pets division--not so much for the amount of money he stole, but for the sheer perversion of the idea itself.

Stein pleaded guilty this week to cheating investors in a company he created that claimed to find lost animals to the tune of $500,000. He was already on parole after a prison stint for an unrelated $30 million investment scheme in Nevada when he was caught.

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A word of advice: if a stranger approaches you, flashes a "badge," starts a conversation about counterfeit money -- and tries to go back to your house with you -- you should probably be a little suspicious. He probably is not a police officer, and he probably is not very nice, either.

Alas, cops say that this guy -- a suspected scumbag by the name of Larry Thomas -- struck up a convo with an elderly man about phony dough and went back to his house. When he was in the home, he showed the victim several pictures of a fake fugitive.

Then, the supposed perp asked the victim and his daughter if they had any money in the house because "it might be counterfeit."

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