NYU student faces bank fraud charge

New Haven, Conn. A New York University student was charged with bank fraud after depositing $43 million in bogus cashier’s checks into Swiss and American accounts and trying to withdraw the money, prosecutors said Friday.

Hakan Yalincak, 21, also faces civil charges that he convinced two investors to sink $2.8 million into a nonexistent hedge fund and spent the money on luxury items and university donations.

He wept in court as U.S. Magistrate Judge Joan Margolis ordered him jailed until a detention hearing Thursday. “I have a graduation on Wednesday,” he said.

Yalincak, a senior mathematics student whose parents donated $21 million to NYU last year, deposited millions of dollars in fake certified checks, then shuffled the money around to avoid getting caught, according to an indictment unsealed Friday.

At one point, he had $25 million in Connecticut and nearly $18 million in Switzerland, prosecutors said. In March, Yalincak tried to withdraw $1.7 million, but by then the banks had discovered the counterfeit checks and frozen his accounts.

“He’s a smart kid. He has some gift in investing and people had confidence in him,” said Yalincak’s attorney, Robert Chan.

A spokesman for NYU said the university has received $1.25 million of the Yalincak family’s $21 million pledge. He said the school was reviewing the donations and any money that was improperly donated would be returned.

Wendy’s finger suspect taken to California

Las Vegas The woman arrested after she said she found a human finger in a bowl of Wendy’s chili was transferred Friday to California to face charges that her claim was a hoax.

Police from San Jose, Calif., took Anna Ayala into custody about 6 a.m. from the Clark County jail, police Sgt. Chris Jones said.

Ayala had waived extradition April 26 and told a Las Vegas judge she was eager to return to California to face charges. She is accused of attempted grand theft in the Wendy’s finger case and grand theft in an unrelated case.

She has denied wrongdoing and her lawyer, Rick Ehler, has called the charges baseless.

Ayala, 39, said she scooped a 1 1/2 - inch-long finger fragment into her mouth March 22 while dining with her family at a Wendy’s restaurant in San Jose. She was arrested April 21 at her suburban Las Vegas home after authorities branded the claim a hoax.

Investigators say they still don’t know where the finger came from. The restaurant chain has offered $100,000 for information.

College project to go without apostrophe

Minneapolis Apostrophe boosters were in mourning at the University of Minnesota after it was decided to name a fancy new walkway the Scholars Walk, not the Scholar’s Walk.

“I’m terribly disappointed,” said Larry Laukka, who leads the group developing the $4.5 million walkway. “I’ll have to lick my wounds. But I’ll get over it.”

For weeks, the issue has bedeviled those at the university and beyond who care a great deal about such things. English professors, e-mailers from across the United States and even the Apostrophe Protection Society of England offered advice.

Laukka argued to board members of the nonprofit University Gateway Corp. that an apostrophe would add distinction by suggesting it is owned by those it honors.

That argument didn’t work. The board voted 4-1 against the punctuation mark.

The board worried that the apostrophe would make the four-block walkway appear exclusive at a time the university wants to be inclusive. It might even mean adding apostrophes to Regents Professors Square and a Professors Lane.

“Apostrophes would be out of control!” said board member Margaret Carlson.