A Missouri business owner who claimed his company had assets that would make it the second biggest corporation in America has been charged with securities fraud and aggravated currency structuring.

Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that Petro America Corp., owned by Isreal Owen Hawkins, had no income other than investor money, no prospects for fulfilling its promises and only one full-time employee -- Hawkins. And instead of being worth more than $284 billion, as Hawkins claimed, Petro America's interests in gold mines and oil trading operations were worthless, investigators said.

"A federal criminal complaint alleges that Petro America was an empty facade of a business run by deception and false promises," U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips said Wednesday at a news conference. "Petro's founder is charged with defrauding unwary investors by selling them worthless stock in order to support his lavish lifestyle."

The criminal action comes on the heels of a civil complaint filed Friday seeking seizure of bank accounts and luxury items from Hawkins and other "unindicted co-conspirators."

Phillips didn't say Wednesday whether anyone else would be charged in the case.

Prosecutors said Hawkins, 55, of Kansas City, Kan., started selling unregistered stock to investors in 2008 at a cost of $100 per 100,000 shares, promising them that "book value" of the stock would be $2 per share when the company went public.

U.S. lenders already facing intense scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators over questionable foreclosure practices will likely face class-action lawsuits on behalf of thousands of homeowners nationwide.

Bruce Simon, a class-action attorney with Pearson Simon Warshaw & Penny LLP in San Francisco, said a filing from his firm is imminent, while two other prominent firms said they were also exploring filing class-actions.

So far, most of the courtroom activity over reports of shoddy documents used by lenders in foreclosure proceedings has come in the form of defenses mounted by individual homeowners, or limited class actions filed in state courts.

However, a lawsuit on behalf of homeowners nationwide could seek a court order that would suspend foreclosures much more broadly, class-action lawyers said.

"We are all hands on deck at the moment,'' said Simon of Pearson Simon Warshaw & Penny.

Another firm, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, in San Francisco, is set to decide "within the next two weeks'' whether to file a lawsuit, according to Eric Fastiff, a partner there. He said the firm, which is on the steering committee for BP Plc oil spill litigation and also plays a leading role in lawsuits against Toyota Motor Corp over acceleration problems, currently has five attorneys and two paralegals assigned to the foreclosure issue.

The revelation that BP's Texas City refinery emitted toxic benzene for more than a month has ignited a furor in the port community that has suffered its share of deadly industrial accidents and toxic spills.

Thousands of residents who fear they may have been exposed to the known carcinogen released at the oil refinery from April 6 to May 16 have been flooding parking lots and conference halls where local trial attorneys hosted information sessions and sought clients for class-action lawsuits against the oil giant.

BP faces the new challenge just as it is reaching a key milestone in another crisis — plugging the Gulf of Mexico well that blew out in an oil spill disaster that is costing the company billions of dollars.

On Wednesday, more than 3,400 people lined the hallways and sidewalks around the Nessler Center to sign on to a $10 billion class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday in Galveston federal court by Friendswood attorney Anthony Buzbee.

The lawsuit alleges the release of 500,000 pounds of chemicals - including 17,000 pounds of benzene - has jeopardized the health and property values of people who live and work in the area. At the nearby College of the Mainland, a separate town hall meeting drew a crowd of 600.

A federal appeals court on Friday granted Dish Network Corp. a rare, full-court review of a ruling it had earlier lost to TiVo Inc., one that could have resulted in the satellite TV company disabling millions of digital video recorders.

Instead, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington breathed new life into litigation that Dish has consistently lost to TiVo. Dish's decision to seek an "en banc" review was seen as CEO Charlie Ergen's last straw effort as damages mounted. Ergen had even believed that the appeals court was unlikely to grant it.

Shares of DVR pioneer TiVo fell by $6.52, or 37.5 percent, to $10.87 in midday trading. Dish rose by $1.22, or 5.6 percent, to $23.18.

But it's uncertain whether Dish will have eventual victory given that TiVo has prevailed in a series of other court rulings.

TiVo sued Dish in 2004 for patent infringement over a technology that stored and retrieved video on DVRs, which lets viewers pause, rewind and replay live TV. Dish lost the case on appeal, paid TiVo $104.6 million in damages and interest and was barred from using the technology.

Oprah Winfrey’s production company wants a federal judge to force a prominent Boston law firm to provide information about one of its former attorneys to bolster its case in a patent-infringement lawsuit against her book club.

The lawsuit poses serious threats to the entire publishing industry, according to Harpo Productions attorney Charles Babcock.

Winfrey’s Harpo filed a motion last week to compel Fish & Richardson to hand over documents and give a deposition regarding Scott Harris, a former patent prosecution attorney in its San Diego office.

Harpo is being sued by Illinois Computer Research, a Chicago holding company that bought Harris’ 2006 patent for Internet technology that allows readers to review digital excerpts from books prior to buying them. Harpo claims the patent is unenforceable. The case is set for a July trial in Illinois.

Harpo wants Fish to comply with a subpoena, because it was party to a similar patent lawsuit that ICR filed against Google, then a Fish client, in 2007.

ICR, which is tied to Harris, added Fish as a defendant in that lawsuit after Fish forced Harris’ resignation several days following its filing.

In court documents, Fish claimed Harris used Fish resources to build a portfolio of patents and cash in on them by selling them to parties that he knew would file infringement cases against companies that included his own law firm’s clients. The suit was settled in 2008.