Last year Whistleblower told the story of Advanced Health Scan, an investment deal that consumed millions of investors’ dollars without opening the promised body imaging clinic in southern California. Now comes word from Alabama that one of the former top dogs of the company, Daniel A. Caterino, will be returning to familiar quarters - behind bars. My conversation with this fast-talking gentleman last year was memorable, not only for its many tangents, but for Caterino’s assertion that he had found God and therefore his criminal past had no relevance to the current furor over what looks like a scam at worst, entrepreneurial incompetence at best. In a video for investors last year, Caterino held up a Bible as he counseled angry investors to just give him more time to make the business work. After pleading guilty in May, Caterino will have 30 months in an Alabama prison to brush up on his Scripture. For my more complete story, click here.

My story today about two Brooklyn Center widows’ outrage about the movement of their husbands’ headstones gave me a crash course in cemetery regulation in Minnesota. The Minnesota Department of Health’s Mortuary Science Section has these duties: “Licenses funeral homes, crematories, morticians, funeral directors and oversee cemetery regulation.” David Benke, the section manager, told me that his office wouldn’t get involved in questions of markers and monuments.

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The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board will get an update this evening on its fundraising foundation’s revamped program for people who want to endow benches, trees, picnic tables, bicycle racks and gardens. The meeting comes nine days after my story about how one memorial bench donor, former park commissioner Vivian Mason, decided not to renew her commitment for another five years because of the sharply rising prices and tight deadline for doing so.

Mason had hoped to tell the park board directly about her complaints tonight, but it was still unclear Tuesday whether she would be able to do so. She had planned to do it during the public comment period, but once that became an agenda item - with a presentation from Cecily Hines of the Foundation for Minneapolis Parks - park board rules don’t allow commentary on agenda items during the “open time” portion, said Dawn Sommers, the park board spokeswoman. Mason got a phone call from a park board staff member informing her that she wouldn’t be allowed to speak as a result.

Sommers said the board, which approved the program in February, was revisiting it because “there have just been a number of questions of late.” You can watch the meeting live, starting at 5 p.m., on the city of Minneapolis webcast.

Maybe I’m naive, but Whistleblower was astonished to read that overdraft fees of the sort that tormented Katie Trottier and numerous other readers are a major profit center for banks, USA Today reporter Kathy Chu reported this week. I guess I labored under the impression that the fees still reflected some actual cost on the part of the bank - in fact, they’re short-term, unregulated loans that banks count on to bolster their bottom lines by an estimated $38 billion this year. As Chu reported:

Today, each of the nation’s 10 largest banks allows consumers to overdraw with checks, debit cards or at ATMs, a 2009 USA TODAY survey reveals. Large banks also reserve the right to process large transactions first, triggering more overdraft fees by emptying the account more quickly. Some even charge consumers before they overdraw by deducting a purchase when it’s made, rather than when it clears, pushing the account into the red sooner.

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