A New York City grand jury has indicted a lawyer suspected of bilking hedge funds out of more than $400 million.

The indictment returned Thursday in federal court in Manhattan charges Marc Dreier with conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. Dreier also is charged with securities fraud and wire fraud.

Dreier led the law firm Dreier LLP, with 250 attorneys and celebrity clients including ex-New York Giants star Michael Strahan (STRAY'-han). He was arrested in December after hedge funds complained he was stealing from them.

Dreier has remained jailed, unable to post enough cash or property toward his $20 million bail.

Defense attorneys say he's cooperated with a receiver appointed by the court to take control of his assets.

Prosecutors say he could face 30 years to life in prison if convicted.

Former Rep. Wes Cooley, who represented Oregon's 2nd District in Congress from 1995 to 1997, is charged with six counts of concealment money-laundering and one count of subscribing to a false tax return.

He is accused of participating in the scheme from December 1999 until April 2004. In 2002 alone, Cooley took $1.1 million from investors, laundered it to conceal the fraud scheme and falsified his tax return to avoid paying taxes, prosecutors said.

If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 38 years in prison.

According to the indictment, Cooley and two other men, George Tannous and De Elroy Beeler Jr., lured victims into purchasing unregistered stock in Bidbay.com Inc. by telling them the company would be acquired by eBay for $20 per share. Cooley was the vice president of Bidbay.

Prosecutors said eBay had no plans to buy the company and even sued Bidbay.com for trademark infringement over the use of "bay" in its name.

Tannous and Beeler both pleaded guilty to charges related to the case.

Cooley's attorney, Richard Moss, said his client cooperated with the investigation but might have difficulty recalling things that happened several years ago.

"He's 76, but he's not a young 76," Moss said. "He's not in good health."

In 2005, a civil jury in St. Louis found Cooley and Tannous lied to investors in the Internet startup. The two were ordered to pay $2.2 million to 11 investors.

Cooley denied any involvement in fraud, testifying that he had suffered three strokes and could remember nothing from the previous 15 years of his life. He now lives in Palm Springs.

Ricardo Ortiz was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. Thursday.

The 46-year-old was the fifth Texas inmate to die this year and the second of two executions in consecutive nights this week in the nation's most active death penalty state.

Ortiz was condemned for the retaliation slaying of 22-year-old Gerardo Garcia more than 11 years ago. Authorities say Garcia was killed so he couldn't testify about bank robberies the pair was suspected of carrying out.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal Thursday to delay the execution. Ortiz had argued he should get federal money to pay for help filing a state clemency request.

Exxon Mobil Corp. on Friday reported a profit of $45.2 billion for 2008, breaking its own record for a U.S. company, even as its fourth-quarter earnings fell 33 percent from a year ago.

The previous record for annual profit was $40.6 billion, which the world's largest publicly traded oil company set in 2007.

The extraordinary full-year profit wasn't a surprise given crude's triple-digit price for much of 2008, peaking near an unheard of $150 a barrel in July. Since then, however, prices have fallen roughly 70 percent amid a deepening global economic crisis.

In the fourth quarter alone crude tumbled 60 percent, prompting spending and job cuts in an industry that was reporting robust, often record, profits as recently as last summer.

With piles of cash and diversified operations, the majors like Exxon Mobil have fared better than many smaller oil and gas companies, but Friday's results show no one is completely insulated from the ongoing malaise.

Irving, Texas-based Exxon said net income slid sharply to $7.8 billion, or $1.55 a share, in the October-December period. That compared with $11.7 billion, or $2.13 a share, in the same period a year ago, when Exxon set a U.S. record for quarterly profit. It has since topped that mark twice, first in last year's second quarter and then with earnings of $14.83 billion in the third quarter.