A Chicago lawyer sentenced to seven years in prison in a $2.4 billion fraud at Refco Inc. is entitled to a new trial because of errors the judge made in dealing with the jury, a federal appeals court said Monday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the conviction of Joseph P. Collins, saying U.S. District Judge Robert P. Patterson erred when he failed to disclose the contents of a jury note and didn't include lawyers when he spoke with a juror accused of trying to barter his vote.

"This sequence of events deprived Collins of his right to be present at every stage of the trial. Because the deprivation was not harmless, we vacate and remand for a new trial," the appeals court wrote.

The lawyer from Winnetka, Ill., was convicted in July 2009 of conspiracy and other charges. Federal sentencing guidelines had called for 85 years in prison.

Refco was once one of the nation's largest independent commodities brokers.

The company in the mid-1990s sustained hundreds of millions of dollars of losses through losing trades and engaged in an elaborate campaign to cover them up, attracting the attention of federal authorities. Refco filed for bankruptcy in 2005, just weeks after going public and soon after revealing that a $430 million debt owed to the company by a firm controlled by former Refco CEO Phillip Bennett had been concealed.

A court hearing scheduled Friday for suspended Oklahoma State forward Darrell Williams has been postponed until next month.

Williams appeared in Payne County District Court with his attorney to request that his arraignment be moved back. Judge Phillip Corley agreed to reschedule the hearing to June 10.

Williams faces five felony counts alleging he inappropriately touched two female OSU students without their consent at an off-campus party in December.

Williams is charged with four counts of rape by instrumentation and one count of sexual battery. He pleaded not guilty to four of the counts before an additional count of rape by instrumentation was added last month.

The former Koss Corp. executive accused of embezzling $34 million from the headphones manufacturer faces sentencing in federal court in Milwaukee.

Koss chief executive Michael Koss is asking the judge to sentence Sue Sachdeva (SUCH'-dayv) Wednesday to the maximum 15 to 20 years.

In a letter to Judge Lynn Adelman, Koss says Sachdeva "stole from the hardworking employees of the company and their families, and ultimately the stockholders of the company."

The company was forced to restrict wages and salary increases because of the loss.

Sachdeva pleaded guilty to six charges against her and said she was driven to embezzle by a compulsive shopping disorder. Her defense attorneys are asking the court to impose a sentence that's "sufficient but not greater than necessary."

A former vice president of California chipmaker Atheros Communications has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty in the biggest hedge fund insider trading case in history.

Federal Judge Richard Holwell announced the sentence Monday in New York after Ali Hariri declined to speak on his own behalf. The sentence was less than the two-year term recommended by sentencing guidelines.

Hariri pleaded guilty to securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud earlier this year. He was among more than 20 people arrested in the Galleon Group hedge fund case. Prosecutors have said the scam generated more than $50 million in profits. The San Francisco resident admitted feeding inside information about the wireless communications company where he worked to a friend employed at a hedge fund.

Deere & Co. will sell its wind energy business to a subsidiary of Exelon for $900 million, the company said Tuesday, potentially signaling an active merger and acquisition period ahead for the power industry.

With energy prices persistently low due to a grinding economic recovery, stakes in the power industry have begun to shift.

Earlier this month, Blackstone Group paid $542.7 million to take Houston's Dynegy Inc. private. In a three-way deal, Dynegy also sold four power plants to NRG Energy Inc. for $1.36 billion in cash.

Deere said in February it was reviewing options for John Deere Renewables. It saw the wind business as an extention of its agricultural work, with projects located in rural areas.

Deere was involved in project management and financing, buying much of the hardware used in the wind projects from India's Suzlon Energy, one of the biggest suppliers in the world. Deere invested $1 billion over the past five years in the financing, development and ownership of wind energy projects.

On Tuesday, Deere said the sale will allow it to get back to what it does best, which is manufacturing farm equipment.

A judge sentenced a Chattanooga woman to 42 months in prison for faking breast cancer and told her it was "reprehensible" that she took donations of sick leave, money and cancer patient support services for five years.

"It seems like to me some confinement is necessary," Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Don Poole said Monday after a four-hour hearing in which attorneys for 39-year-old Keele Maynor asked for a probation sentence that would allow her to work and pay about $54,000 in restitution.

Poole added 10 years of probation to the sentence for Maynor, a mother of three, and ordered her taken into custody immediately. She will be eligible for parole after serving one-third of the prison sentence. He ordered her to start making $300 monthly restitution payments after her release.

The Supreme Court says the National Football League can be considered as 32 separate teams - not one big business - when it comes to to selling NFL-branded items like jerseys and caps.

The high court has unanimously reversed a lower court ruling throwing out an antitrust suit brought against the league by one of its former hat makers.

American Needle had sued the league after losing the contract to Reebok. The company said the NFL violated antitrust law because all 32 teams worked together to freeze it out of the NFL-licensed hatmaking business. The NFL said it did not violate antitrust law because the teams are all one business.