[JURIST] The US Securities and Exchange Commission [official website] is pursuing fraud charges against four former Time Warner [corporate website] executives for their alleged involvement in a 2000-2002 plot to defraud investors by inflating advertising revenue, according to Monday reports. Charges against four other executives, including former head of the company's business affairs unit David Colburn [NYT report], have been settled. Reuters has more.

In 2005, Time Warner agreed to pay $300 million [JURIST report] to settle charges alleging that it overstated online advertising revenue and the number of its AOL Internet subscribers and committed other securities frauds. The SEC accused Time Warner of exaggerating the number of AOL subscribers in the second, third, and fourth quarters of 2001 so it could report to the investment community that it had met its new subscriber targets.