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Byline: - Staff and Wire Services

Minnesota firm acquires Gusmer

SUN VALLEY - Graco Inc. has acquired Gusmer Corp. for $45 million in cash and Gusmer Europe for $20 million in cash, bolstering the fluid management company's product line.

Both Gusmer companies are subsidiaries of Sun Valley-based PMC Global, Inc. The companies combined had sales of approximately $43 million in 2004.

Graco is a Minneapolis-based company that manufactures equipment to measure and spray fluid materials.

Youbet.com tops $1 billion in bets

WOODLAND HILLS - Youbet.com Inc., a provider of online horse racing content, announced Friday that the company has topped the $1 billion mark in total wagers processed since it started accepting bets in 1997.

The $2 column-altering bet went through Youbet's secure wagering system Monday.

Subscribers can bet on races being staged at more than 120 tracks in the United States and in Europe and Asia.

Ex-AOL engineer admits name theft

NEW YORK - A 24-year-old former American Online software engineer pleaded guilty Friday to stealing 92 million screen names and e-mail addresses and selling them to spammers, setting off an avalanche of up to seven billion unsolicited e-mails.

The soft-spoken Jason Smathers of Harpers Ferry, W.Va., entered the plea to conspiracy charges in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where he was likely to face from 18 months to two years in prison at a May 20 sentencing.

Smathers also faces mandatory restitution of between $200,000 and $400,000, the amount the government estimates AOL spent as a result of the e-mails.

HealthSouth fraud unraveled by law

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - The massive fraud at HealthSouth Corp. began unraveling days after President George W. Bush signed a new law with stiff penalties for false corporate reporting, according to testimony Friday by a former finance chief at the trial of fired CEO Richard Scrushy.

Bill Owens, who served in several top positions at the rehabilitation giant, said then-chief financial officer Weston Smith told him he was quitting on Aug. 5, 2002, rather than sign bogus financial statements under the Sarbanes-Oxley law, enacted less than a week earlier amid a wave of corporate scandals.

Owens said he and Scrushy - the first chief executive tried under the law - tried to come up with a way to keep Smith ``on the reservation'' and get him to sign the financial reports, which Smith knew were fraudulent.

World banks fret over U.S. deficits

LONDON - Some of the world's major central bankers warned the United States on Friday that the international community could be running out of patience with the massive U.S. budget and trade deficits that have pushed the dollar lower and increased the cost of their exports in America.

But U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said before the official opening of the Group of Seven finance ministers meeting that factors including the weaker dollar and tougher budget discipline in Congress could finally start to restrain the growth of the trade gap.