Try our Advanced Search for more refined results
White Collar
-
July 01, 2024
Court Tosses Constitutional Challenge To Pot Prohibition
A Massachusetts federal judge on Monday granted the U.S. Department of Justice's bid to dismiss a constitutional challenge to federal marijuana prohibition, delivering a blow to an effort brought by a group of cannabis companies represented by litigator David Boies.
-
July 01, 2024
Feds Push To Keep IRS Agents Out Of Hunter Biden Tax Case
Two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers who Hunter Biden said wrongfully disclosed his confidential tax information should not be allowed to intervene in his suit against the U.S. government, the government told a D.C. federal court Monday.
-
July 01, 2024
House Republicans Call For ACA Enrollment Probe
Three House Republican committee chairs are asking government watchdogs to investigate Affordable Care Act enrollments after a third-party report alleged a significant number of Americans are fraudulently accessing low-income healthcare subsidies.
-
July 01, 2024
Binance, Ex-CEO Must Face 'Bulk' Of SEC Case
A Washington, D.C., federal judge ruled that Binance, its former CEO and its U.S. arm will have to face the "bulk" of a lawsuit from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, but claims surrounding the crypto exchange's stablecoin and certain secondary sales of its proprietary token won't move forward.
-
July 01, 2024
Pa. Man Gets 12 Years For $2M COVID-19 Funds Fraud
A Pennsylvania man was sentenced to approximately 12 years in prison following his convictions for bank fraud, aggravated identity theft and unlawful monetary transactions related to theft of federal COVID-19 pandemic relief funds, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
-
July 01, 2024
Admiral, CEOs Deny Steering Navy Contracts
A retired four-star Navy admiral and two executives at a leadership training company pled not guilty to charges of conspiracy and bribery Monday morning in D.C. federal court, vowing to take the U.S. Department of Justice's case to trial.
-
July 01, 2024
Ex-Calif. Law Firm CFO Charged in $1.2M Embezzlement
The former chief financial officer of two related San Francisco law firms now faces federal criminal charges that he embezzled at least $1.2 million from the companies, and the government is trying to seize some of his properties.
-
July 01, 2024
Judge Acquits Firm Co-Founder, 27 Others Over Panama Papers
When authorities raided the now defunct Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca as part of their investigation into the international money laundering case known as the Panama Papers, they didn't follow the chain of custody for evidence they seized, so 28 people accused in the conspiracy must be acquitted, a Panamanian judge has ruled.
-
July 01, 2024
Fla. Court Releases 2006 Epstein Grand Jury Transcript
A Florida state court judge on Monday made public the 2006 grand jury transcripts of the Jeffrey Epstein sex abuse investigation after a newspaper persuaded him to reconsider releasing them in light of a new law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this year.
-
July 01, 2024
Feds Say Ex-Magellan Officer's Atty May Have Conflict
A Donnelly Conroy & Gelhaar LLP attorney's prior representation of co-defendants in a pending fraud case against former executives of medical device company Magellan Diagnostics may have created a disqualifying conflict of interest, lawyers for the government told a Massachusetts federal judge.
-
July 01, 2024
Texas Attorney Serving 15-Year Sentence Is Disbarred
The State Bar of Texas announced Monday that it has yanked the license of a criminal defense attorney who was sentenced in 2021 to more than 15 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of cheating big-time Colombian drug trafficking clients.
-
July 01, 2024
Supreme Court Gives Trump Immunity For Official Acts
Former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity from prosecution related to an indefinite list of official acts, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday, partially releasing Donald Trump from liability for allegedly interfering with the 2020 presidential election, but ultimately tasking lower courts with sussing out the full extent of his immunity.
-
June 28, 2024
Cahill Hires SDNY Vet Who Prosecuted 'Real Housewives' Star
Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP has hired an eight-year veteran of the U.S. Attorney's Office for Southern District of New York who was a senior member of the office's Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force and prosecuted a former U.S. congressional representative and a star of one of "The Real Housewives" TV series.
-
June 28, 2024
Chevron's End Is Just The Start For Energized Agency Foes
By knocking down a powerful precedent that has towered over administrative law for 40 years, the U.S. Supreme Court's right wing Friday gave a crowning achievement to anti-agency attorneys. But for those attorneys, the achievement is merely a means to an end, and experts expect a litigation blitzkrieg to materialize quickly in the aftermath.
-
June 28, 2024
CUNY Medical Prof Accused Of Fabricating NIH Grant Apps
A medical professor at the City College of New York and paid adviser to Cassava Sciences has been indicted on allegations he falsified scientific data in grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health on behalf of himself and Cassava, prosecutors announced Friday.
-
June 28, 2024
Prosecution Rests In Menendez Bribery Trial
New York federal prosecutors on Friday closed out their case-in-chief that Sen. Robert Menendez accepted bribes from constituent businessmen, resting after a final witness said some $550,000 in cash seized from the senator's wife's house could not have been from his cash withdrawals in recent years, which were only $55,000.
-
June 28, 2024
Citi Wants Termination Suit Over Alleged Lies To OCC Tossed
Citibank has urged a New York federal judge to toss a suit by a former managing director of the bank who claims she was fired for not reporting false information to compliance authorities, arguing that even if her claims are true, she hasn't plausibly alleged a cause of action under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
-
June 28, 2024
Eagles' Don Henley Wants 'Hotel California' Lyrics Returned
Eagles frontman Don Henley is seeking to retake possession of handwritten lyric sheets that were seized by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office in a now-dismissed criminal case over the sale of the allegedly stolen album notes, asking a New York federal judge Friday to declare that he is the legal owner.
-
June 28, 2024
FCPA, Shkreli Prosecutor To Lead EDNY's Criminal Division
Breon Peace, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, on Friday said Alixandra Smith, known for taking point in the prosecution of Martin Shkreli and her leading roles in foreign bribery cases, has been appointed as the new chief of the office's Criminal Division.
-
June 28, 2024
In Chevron Case, Justices Trade One Unknown For Another
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overrule a decades-old judicial deference doctrine may cause the "eternal fog of uncertainty" surrounding federal agency actions to dissipate and level the playing field in challenges of government policies, but lawyers warn it raises new questions over what rules courts must follow and how judges will implement them.
-
June 28, 2024
Ontrak Exec Conviction Shows Trading Plans Aren't Shields
Executives who use so-called Rule 10b5-1 trading plans to buy and sell shares of their company's stock don't have an automatic shield against insider trading charges, attorneys said following the first criminal conviction of an executive based exclusively on his use of the plans, which are facing increased scrutiny from financial regulators.
-
June 28, 2024
Justices' SEC Ruling Unlikely To Bear On Immigration Actions
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision reining in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's use of administrative courts is unlikely to help Walmart and SpaceX escape proceedings for alleged immigration-related violations, with the justices punting on the authority of administrative law judges.
-
June 28, 2024
Fla. Air Force Vet Charged With Sharing Classified Information
A Florida Air Force veteran was accused of distributing classified materials about military aircraft in a federal indictment, which charged him with several counts of sharing national defense information that could be used to harm the United States.
-
June 28, 2024
Shkreli Asks High Court To Toss $64M Disgorgement Order
Former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli, who gained notoriety for hiking the price of HIV/AIDS medication before serving more than four years in prison for securities fraud, is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to toss a disgorgement order requiring him to pay $64 million for monopolistic price-gouging.
-
June 28, 2024
NJ Contractor Admits To Defrauding Defense Dept.
A New Jersey businessman has admitted in federal court to engaging in two multiyear schemes to defraud the U.S. Defense Department on contracts for military equipment parts and agreeing to rig bids for government contracts.
Expert Analysis
-
Key Takeaways From High Court's Substitute Expert Decision
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Smith v. Arizona decision, holding that the confrontation clause generally bars prosecutors’ use of a substitute expert witness at trial, will have the most impact in narcotics and violent crime cases, but creative defense lawyers may find it useful in white collar cases, too, say Joshua Naftalis and Melissa Kelley at Pallas Partners.
-
Opinion
Atty Well-Being Efforts Ignore Root Causes Of The Problem
The legal industry is engaged in a critical conversation about lawyers' mental health, but current attorney well-being programs primarily focus on helping lawyers cope with the stress of excessive workloads, instead of examining whether this work culture is even fundamentally compatible with lawyer well-being, says Jonathan Baum at Avenir Guild.
-
Proposed Customer ID Rule Could Cost Investment Advisers
A rule recently proposed by FinCEN and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to make financial advisers collect more customer information parallels an anti-money laundering and counterterrorism rule proposed this spring, but firms may face new compliance costs when implementing these screening programs, say attorneys at Lowenstein Sandler.
-
Perspectives
High Court Ruling Leaves Chance For Civil Forfeiture Reform
Though advocates for civil forfeiture reform did not prevail in Culley v. Marshall last month, concerns voiced by a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court justices potentially leave the door open to consider stricter limits in future cases, say attorneys at Dykema.
-
How Cannabis Rescheduling May Affect Current Operators
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency's proposal to reschedule marijuana to Schedule III provides relief in the form of federal policy from the stigma and burdens of Schedule I, but commercial cannabis operations will remain unchanged until the federal-state cannabis policy gap is remedied by Congress, say Meital Manzuri and Alexis Lazzeri at Manzuri Law.
-
Series
Skiing And Surfing Make Me A Better Lawyer
The skills I’ve learned while riding waves in the ocean and slopes in the mountains have translated to my legal career — developing strong mentor relationships, remaining calm in difficult situations, and being prepared and able to move to a backup plan when needed, says Brian Claassen at Knobbe Martens.
-
Unpacking The Circuit Split Over A Federal Atty Fee Rule
Federal circuit courts that have addressed Rule 41(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are split as to whether attorney fees are included as part of the costs of a previously dismissed action, so practitioners aiming to recover or avoid fees should tailor arguments to the appropriate court, says Joseph Myles at Finnegan.
-
In Biz Account Breaches, Look Beyond The Payment Platform
A business's legal path to recovering funds after bad actors access a payment platform account and engage in unauthorized transactions can lead into murky legal territory where liability is unclear, and pursuing the payment platform itself will be an uphill, if not insurmountable, struggle, say Edward Marshall and Morgan Harrison at Arnall Golden.
-
Justices' 'Blind Mule' Ruling Won't Change Defense Strategy
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week in Diaz v. U.S., holding that expert witnesses can testify broadly about the mental state of “most people” in a group, simply affirms the status quo for the majority of defendants, and is unlikely to change defense counsel’s strategy at trial, says Walter Gonçalves at the Arizona Federal Public Defender's Office.
-
4 Steps To Repair Defense Credibility In Opening Statements
Given the continued rise of record-breaking verdicts, defense counsel need to consider fresh approaches to counteract the factors coloring juror attitudes — starting with a formula for rebuilding credibility at the very beginning of opening statements, says Ken Broda-Bahm at Persuasion Strategies.
-
Del. Bankruptcy Ruling Will Give D&O Insureds Nightmares
In Henrich v. XL Specialty Insurance, the Delaware Bankruptcy Court recently found that a never-served qui tam claim had been "brought" before a D&O policy's retroactive date, thereby eliminating coverage, and creating a nightmare scenario for directors and officers policyholders facing whistleblower claims, says David Klein at Pillsbury.
-
Prejudicial Evidence Takeaways From Trump Hush Money Trial
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office's prosecution and conviction of former President Donald Trump on 34 felony counts provides a lesson on whether evidence may cause substantial unfair prejudice, or if its prejudicial potential is perfectly fair within the bounds of the law, says Reuben Guttman at Guttman Buschner.
-
Lower Courts May Finally Be Getting The Memo After Ciminelli
A year after the U.S. Supreme Court again limited prosecutors' overbroad theories of fraud in Ciminelli v. U.S., early returns suggest that the message has at least partially landed with the lower courts, spotlighting lessons for defense counsel moving forward, says Kenneth Notter at MoloLamken.
-
After A Brief Hiccup, The 'Rocket Docket' Soars Back To No. 1
The Eastern District of Virginia’s precipitous 2022 fall from its storied rocket docket status appears to have been a temporary aberration, as recent statistics reveal that the court is once again back on top as the fastest federal civil trial court in the nation, says Robert Tata at Hunton.
-
A Framework For Investigating Commercial Loan Fraud
As commercial loan transactions are increasingly subject to sophisticated fraud schemes, lenders must adopt dynamic strategies to detect, investigate and mitigate these schemes, say attorneys at Baker Donelson.