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Fintech
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September 24, 2024
SEC Orders Crypto Cos. To Pay $700K Over Stablecoin Offers
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday unveiled a $700,000 settlement with stablecoin issuer TrueCoin and affiliated lending business TrustToken over alleged misrepresentations about the stability of the token and failures to register its use in "profit-making opportunities."
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September 24, 2024
3 Takeaways From Gensler's Big Day Before The House
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler appeared before the U.S. House of Representative for potentially the last time on Tuesday, where he stuck up for his agency's actions in the crypto space and hinted at the possible revival of share buyback rules.
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September 24, 2024
Feds Say BitMEX Should Owe $428M For Flouting AML Rules
Federal prosecutors urged a Manhattan federal judge to impose a $428 million penalty for offshore crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX after the firm admitted to lax anti-money laundering procedures, arguing the more than $100 million the firm and founders have already paid to regulators is not enough to deter other crypto firms from Bank Secrecy Act violations.
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September 24, 2024
1st Circ. Affirms Tossing Of IRS Crypto Doc Seizure Case
A New Hampshire federal court correctly dismissed a bitcoin investor's claim that the IRS violated his privacy and property rights when it seized his records from the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, the First Circuit ruled Tuesday, agreeing that he lacked a reasonable expectation that his account information would be kept private.
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September 24, 2024
Chancery Told SwervePay Deserves Sanctions In Earnout Suit
A court-appointed special magistrate has recommended sanctioning e-payment venture SwervePay and related parties over up to 22 months of missing or deleted text messages sought by SPOSC Investment Holdings and others in a post-merger battle over an alleged multibillion-dollar overstatement of "monetizable" payment traffic.
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September 24, 2024
Star Witness Against Bankman-Fried Gets 2 Years In FTX Case
A Manhattan federal judge sentenced former cryptocurrency executive Caroline Ellison to two years in prison Tuesday, crediting her decision to testify against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried but saying the $11.2 billion fraud was too big to warrant a "get out of jail free card."
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September 24, 2024
Baker Donelson Adds Financial Services Expert In DC
Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz PC has hired a new shareholder who started her 15-year legal career as an attorney adviser in the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Banking and Finance Division, the firm announced Tuesday.
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September 24, 2024
DOJ Accuses Visa Of Monopolizing Debit Card Market
The U.S. Department of Justice accused Visa on Tuesday of illegally maintaining a monopoly over debit card networks by using its dominance to thwart competition from new and existing rivals, as the Biden administration continues its push to combat high prices using antitrust law.
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September 24, 2024
SEC, CFTC Issue $118M Fines In Latest Text Message Actions
Federal regulators said Tuesday that the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and nearly a dozen other financial firms have agreed to pay fines totaling nearly $120 million to settle recordkeeping violations tied to employee use of unapproved communication methods like text messages to conduct business.
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September 23, 2024
3rd Circ. Probes SEC's 'Close To Vacuous' Reply To Coinbase
Members of a Third Circuit panel on Monday pressed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on its brief denial of crypto exchange Coinbase's request for rulemaking around digital assets, digging into how much of an explanation the agency owes the industry about its decision to forego setting rules for now.
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September 23, 2024
Crypto Miners Must Keep Fighting SEC's $18M Fraud Claims
A Utah federal judge on Monday refused to throw out the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's suit accusing two Utah residents of running an $18 million crypto fraud scheme, rejecting their arguments that the transactions at the heart of the dispute do not involve securities subject to the SEC's regulation.
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September 23, 2024
Coinbase Brings On Ex-Citadel Legal Chief With SEC Chops
Coinbase announced on Monday it has hired Ryan VanGrack to serve as its vice president of legal, where he will be overseeing civil litigation, regulatory probes, employment and intellectual property matters for the crypto exchange after spending seven years with Citadel Securities as general counsel.
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September 23, 2024
CFTC Fines Piper Sandler $2M In Latest Text Messaging Action
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission both announced settlements Monday in their ongoing probe into the financial industry's use of personal devices to discuss company business, with the CFTC issuing a fine against a subsidiary of Piper Sandler & Co. while the SEC said that a cooperative investment adviser would not have to pay anything.
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September 23, 2024
DOJ Adds AI Risk To Corporate Compliance Program
The U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division is now weighing how companies manage risk related to artificial intelligence and potentially stymie whistleblowers, one of several updates to the division's policies on evaluating corporate compliance programs announced by a senior official on Monday.
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September 23, 2024
SEC Scores $12M Judgment In Unregistered Dealer Case
A Minnesota federal judge has ordered financial firm Carebourn Capital LP, its founder and an affiliated company to pay more than $12 million in disgorgement and prejudgment interest over U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claims they made millions selling securities as unregistered dealers.
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September 23, 2024
PNC, Plaid End Legal Battle With Customer Data-Sharing Deal
PNC Financial Services Group and Plaid have reached an agreement to end nearly four years of trademark litigation that allows PNC customers to use Plaid to share their financial data with fintech companies like Venmo and Cash App.
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September 23, 2024
Davis Polk Vows Ex-Clerk Won't Touch Crypto Merger Suit
Local counsel for Galaxy Digital Holdings Inc. has told a Delaware vice chancellor that Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP will ensure that an incoming associate who clerked for the state's Supreme Court won't share information with attorneys defending the digital assets company in a merger suit that the state's highest court revived in May.
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September 23, 2024
Shkreli Told To Provide More Info On Wu-Tang Album Copies
A Brooklyn federal judge on Monday ordered Martin Shkreli to update the court on how many tracks he copied from a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album after the cryptocurrency group that now owns the work argued Shkreli could be holding out on surrendering all his copies amid the parties' legal battle.
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September 23, 2024
Holland & Knight Adds Former Treasury Adviser In DC
A former adviser for the U.S. Department of the Treasury and counsel for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has moved his practice to Holland & Knight's office in Washington, D.C., the firm announced Monday.
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September 23, 2024
Autism Played Role In Bankman-Fried Case, 2nd Circ. Told
A group of experts on neurodiversity told the Second Circuit that Sam Bankman-Fried, who has said he has autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, may have been hurt at trial by a "cognitive and communication style" that at times frustrated the trial judge.
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September 20, 2024
3rd Circ. CFPB Ruling Threatens Securitization, Justices Told
Two major trade groups for the securities industry have urged the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Third Circuit decision allowing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to exercise enforcement authority over a collection of student loan securitization trusts, slamming the ruling as wrong and dangerous.
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September 20, 2024
Judge Won't Toss Fraud Suit Against Crypto-Forex Co. Execs
A Florida judge decided that the CEO and a founding shareholder of purported foreign exchange currency broker FxWinning Ltd. have sufficient ties to Florida to keep them among the defendants of a suit alleging the business and its operators perpetrated a multimillion-dollar fraud.
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September 20, 2024
CFPB Pitches Remittance Rule Tweak For Consumer Inquiries
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau moved Friday to revise a longstanding remittance disclosure requirement, saying the agency thinks the wording may be causing it to get inundated with thousands of phone calls from consumers asking about their international money transfers.
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September 20, 2024
States Tell 10th Circ. To Back Colo. Interest Rate Opt-Out Law
Attorneys general for 13 states and Washington, D.C., asked the Tenth Circuit on Friday to uphold a Colorado law imposing more restrictive interest rate caps on loans made to its residents by out-of-state banks, arguing that a federal judge's injunction "nullifies the authority granted to states by Congress" to protect consumers from abusive lending practices.
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September 20, 2024
NFT Buyers Bring Securities Suit Against Crypto Co. OpenSea
Two Florida users of OpenSea hit the nonfungible token marketplace with a proposed securities class action claiming the assets the users bought on the platform are unregistered investment contracts in light of recent court decisions and regulatory scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Expert Analysis
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Chevron's End Puts Target On CFPB's Aggressive BNPL Rule
A recent interpretative rule by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, subjecting buy-now, pay-later loans to the same regulations as credit cards, is unlikely to survive post-Chevron challenges of the rule's partisan and shaky logic, say Scott Pearson and Bryan Schneider at Manatt.
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Cyber Incident Response Checklist For SEC Compliance
In light of recent guidance from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which clarified the distinction between two types of cybersecurity incident disclosures, companies should align their materiality assessment, incident response and disclosure control processes to bolster compliance and provide a measure of protection, say attorneys at Troutman Pepper.
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Expect CFPB To Enforce Warning Against 'Coercive' Fine Print
The recent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warning against unenforceable terms "deceptively" slipped into the fine print of contracts will likely be challenged in court, but until then, companies should expect the agency to treat its guidance as law and must carefully scrutinize their consumer contracts, say attorneys at Ballard Spahr.
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Opinion
Now More Than Ever, Lawyers Must Exhibit Professionalism
As society becomes increasingly fractured and workplace incivility is on the rise, attorneys must champion professionalism and lead by example, demonstrating how lawyers can respectfully disagree without being disagreeable, says Edward Casmere at Norton Rose.
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What FTX Case Taught Us About Digital Asset Recoverability
FTX's Chapter 11 plan has drawn lots of attention, but the focus should be on the anticipated outcome for investors, which counters several myths about digital currencies, innovation and recoverability, says Kyla Curley at StoneTurn.
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Series
Serving In The National Guard Makes Me A Better Lawyer
My ongoing military experience as a judge advocate general in the National Guard has shaped me as a person and a lawyer, teaching me the importance of embracing confidence, balance and teamwork in both my Army and civilian roles, says Danielle Aymond at Baker Donelson.
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Big Business May Come To Rue The Post-Administrative State
Many have framed the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions overturning Chevron deference and extending the window to challenge regulations as big wins for big business, but sand in the gears of agency rulemaking may be a double-edged sword, creating prolonged uncertainty that impedes businesses’ ability to plan for the future, says Todd Baker at Columbia University.
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A Midyear Forecast: Tailwinds Expected For Atty Hourly Rates
Hourly rates for partners, associates and support staff continued to rise in the first half of this year, and this growth shows no signs of slowing for the rest of 2024 and into next year, driven in part by the return of mergers and acquisitions and the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence, says Chuck Chandler at Valeo Partners.
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Synapse Bankruptcy Has Ripple Effects For Fintech Industry
Synapse Financial Technologies’ recent bankruptcy filing marks a significant moment in the fintech industry's evolution, highlighting that stringent compliance and risk management in fintech partnerships are essential to mitigate risk and protect consumers, say Joann Needleman and Ryan Blumberg at Clark Hill.
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Opinion
Discount Window Reform Needed To Curb Modern Bank Runs
We learned during the spring 2023 failures that bank runs can happen extraordinarily fast in light of modern technology, especially when banks have a greater concentration of large deposits, demonstrating that the antiquated but effective discount window needs to be overhauled before the next crisis, says Cris Cicala at Stinson.
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Series
In The CFPB Playbook: Making Good On Bold Promises
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision upholding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's funding structure in the second quarter cleared the way for the bureau to resume a number of high-priority initiatives, and it appears poised to charge ahead in working toward its aggressive preelection agenda, say Andrew Arculin and Paula Vigo Marqués at Blank Rome.
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Opinion
States Should Loosen Law Firm Ownership Restrictions
Despite growing buzz, normalized nonlawyer ownership of law firms is a distant prospect, so the legal community should focus first on liberalizing state restrictions on attorney and firm purchases of practices, which would bolster succession planning and improve access to justice, says Michael Di Gennaro at The Law Practice Exchange.
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FBI Raid Signals Growing Criminal Enforcement Of Algorithms
The U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division's increased willingness to pursue the use of algorithmic pricing as a potential criminal violation means that companies need to understand the software solutions they employ and stay abreast of antitrust best practices when contracting with providers, say attorneys at Rule Garza.
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Best Text Practices In Light Of Terraform's $4.5B Fraud Deal
Text messages were extremely important in a recent civil trial against Terraform Labs, leading to a $4.5 billion settlement, so litigants in securities fraud cases need to have robust mobile data policies that address the content and retention of messages, and the obligations of employees to allow for collection, say Josh Sohn and Alicia Clausen at Crowell & Moring.
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Series
Solving Puzzles Makes Me A Better Lawyer
Tackling daily puzzles — like Wordle, KenKen and Connections — has bolstered my intellectual property litigation practice by helping me to exercise different mental skills, acknowledge minor but important details, and build and reinforce good habits, says Roy Wepner at Kaplan Breyer.