White Collar

  • June 25, 2025

    Citi Accused Of Complicity In $20M NFT 'Pig Butchering' Scam

    Citibank NA has been hit with a lawsuit in New York federal court by a Texas man accusing it of ignoring red flags that allowed scammers to use accounts at the bank to siphon nearly $4 million from his family trusts after he fell for a social media romance scam involving non-fungible tokens.

  • June 25, 2025

    Auto Lender's Ex-Exec Gets No Prison For Role In $67M Fraud

    An auto lender's former operations chief was sentenced Wednesday in Illinois federal court to one day of time served alongside a year of supervised release, three months of which served as home detention, for his role in a fraud that caused more than $60 million in losses.

  • June 25, 2025

    NC Woman Gets 5 Years For Federal Student Aid Scheme

    A North Carolina woman was sentenced Tuesday to five years in prison and ordered to pay $3.6 million to the U.S. Department of Education after pleading guilty to wire fraud charges alleging the theft of millions from the federal student loan aid program.

  • June 25, 2025

    Investor Wins $2.25M In Cannabis Shareholder Dispute

    The manager of a medical marijuana collective must fork over $2 million and a 50% stake in the entity to an investor, a Los Angeles state court judge ruled, hitting the defendant, previously accused of recklessly spending the dispensary money and found liable for fraud, with another judgment.

  • June 25, 2025

    Adviser's $300M Ponzi Dismissal Bid 'Specious,' Investor Says

    An investor who was roped into what the federal government has called a $300 million Ponzi scheme asked a Georgia federal judge Wednesday to keep their suit alive, arguing they shouldn't be subject to heightened pleading standards for a fraud claim they never made against a Peach State financial adviser.

  • June 25, 2025

    Ex-Google Engineer Nixes Evidence Over Miranda Violation

    A California federal judge has ordered that statements a former Google engineer made to federal agents investigating him for espionage and trade secret theft must be suppressed because they violated the Chinese national's Miranda rights.

  • June 25, 2025

    The 5 Big Enforcement Trends White Collar Attys Must Know

    The Trump administration has made clear its intent to prioritize U.S. interests, eliminate transnational cartels and cut government fraud, waste and abuse — but questions remain about the administration’s approach to foreign bribery, crypto, public corruption, self-disclosure and clemency as we head into the second half of the year.

  • June 25, 2025

    Watchdog Targets US Atty Over Arrests, Probes Of NJ Officials

    The legal ethics watchdog Campaign for Accountability on Wednesday accused interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba of an "abuse of power" over her office's recent investigations and arrests of New Jersey officials and called for an ethics investigation.

  • June 25, 2025

    3rd Circ. Pick Emil Bove Says He's 'Not Anybody's Henchman'

    Emil Bove, nominee for the Third Circuit, who previously served as President Donald Trump's criminal attorney and was a top acting official at the U.S. Department of Justice earlier this year, where he took various controversial actions, made his case on Wednesday for judicial confirmation.

  • June 25, 2025

    NJ Rep. McIver Pleads Not Guilty In ICE Facility Incident

    U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver pled not guilty Wednesday in New Jersey federal court to assault and interference charges stemming from an incident at an immigration detention center in Newark on May 9.

  • June 25, 2025

    NJ Accountant Admits To Role In $1.3B Easement Tax Scheme

    A New Jersey accountant admitted to promoting fraudulent conservation easement tax shelters to wealthy clients in connection with a $1.3 billion scheme that triggered decades-long prison sentences for two ringleaders, the U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday.

  • June 25, 2025

    Pa. Wealth Manager Gets 8 Years For Stealing Client Money

    A suburban Philadelphia wealth manager was sentenced Wednesday to just over eight years in prison for using nearly $25 million of his clients' money on properties, country club fees and luxury vacations, his counsel said.

  • June 25, 2025

    Mass. Atty Gets 18 Mos. For 'Greed' In Pot Shop Bribery Plot

    A Massachusetts lawyer, whose conviction for attempting to bribe a police chief to endorse his client's retail cannabis license application had been partly reversed at the First Circuit, was re-sentenced Wednesday to 18 months in prison by a federal judge who said the attorney should have known better.

  • June 25, 2025

    Hanford Contractor To Pay $6.5M To Settle Fraud Allegations

    A contractor tapped to manage and operate a tank farm holding millions of gallons of hazardous and radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington will pay $6.5 million to settle claims it overcharged the U.S. Department of Energy for labor hours, according to federal prosecutors.

  • June 25, 2025

    Lobbyist Who Evaded Taxes Gets Prison, $1.7M Restitution

    A Miami lobbyist who admitted to evading taxes was sentenced to prison and ordered to pay $1.7 million in restitution to the U.S. after prosecutors said he spent years pretending to sell his house to pay off his debt, according to a Florida federal court.

  • June 25, 2025

    Do Kwon Trial Judge Has Eye On Federal Crypto Legislation

    Federal legislation that could codify stablecoins as payment-related assets — not securities — has the potential to impact the Manhattan U.S. attorney's $40 billion criminal case against Terraform founder Do Kwon, a federal judge said Wednesday.

  • June 25, 2025

    How An Ex-AUSA's Compliance Savvy Ended A Kickback Case

    An attorney drew upon his past as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey and as a healthcare compliance counsel to get all charges dropped against a doctor accused of accepting close to $150,000 in bribes through Insys Therapeutics for "sham" speaker program engagements.

  • June 25, 2025

    11 Arrested In €520M VAT Fraud Investigation, EPPO Says

    Italian authorities arrested 11 people in Italy on suspicion that they participated in a massive €520 million ($604 million) value-added tax fraud scheme tied to mafia operations, the European Public Prosecutor's Office said.

  • June 24, 2025

    Former DOJ Antitrust Official Joins Latham

    Latham & Watkins LLP on Wednesday announced the addition of a new D.C.-based antitrust partner with the hiring of Andrew Forman, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division who is rejoining private practice after three years of helping lead civil competition enforcement.

  • June 24, 2025

    Colo. Justices Order Fraud Retrial Over Legal Advice Hearsay

    Colorado's highest court granted a new securities fraud trial Monday to a man whose testimony in his own defense about advice of counsel was curtailed by a judge, saying legal advice is unquestionably relevant in mounting a defense around "willfulness."

  • June 24, 2025

    Fla. Nonprofit Leaders Charged In $100M Fraud Scheme

    A Florida federal grand jury has charged the founder of a special needs nonprofit and its accountant with multiple counts of fraud stemming from a scheme to steal $100 million from the organization, alleging they diverted money through a slush fund used to pay for personal expenses.

  • June 24, 2025

    Landmark Product Safety Conviction Faces 9th Circ. Appeal

    A former Gree USA executive has appealed his conviction and 38-month prison sentence in the first-ever criminal prosecution of individuals under the Consumer Product Safety Act, according to a Tuesday filing in California federal court.

  • June 24, 2025

    SEC, Ex-Chicago Hedge Fund Ink $5.8M Deal In Fraud Suit

    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has settled with a now-defunct Chicago investment firm in its lawsuit accusing the firm of mismanaging $1 billion in assets, ahead of a trial, with the firm and its co-defendants agreeing to fork over more than $5.8 million collectively.

  • June 24, 2025

    Ex-NFL Player Says Indicted Adviser Defrauded Him For Years

    Retired Carolina Panthers defensive lineman Mike Rucker and his wife unknowingly invested in a Ponzi scheme perpetrated by their longtime financial adviser who is now under criminal indictment in North Carolina, according to a state court complaint they filed accusing him of mismanaging their money for decades.

  • June 24, 2025

    Reinsurer Gets Short Prison Stint In Ecuadorian Bribery Case

    A Florida federal judge sentenced a reinsurance manager to 10 months of time served in prison for his role in a $3 million Ecuadorian bribery scheme following a hearing in Miami court on Tuesday, potentially allowing him to leave the country to reunite with his family in South America.

Expert Analysis

  • DOJ Memo Raises Bar For Imposition Of Corporate Monitors

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    A recently released U.S. Department of Justice memo, outlining guidance on the imposition of compliance monitors in corporate criminal cases, reflects DOJ leadership’s concerns about scope creep and business costs, but the strategies for companies to avoid a monitorship haven't changed much compared to the Biden era, says James Koukios at MoFo.

  • Series

    Law School's Missed Lessons: Becoming A Firmwide MVP

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    Though lawyers don't have a neat metric like baseball players for measuring the value they contribute to their organizations, the sooner new attorneys learn skills frequently skipped in law school — like networking, marketing, client development and case evaluation — the more valuable, and less replaceable, they will be, says Alex Barnett at DiCello Levitt.

  • How NY's FAIR Act Mirrors CFPB State Recommendations

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    New York's proposed FAIR Business Practices Act, which targets predatory lending and junk fees, reflects the Rohit Chopra-era Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's recommendations to states in a number of ways, including by defining "abusive" conduct and adding a new right to file class actions, says Christian Hancock at Bradley Arant.

  • Takeaways From DOJ's 1st Wage-Fixing Jury Conviction

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    U.S. v. Lopez marked the U.S. Department of Justice's first labor market conviction at trial as a Nevada federal jury found a home healthcare staffing executive guilty of wage-fixing and wire fraud, signaling that improper agreements risk facing successful criminal prosecution, say attorneys at McGuireWoods.

  • How Cos. Can Navigate Risks Of New Cartel Terrorist Labels

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    The Trump administration’s recent designation of eight drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations gives rise to new criminal and civil liabilities for companies that are unwittingly exposed to cartel activity, but businesses can mitigate such risks in a few key ways, say attorneys at Steptoe.

  • What We Lost After SEC Eliminated Regional Director Role

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    Former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Regional Director Marc Fagel discusses the recent wholesale elimination of the regional director position, the responsibilities of the job itself and why discarding this role highlights how the appearance of creating a more efficient agency may limit the SEC's effectiveness.

  • Perspectives

    Reading Tea Leaves In High Court's Criminal Law Decisions

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    The criminal justice decisions the U.S. Supreme Court will announce in the coming weeks will reveal whether last term’s fractured decision-making has continued, an important data point as the justices’ alignment seems to correlate with who benefits from a case’s outcome, says Sharon Fairley at the University of Chicago Law School.

  • $38M Law Firm Settlement Highlights 'Unworthy Client' Perils

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    A recent settlement of claims against law firm Eckert Seamans for allegedly abetting a Ponzi scheme underscores the continuing threat of clients who seek to exploit their lawyers in perpetrating fraud, and the critical importance of preemptive measures to avoid these clients, say attorneys at Lockton Companies.

  • Series

    Teaching Business Law Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Teaching business law to college students has rekindled my sense of purpose as a lawyer — I am more mindful of the importance of the rule of law and the benefits of our common law system, which helps me maintain a clearer perspective on work, says David Feldman at Feldman Legal Advisors.

  • Evolving Federal Rules Pose Further Obstacles To NY LLC Act

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    Following the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network's recent changes to beneficial ownership information reporting under the federal Corporate Transparency Act — dramatically reducing the number of companies required to make disclosures — the utility of New York's LLC Transparency Act becomes less apparent, say attorneys at Pillsbury.

  • Series

    Law School's Missed Lessons: Mastering Discovery

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    The discovery process and the rules that govern it are often absent from law school curricula, but developing a solid grasp of the particulars can give any new attorney a leg up in their practice, says Jordan Davies at Knowles Gallant.

  • DOJ Signals Major Shift In White Collar Enforcement Priorities

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    In a speech on Monday, an official outlined key revisions to the U.S. Department of Justice’s voluntary self-disclosure, corporate monitorship and whistleblower program policies, marking a meaningful change in the white collar enforcement landscape, and offering companies clearer incentives and guardrails, say attorneys at McGuireWoods.

  • Breaking Down 4th Circ. 'Actual Knowledge' Ruling For Banks

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    A recent decision from the Fourth Circuit finding that banks must have "actual knowledge" to be found liable for losses arising from an automated clearinghouse transfer warns that the more financial institutions know about a name mismatch issue for any particular transaction, the more liability they may face, say attorneys at Katten.

  • Strategies To Limit Inherent Damage Of Multidefendant Trials

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    As shown by the recent fraud convictions of two executives at the now-shuttered education startup Frank, multidefendant criminal trials pose unique obstacles, but with some planning, defense counsel can mitigate the harm and maximize the chances of a good outcome, says Kenneth Notter at MoloLamken.

  • CFTC Memos Clarify When 'Sorry' Still Gets You Subpoenaed

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    A pair of Commodity Futures Trading Commission advisories released in February and April open a new path to self-reporting but emphasize that serious breaches still warrant a trip to the penalty box, prompting firms to weigh whether — and how — to disclose potential violations in the future, say attorneys at Pryor Cashman.

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