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White Collar
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April 17, 2024
Trader's Alleged $110M Mango Markets Fraud In Jury's Hands
A Manhattan federal jury weighed charges Wednesday against a cryptocurrency trader accused of illegally squeezing $110 million out of Mango Markets by inflating the finance platform's tokens, then borrowing against them, allegedly taking "supply and demand into his own hands."
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April 17, 2024
Ex-Union Leader Wielded 'Financial Ruin' At Jobsite, Jury Told
Prosecutors told a federal jury Wednesday that ex-Philadelphia labor leader John Dougherty threatened a jobsite manager with "financial ruin" if the man refused to pay his nephew, Gregory Fiocca, despite spotty attendance during the construction of the Live! Casino.
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April 17, 2024
Rebut Or Regret? Baldwin Faces Quandary In 'Rust' Trial
The stiff prison sentence handed to the "Rust" film armorer convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal on-set shooting of a cinematographer offers potential lessons for actor-producer Alec Baldwin, who experts say must walk a fine line between denying fault and expressing sympathy over his involvement in the tragic incident as he faces trial on the same charge.
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April 17, 2024
Swedish Tax Investigations Add $90M To Crypto Miners' Bills
Investigations revealed that a number of cryptocurrency mining centers in Sweden misrepresented their business dealings, which led to the Swedish Tax Agency doling out a total of 990 million Swedish krona ($90 million) in increased tax liabilities, the agency said Wednesday.
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April 17, 2024
Bankman-Fried Appeal May Cite Unusual Preview Testimony
Sam Bankman-Fried's appeal of his conviction and 25-year prison sentence may cite a "rather unprecedented" trial procedure in which the FTX founder gave provisional testimony before officially taking the witness stand last year, one of his attorneys said Wednesday.
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April 17, 2024
Panel Agrees Pot Investor's Deal In 2017 Suit Nixes 2019 Suit
A Washington state appeals court has thrown out an investor's suit alleging that a cannabis venture failed to follow through on a deal to acquire ownership interest in exchange for a $650,000 investment, finding his settlement of a prior suit block his claims.
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April 17, 2024
Manatt Adds NY Bankruptcy, Financial Regulatory Partners
Manatt Phelps & Phillips LLP announced that it hired a pair of experienced New York-based attorneys who focus their practices on regulatory matters as partners in its bankruptcy and financial regulatory practices.
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April 17, 2024
Ex-Pharma Exec's Contempt Plea Rejected By Judge
A Massachusetts federal judge on Wednesday rejected a former pharmaceutical executive's agreement to plead guilty to contempt for using an alias to get around a consent judgment in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fraud case, saying both the former executive and the government knew he'd view the sentence as too low.
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April 17, 2024
'Fat Leonard' Prosecutors Say 5 More Plea Deals Tainted
Federal prosecutors in San Diego have agreed to let several former U.S. Navy officers withdraw their felony pleas in the "Fat Leonard" bribery scandal, citing "serious" lapses that wiped out other convictions in the high-profile case.
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April 17, 2024
Judge Delays Trial Over $20M Allegedly Hidden From IRS
A Florida federal judge agreed Wednesday to delay the trial of a Brazilian-American businessman accused of hiding $20 million from the Internal Revenue Service by using Swiss bank accounts, but told the defendant the new deadlines are firm.
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April 17, 2024
Stormy Daniels Says Trump Flubbed Subpoena At Nightclub
Stormy Daniels, the adult film star at the center of Donald Trump's hush money case, said the former president failed to properly serve her with a subpoena seeking evidence of alleged bias last month after the man dropped the papers at her feet outside a Brooklyn nightclub.
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April 17, 2024
Justices Rule Criminal Forfeiture Deadline Isn't Absolute
The U.S. Supreme Court held Wednesday that courts can issue forfeiture orders at sentencing in criminal cases even if prosecutors fail to submit a draft request prior to the court-ordered date, ruling noncompliance with the rule doesn't strip judges of the authority to direct defendants to hand over ill-gotten gains.
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April 17, 2024
Menendez's Defense Could Target Wife, Court Records Show
U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, facing trial next month on bribery and corruption charges, may resort to blaming his wife for concealing that anything about the couple's dealings with three New Jersey businessmen could be illegal, newly unsealed court papers show.
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April 16, 2024
Autonomy CEO Pressured JPMorgan Over Analyst, Jury Told
An ex-JPMorgan stock analyst testifying Tuesday in the criminal fraud trial of former Autonomy CEO Michael Lynch told jurors that the software company founder responded with hostility when his research reports questioned its growth, and that Lynch offered JPMorgan millions in business if he were taken off the Autonomy beat.
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April 16, 2024
Cooperation Helped Cable Co. Avoid Prosecution, Feds Say
The U.S. Department of Justice's fraud section has indicated it won't prosecute Proterial Cable America for allegedly fraudulently misrepresenting the safety standards compliance of its motorcycle brake hose assemblies because of the company's timely self-disclosure, cooperation and remediation, among other things.
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April 16, 2024
Corp. Transparency Act A Valid Use Of Powers, 11th Circ. Told
The U.S. Department of Treasury told the Eleventh Circuit that a federal district court erred in finding the Corporate Transparency Act unconstitutional, saying the lower court misunderstood the law's scope and relation to efforts to curb financial crime.
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April 16, 2024
Nothing 'Sinister' About Attys, Broker's Tax Plan, NC Jury Told
Two St. Louis attorneys and a North Carolina insurance agent on Tuesday tried to poke holes in an undercover IRS agent's investigation of what the government has characterized as a criminal tax avoidance scheme, which defense counsel sought to paint for the jury as a legal interpretation of federal tax law.
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April 16, 2024
Mich. Justice Questions Abuse Law's Missing Language
A Michigan Supreme Court justice on Tuesday challenged an attorney for a victim of a 1990s sexual assault on why the state Legislature didn't explicitly include retroactive language for a 2018 change that allowed survivors of Larry Nassar's abuse scandal more time to bring civil suits, noting that the law was specific in other areas.
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April 16, 2024
Trump, Insurer Defend $175M Bond In NY AG Case
Donald Trump and the Delaware insurer that agreed to post the former president's $175 million bond in his civil business fraud case told a Manhattan judge that they have the money in cash, after New York Attorney General Letitia James questioned the sufficiency of the bond.
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April 16, 2024
Ex-Fla. Lawmaker Didn't Break Election Laws, 11th Circ. Told
A former U.S. congressman from Florida urged the Eleventh Circuit on Tuesday to reverse a $456,000 fine imposed by a lower court over the Federal Election Commission's allegations that he violated campaign finance laws, saying the agency didn't follow pre-suit notice procedures while insisting he didn't break the law.
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April 16, 2024
Arms-Maker Gets 70 Years For Torture Under Rarely Used Law
A Pennsylvania man who owned an Iraqi weapons factory has been sentenced to 70 years in prison after being found guilty of abducting and torturing an employee who threatened to expose an illegal weapons manufacturing scheme, making him the second person convicted under a little-used federal statute.
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April 16, 2024
Ex-NBA Guard Gets 18 Months In Healthcare Scheme
A former Detroit Pistons point guard was sentenced to 18 months in prison Tuesday after being convicted of one of two counts over an alleged scheme to defraud the NBA's healthcare plan, with a Manhattan federal judge saying his proceeds were "not chump change" and faulting his behavior on pretrial release.
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April 16, 2024
CIA Says Litigating Assange Spying Suit Would Reveal Secrets
The Central Intelligence Agency has asked a New York federal judge to toss a case accusing it of unlawfully spying on lawyers and journalists who met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, saying it cannot address those allegations without revealing protected state secrets.
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April 16, 2024
Jackson, Barrett Seek Enron Law Compromise In Jan. 6 Case
The U.S. Supreme Court grappled Tuesday with whether an obstruction of Congress statute enacted in the wake of an accounting scandal can be read broadly enough to prosecute alleged U.S. Capitol rioters.
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April 16, 2024
Ex-Mich. Speaker, Wife Charged With Embezzlement
Former Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield was charged Tuesday with criminally misusing money from his nonprofit to pay for family trips and designer clothing while in office, as the state attorney general called on lawmakers to beef up Michigan's "worthless" campaign finance laws.
Expert Analysis
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Googling Prospective Jurors Is Usually A Fool's Errand
Though a Massachusetts federal court recently barred Google from Googling potential jurors in a patent infringement case, the company need not worry about missing evidence of bias, because internet research of jury pools usually doesn’t yield the most valuable information — voir dire and questionnaires do, says Sarah Murray at Trialcraft.
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Skirting Anti-Kickback Causation Standard Amid Circuit Split
Amid the federal circuit court split over the causation standard applicable to False Claims Act cases involving Anti-Kickback Statute violations, which the First Circuit will soon consider in U.S. v. Regeneron, litigators aiming to circumvent the heightened standard should contemplate certain strategies, say Matthew Modafferi and Terence Park at Frier Levitt.
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A Look Into How Jurors Reach High Damages Awards
In the wake of several large jury awards, Richard Gabriel and Emily Shaw at Decision Analysis shed light on challenges that jurors have in deciding them, the nonevidentiary and extra-legal methods they use to do so, and new research about the themes and jury characteristics of high-damages jurors.
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What New Calif. Strike Force Means For White Collar Crimes
The recently announced Central District of California strike force targeting complex corporate and securities fraud — following the Northern District of California's model — combines experienced prosecutorial leadership and partnerships with federal agencies like the IRS and FBI, and could result in an uptick in the number of cases and speed of proceedings, say attorneys at MoFo.
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Managing Competing Priorities In Witness Preparation
There’s often a divide between what attorneys and witnesses want out of the deposition process, but litigation teams can use several strategies to resolve this tension and help witnesses be more comfortable with the difficult conditions of testifying, say Ava Hernández and Steve Wood at Courtroom Sciences.
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Reimagining Law Firm Culture To Break The Cycle Of Burnout
While attorney burnout remains a perennial issue in the legal profession, shifting post-pandemic expectations mean that law firms must adapt their office cultures to retain talent, say Kevin Henderson and Eric Pacifici at SMB Law Group.
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Understanding And Working With The Millennials On Your Jury
Every trial attorney will be facing a greater proportion of millennials on their jury, as they now comprise the largest generation in the U.S., and winning them over requires an understanding of their views on politics, corporations and damages, says Clint Townson at Townson Litigation Consulting.
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Grant Compliance Takeaways From Ga. Tech's FCA Settlement
Georgia Tech’s recent False Claims Act settlement over its failure to detect compliance shortcomings in a grant program was unique in that it involved a voluntary repayment of funds prior to the resolution, offering a few key lessons for universities receiving research funding from the government, says Jonathan Porter at Husch Blackwell.
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Series
Competing In Dressage Makes Me A Better Lawyer
My lifelong participation in the sport of dressage — often called ballet on horses — has proven that several skills developed through training and competition are transferable to legal work, especially the ability to harness focus, persistence and versatility when negotiating a deal, says Stephanie Coco at V&E.
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Opinion
White Collar Plea Deals Are Rarely 'Knowing' And 'Voluntary'
Because prosecutors are not required to disclose exculpatory evidence during plea negotiations, white collar defendants often enter into plea deals that don’t meet the U.S. Supreme Court’s “knowing” and “voluntary” standard for trials — but individual courts and solutions judges could rectify the issue, says Sara Kropf at Kropf Moseley.
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CFTC Moves May Boost Interest In Voluntary Carbon Markets
As companies try to reduce their net greenhouse gas emissions, many have been cautious about embracing voluntary carbon credit markets — but recent moves by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to regulate this sector may address some of its well-known challenges, say Deborah North and Laura Daugherty at Cleary.
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Sentencing Shift Might Not Help Most White Collar Defendants
Many have lauded the new zero-point offender adjustment in the U.S. sentencing guidelines, which may provide a pathway for noncustodial sentences for first-time offenders — but given the types of cases federal prosecutors often pursue, it likely won't offer much relief to white collar defendants, says Saurish Appleby-Bhattacharjee at BCLP.
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2 SEC Orders Illuminate Bribery Risks For US-China Cos.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s foreign bribery-related resolutions with 3M and Clear Channel offer important takeaways on compliance risks for companies with operations in China, from the role of traditionally low-risk vendors to gaps in internal accounting controls, say attorneys at Miller & Chevalier.
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Opinion
High Court's Gifts Problem Taints Public Corruption Cases
A history of U.S. Supreme Court justices failing to disclose luxurious gifts from wealthy donors coincides with a troubling line of court precedent overturning jury convictions in public corruption cases, indicating that perhaps justices aren't presently fit to be making these decisions, says Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.
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The Legal Industry Needs A Cybersecurity Paradigm Shift
As law firms face ever-increasing risks of cyberattacks and ransomware incidents, the legal industry must implement robust cybersecurity measures and privacy-centric practices to preserve attorney-client privilege, safeguard client trust and uphold the profession’s integrity, says Ryan Paterson at Unplugged.