Practice Areas
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White Collar
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May 25, 2012
US Drops 9th Circ. Appeal In Lindsey FCPA Case
Federal prosecutors on Friday dropped their Ninth Circuit appeal of the dismissal of the Lindsey Manufacturing Co. indictment, five months after a judge lambasted them for their misconduct in the first Foreign Corrupt Practices Act case that resulted in a corporation’s conviction.
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May 25, 2012
Ex-AIG, Gen Re Execs In Settlement Talks With US
Federal prosecutors are discussing settling a high-profile criminal case against five former executives of General Reinsurance Corp. and American International Group over a $500 million accounting scandal that included securities fraud charges, a motion filed Thursday revealed.
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May 25, 2012
Gupta Likely Source Of P&G Tips, Ex-Galleon Trader Says
A former Galleon Group LLC trader testified Friday in the trial of Rajat Gupta, the most prominent defendant ensnared in the government’s insider trading crackdown, that Gupta may have used his role on the board of Procter & Gamble Co. to supply the hedge fund with illegal tips.
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May 25, 2012
Telefunken Claims Ex-CEO Made Off With $20M
Telefunken Semiconductors International LLC and its American subsidiary launched a suit in Delaware court Friday accusing their former CEO of fraudulently transferring more than $20 million from the two firms to an unrelated company for his own benefit.
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May 25, 2012
SEC Advises High Court To Leave Madoff Investor Suits Alone
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday advised the U.S. Supreme Court not to review cases challenging the methods of the trustee liquidating Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, which would allow the trustee to start distributing roughly $9 billion to victims.
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May 25, 2012
Chartis Accused Of Failing To Cover $17M Ponzi Loss
Chartis Inc. was hit with a suit in Texas federal court Thursday claiming that the insurance giant wrongfully denied coverage of $17 million lost by an electrical manufacturer unwittingly caught up in a $670 million Ponzi scheme.
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May 25, 2012
Ex-CCI Sales Chief To Change Plea In FCPA Case
A former Control Components Inc. executive on Tuesday will change his not guilty plea to charges stemming from his part in an alleged foreign bribery scheme, according to a California federal court docket.
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May 25, 2012
Reach Of High Court's GPS Ruling Expanded In Ky. Drug Bust
A Kentucky federal judge overseeing a criminal drug case recently excluded critical evidence that police collected after attaching a GPS device to the defendant's vehicle without a warrant, extending the reach of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision deeming such surveillance unconstitutional.
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May 25, 2012
Texas Duo Indicted In $19M Medicare, Medicaid Fraud
Federal prosecutors said Thursday they've indicted two Houston-area men suspected of orchestrating a $19 million Medicare and Medicaid scam made possible through kickbacks to patient recruiters and a laundry list of medically unnecessary procedures.
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May 24, 2012
2 Prosecutors Sidelined Over Misconduct In Stevens Case
The U.S. Department of Justice suspended two federal prosecutors over findings from a report it released Thursday that said they had shown “reckless disregard” in withholding important evidence from the defense in the infamous prosecution of the late Sen. Ted Stevens.
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May 24, 2012
Obama Picks Akin Gump Partner For Afghanistan IG Post
President Barack Obama plans to appoint John F. Sopko, a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP with decades of investigative experience, to the post of special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, the White House announced Wednesday.
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May 24, 2012
Ex-SEC Atty Barred From Agency After Repping Stanford
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday barred the former head of enforcement in its Fort Worth, Texas, office from appearing before the commission for one year for privately representing alleged Ponzi schemer R. Allen Stanford after participating in the SEC's investigations into the financier.
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May 24, 2012
High Court Ruling Could Mean Retrials In White Collar Cases
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday held that a criminal defendant can be retried even when a jury has rejected the most serious charges against him in a case attorneys say has implications for white collar as well as other kinds of criminal defendants.
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May 24, 2012
Prosecutors Unveil Key Raj Wiretaps As Gupta Case Builds
Prosecutors continued to build their insider trading case against Rajat Gupta on Thursday, deploying two wiretapped phone calls featuring convicted hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam alluding to tips he had allegedly received from the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director.
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May 24, 2012
Segui Strikes Out For Clemens Prosecutors
While prosecutors hoped former Major League Baseball player David Segui would tell jurors in Roger Clemens' perjury trial Thursday that he knew former trainer Brian McNamee kept evidence of Clemens' steroid use, his poor memory turned his testimony into a bust.
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May 24, 2012
UK Bribery Act Crippled By Lack Of Funding, Attys Say
A severe lack of funding has sabotaged the U.K. Serious Fraud Office's ability to aggressively enforce the country's sweeping new anti-bribery law and to bring the types of major corruption cases many have long anticipated, experts told Law360 on Thursday.
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May 24, 2012
Edwards Jury Takes Another Look At Trial Exhibits
The jury in former Sen. John Edwards' campaign corruption trial, still locked in deliberations, asked Thursday for another look at all of the roughly 300 introduced exhibits from the trial, as media outlets continued pushing for the release of the jurors' identities.
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May 23, 2012
Gupta Jury Hears Raj Wiretap For First Time
Jurors in the insider trading trial of Rajat Gupta heard the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director's voice for the first time Wednesday when prosecutors played a key wiretap recording of him describing a Goldman board meeting to Raj Rajaratnam.
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May 23, 2012
23-Year Sentence Too Harsh, Ponzi Schemer Tells 7th Circ.
An attorney for confessed Chicago Ponzi schemer Frank Castaldi asked the Seventh Circuit on Wednesday to vacate his client's 23-year sentence, arguing the punishment is unreasonable and that the lower court failed to consider properly Castaldi's cooperation with the government.
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May 23, 2012
Investment Club Founder Gets 12 Years For Fraud
The operator of Michigan-based investment club Cash Flow Financial LLC was sentenced to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay roughly $36 million in restitution Wednesday, after being found guilty of scamming the other participants.
Expert Analysis
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Avoiding FCPA Prosecution For Employee Conduct
Contrasting the enforcement positions in the recent Morgan Stanley and Noble Corp. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases, a few factors stand out as potentially influencing when companies will be held responsible for the actions of their employees, and when such actions will be viewed as “rogue” conduct, say attorneys with Steptoe & Johnson LLP.
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The Government’s Burgeoning Brady Problem
As the National Security Agency builds a multibillion-dollar structure that will be the epicenter of its efforts to capture, store and review vast amounts of digital data, it would be wise for the government to begin the process of shaping a fair and comprehensive approach to criminal discovery that accounts for the government’s accumulation of ever-increasing amounts of information, says Matthew Umhofer of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP.
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Dealing With Federal Search Warrants In 10 Easy Steps
Being on the receiving end of a federal search warrant is not something that most business executives want to contemplate. But taking 10 simple steps can minimize disruption to your business and ensure that your company has preserved its legal rights to the greatest extent possible, says Denis King of Goulston & Storrs PC.
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Beware Obstruction Of Justice In Merger Investigations
The actions by the U.S. Department of Justice in USA v. Pyo may mark the first time criminal charges have been brought against defendants for altering documents submitted with a Hart-Scott-Rodino filing and during a merger investigation. The charges serve as a stark reminder that HSR filings and subsequent Federal Trade Commission and DOJ review and analysis of a proposed transaction constitute an "official proceeding" for purposes of the criminal obstruction statutes, say attorneys with Jones Day.
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Best Practices For Corporate Social Responsibility
As with many industries, the legal services industry has adapted to the demand for sustainability practices. An effective Corporate Social Responsibility program will manifest itself in all strategic planning, from best firm employee practices and environmental sustainability to providing legal services, recruiting and retention of employees, business development, marketing and philanthropy, says Howard Dakoff of Levenfeld Pearlstein LLC.
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UK Bribery Act — There’s A New Constable In Town
While David Green’s recent arrival as director of the U.K. Serious Fraud Office certainly appears to usher in a far more aggressive prosecution policy, rather than the pragmatic — and some would say lenient — approach of the last four years, his task will not be easy, says Raymond Sweigart of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP.
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Going To Trial On FCPA Charges — The Percentage Play
For the individual defendant facing Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges, pleading guilty is by no means a foregone conclusion — real opportunities may exist to put the government to its proof at a trial, say John Gordon and Sean Delphey of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP.
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Altering 4(C) Documents May Land You In Jail
The Hyosung Corporation investigation is an important reminder of the significance of pre-existing documents in Hart-Scott-Rodino merger review, and sends a strong signal to the business community that the U.S. antitrust agencies view unobstructed access to responsive party documents as a lynchpin of the integrity of the merger review process, says Hartmut Schneider of WilmerHale LLP.
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Pottage V. FSA — A Welcome Decision For UK Bank Execs
The recent U.K. Upper Tribunal decision in Pottage v. Financial Services Authority makes clear that senior managers working in business and risk management functions are expected to act reasonably on the timing of reviews and the appropriate responses to business issues — and should not be held personally culpable in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, say attorneys with Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP.
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Plea Agreements With Antitrust Division Post-VandeBrake
If it is not an abuse of discretion for a trial judge to apply whichever sentencing guideline he prefers — as in the Eighth Circuit's decision in the VandeBrake case — then it becomes much more palatable for a defendant to roll the dice at trial rather than taking his chances that a judge will impose the sentence in a plea deal, say Brady Dugan and Diana Gillis of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.