Analysis

SEC Leaves Meme Coin Fraud For Other Cops To Chase

By Aislinn Keely

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission staff's decision to say that so-called meme coins are beyond the agency's purview is a welcome change from past practices, experts say, but the devil is in the details when it comes to policing fraud and helping consumers recover when projects go bust.

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Split SEC Pulls Subpoena Authority From Enforcement Head

By Jessica Corso

A divided U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday withdrew a 15-year-old policy that allowed the director of enforcement to greenlight new investigations and approve the issuance of subpoenas, leaving the decision squarely in the hands of the agency's Republican majority.

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DC Ethics Hearing Over Anti-Trump Protest Arrests To Kick Off

By Alison Knezevich

A former federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., is set to face an attorney ethics panel Tuesday in disciplinary proceedings that could shed new light on how the government handled key evidence in cases against hundreds of people arrested at protests of President Donald Trump's first inauguration in 2017.

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Menendez Brothers 'Shouldn't Get Out Of Jail,' LA DA Says

By Bonnie Eslinger

Erik and Lyle Menendez should remain imprisoned for the 1989 murder of their parents "in cold blood," since they haven't admitted their self-defense claims were "phony," and the only possible "pathway" to freedom is if they "completely" accept responsibility for their crimes, Los Angeles County's new district attorney said Monday.

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Ex-NFL Player Gets 2½ Years For $5.3M Ponzi Scheme

By Elliot Weld

A former NFL linebacker was sentenced to two and a half years in prison Monday after pleading guilty to running a Ponzi scheme in which he bilked $5.3 million from investors who believed they were buying into luxury real estate and gold mines in Alaska and Ghana.

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Ex-Magellan CEO Pleads Guilty Over Faulty Lead Tests

By Brian Dowling

The former CEO of Magellan Diagnostics Inc. admitted Monday to selling faulty devices that tested blood lead levels, the final of three defendants to plead guilty ahead of a jury trial scheduled for April.

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Bad Police Work Led To 30-Year Sentence, Conn. Jury Told

By Aaron Keller

A Connecticut man who served 30 years in prison for a murder he did not commit should be compensated because one local police officer failed to disclose key evidence and another sat by as the state police fed facts to an informant, his attorneys told a federal jury Monday afternoon.

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Treasury's CTA Halt Doesn't Justify Block, Feds Tell 5th Circ.

By Kevin Pinner

The U.S. Treasury Department halting enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act on domestic entities doesn't add justification to a nationwide block on the law because it's a valid exercise of Congress' powers to regulate commerce, taxes, foreign affairs and national security, the U.S. government told the Fifth Circuit.

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2nd Circ. Won't Free Ex-JPMorgan Banker From Industry Ban

By Jessica Corso

The Second Circuit on Monday upheld a lifetime investment advising ban against a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Perella Weinberg Partners investment banker convicted of insider trading, saying that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission presented substantial evidence demonstrating that the ban was appropriate.

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Calif. Pharma Exec Pleads Guilty To Insider Trading

By Katryna Perera

A California medical doctor has pled guilty to insider trading in the securities of biopharmaceutical company Acadia Pharmaceuticals Inc. while serving on Acadia's drug safety team, admitting to trading on confidential information that helped him avoid $1.3 million in losses.

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Real Estate Cos. Commingled $50M Investor Funds, SEC Says

By Emilie Ruscoe

A Washington, D.C., area man and dozens of companies under his control have agreed to pay a total of $3.3 million to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission allegations they deceived their investors with improper accounting practices that involved commingling $50 million in earmarked money.

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Ex-Cognizant Execs Support 180-Day Trial Delay In FCPA Case

By Elliot Weld

Two former Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. executives have told a New Jersey federal judge they agree with prosecutors that their bribery trial should be delayed for 180 days after the Trump administration paused enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

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FanDuel Slams 'Baseless' Suit From Jaguars Fraudster

By Alex Lawson

FanDuel is looking to squash a lawsuit filed by a former Jacksonville Jaguars employee jailed for embezzling millions from the team, slamming the man's "baseless" and "farfetched" claims that the online sportsbook preyed on his addiction and enabled his crimes.

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Fla. Businessman Settles COVID-19 False Claims For $20M

By David Minsky

A Florida businessman has agreed to pay more than $20 million to settle numerous alleged violations of the False Claims Act with the U.S. government, which accused him of lying to obtain Small Business Administration loans meant to help companies stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Accused Fraudster An Innocent 'Jailhouse Lawyer,' Jury Told

By Pete Brush

A Long Island man charged with posing as an attorney to defraud families of inmates is really an innocent "jailhouse lawyer" who continued to help people after serving his own fraud sentence, his counsel told a Manhattan federal jury Monday.

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Ex-Credit Suisse Client Pleads Guilty To Hiding $90M

By Carolina Bolado

A Colombian-American businesswoman and former Credit Suisse client pled guilty Monday in Florida federal court to conspiring with family members to hide more than $90 million in assets from the IRS through a series of foreign bank accounts.

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Brief

NJ Man Gets 18 Months In $50M Off-Road Tire Ponzi Scheme

By Ryan Harroff

A New Jersey man who pled guilty to wire fraud for his role in a $50 million Ponzi scheme in which he took investor money on the promise he could buy and resell off-the-road tires at a substantial profit has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.

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3 Ways Civil Plaintiffs Could Fill An FCPA Enforcement Gap

While the Department of Justice recently announced it would deprioritize Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigations into U.S. businesses without obvious ties to international crime, companies should stay alert to private plaintiffs, who could fill this enforcement void — and win significant civil damages — through several legal channels, says Eric Nitz at MoloLamken.

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Recent Cases Clarify FCA Kickback Pleading Standards

Two recently resolved cases involving pharmaceutical manufacturers may make it more difficult for False Claims Act defendants facing kickback scheme allegations to get claims dismissed for lack of evidence, say Li Yu at Bernstein Litowitz, Ellen London at London & Noar, and Gregg Shapiro at Gregg Shapiro Law.

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2 Practical Ways For Banks To Battle Elder Financial Abuse

Federal regulators' recent statement raising awareness of elder financial exploitation provides a useful catalog of techniques that banks can employ to fight fraud, particularly encouraging older account holders to establish trusted contacts and sharing timely warnings about the latest scams with customers, say attorneys at Nutter.

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Examining Trump Meme Coin And SEC's Crypto Changes

While the previous U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission tended to view most crypto-assets as securities, the tide is rapidly changing, and hopefully the long-needed reevaluation of this regulatory framework is not tarnished by an arguable conflict of interest due to President Donald Trump's affiliation with the $Trump meme coin, say attorneys at Thompson Coburn.

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National Lawyers Guild Slams Trump's Perkins Coie Order

By Rachel Riley

The Seattle Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild denounced President Donald Trump's recent executive order revoking Perkins Coie LLP's security clearances, saying on Monday the decision "exemplifies his complete disregard for the rule of law and his contempt for core American democratic values."

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GOP Sens. Escalate Fight With ABA Over 'Leftist' Statements

By Courtney Bublé

A group of Senate Republicans are once again going after the American Bar Association, which they claim has become a "leftist" organization, and announced Monday they will disregard ABA ratings on judicial nominees and encouraged the Trump administration and their colleagues to do the same.

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Paul Hastings Reelects Chair, Managing Partner To 2nd Terms

By Tracey Read

Paul Hastings LLP Chair Frank Lopez and Managing Partner Sherrese Smith have been reelected to their second three-year terms, the firm said Monday.

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Judge Who Shot Wife Gets Mistrial As Jury Hangs On Murder

By Gina Kim

A California judge declared a mistrial Monday in the murder trial of Orange County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ferguson, who shot and killed his wife in their Anaheim Hills home in 2023, after jurors said they remained at an impasse over whether he was guilty of second-degree murder.

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Del. Bar Panel OKs Corp. Law Bill To Curb Class Suits, Fees

By Jeff Montgomery

A key panel of the Delaware's State Bar Association overwhelmingly approved on Monday a pending bill to put new constraints on corporate stockholder lawsuits, over objections that the measure will snuff out shareholder protections from conflicted boards and corporation controllers.

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High Court Will Review Colo.'s Conversion Therapy Ban

By Katie Buehler

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it will review a challenge to Colorado's ban on licensed therapists providing conversion therapy to transgender minors, in a case that asks whether the state's law is a permissible regulation of professional conduct or an unconstitutional restriction of speech.

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2 Firms Sued After Cyber Thief Steals $442K From Estate

By Ryan Harroff

Law firms SutterWilliams LLC and Allender & Allender PA were hit with a negligence and malpractice suit after a cybercriminal allegedly used spoofed email accounts to trick an attorney at the latter firm into handing over $442,600 from the sale of a late Pennsylvania sheriff's deputy's house in Florida.

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Paul Hastings Adds Kirkland Atty As Global M&A Co-Chair

By Tracey Read

Paul Hastings LLP has hired a third global co-chair for its mergers and acquisitions practice who was one of the youngest M&A partners in the world to have announced well over $1 trillion in deals, the firm said Monday.

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Hagens Berman Comms With Ghosting Client Kept Privileged

By Ryan Boysen

Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP doesn't have to turn over texts and emails with a client who disappeared from a putative class action against Apple and Amazon, a Washington federal judge has ruled, despite the tech giants' accusations that the firm lied about those communications.

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J. Crew Wins Confirmation Of Ex-GC's Arbitration Loss

By Lauren Berg

A New York federal judge confirmed an arbitrator's ruling Monday that found J. Crew hadn't fired its former legal chief, Maria DiLorenzo, in retaliation for her complaints about colleagues' discriminatory comments about her hearing loss.

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Clerks May Seek Political Jobs On 'Case-By-Case Basis'

By Emily Sawicki

Individual federal judges may determine whether their clerks may seek political posts while employed by the judiciary, the Judicial Conference of the United States' Committee on Codes of Conduct now recommends, months after issuing guidance advising clerks to hold off seeking such roles until their clerkships end.

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