Try our Advanced Search for more refined results
White Collar
-
May 20, 2024
Feds Fight Proposed Delay In Hunter Biden's Tax Trial
Hunter Biden shouldn't be allowed to delay his criminal tax trial in California just because his lead attorney says the dates run up against Biden's upcoming trial in Delaware on firearms charges, the special counsel's office told a federal court.
-
May 20, 2024
McElroy Deutsch Says Ex-Exec's Guilt Boosts Home Claim
McElroy Deutsch Mulvaney & Carpenter LLP doubled down on its attempt to seize the home of two former firm executives following a guilty plea on criminal embezzlement charges earlier this month by one of them, the firm's former chief financial officer.
-
May 20, 2024
Menendez Texts With Wife A Legislative Promise, Judge Says
Emoji-laden texts between Sen. Robert Menendez and his wife about an arms sale constitute a legislative promise, a Manhattan federal judge reiterated Monday, as the government seeks to prove the power couple had a corrupt agreement with a New Jersey businessman.
-
May 20, 2024
Assange Gets Final Appeal In Fight Against US Extradition
Julian Assange won a lifeline in his long-running fight against extradition to the U.S. on Monday as an English court granted him permission to challenge assurances from American authorities that the WikiLeaks founder would not face discrimination at trial.
-
May 17, 2024
Feds Say Duo Ran $73M 'Pig Butchering' Laundering Scheme
Two Chinese citizens have been arrested on charges of being kingpins in a money laundering operation that processed more than $73 million of funds that were stolen in so-called pig butchering cryptocurrency schemes.
-
May 17, 2024
Scammer Cops To SIM Scheme Including $400M Crypto Theft
A Colorado woman on Thursday pled guilty in D.C. federal court for her part in a SIM swapping scheme that appears to encompass more than $400 million stolen from the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
-
May 17, 2024
Judge Doubts 9th Circ. Ruling Upends VC's Fraud Conviction
A California federal judge appeared skeptical Friday of convicted self-described "millennial" venture capitalist Michael Rothenberg's renewed request for a new trial or acquittal in light of a recent Ninth Circuit decision clarifying "materiality" in the federal criminal fraud statutes, doubting that Rothenberg was prejudiced by jury instructions addressing materiality.
-
May 17, 2024
SD Gov. Says Cartels Operating On Tribal Lands Across US
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem told reporters Friday that drug cartels are operating on tribal lands, not only in her state, but in Indigenous communities throughout the country, calling for seven of the state's nine tribes that have banned her to banish the illegal operations she described instead.
-
May 17, 2024
Crypto Cos. Take SEC Cases To The Court Of Public Sentiment
Mounting tension between the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the cryptocurrency industry has led companies dealing in digital assets to toss the long-held practice of keeping notices of potential enforcement quiet and wear them as a badge of honor in the hopes of currying public favor.
-
May 17, 2024
Judge Reluctantly Dismisses FirstEnergy Shareholder Suit
An Ohio federal judge said Friday that he had no other choice but to dismiss a shareholder lawsuit filed against scandal-plagued utility FirstEnergy Corp., though his reluctance to do so was underscored by a lament that a $180 million settlement brokered in another courtroom left a "shroud of darkness" over a $1 billion bribery scandal.
-
May 17, 2024
Two Guilty Of Wire Fraud And Conspiracy In Forex Case
A Colorado federal jury on Friday found two men guilty of wire fraud and conspiracy related to their work soliciting tens of millions of dollars from investors for their foreign exchange investment business.
-
May 17, 2024
UAW, Fiat Chrysler Say Ohio Workers' Bribery Suit Untimely
The United Auto Workers and Fiat Chrysler told an Ohio federal judge Friday that a recent Sixth Circuit decision nullifies a racketeering lawsuit from plant workers trying to tie their claims of lost wages and benefits to an illicit bribery scheme involving former union and company officials.
-
May 17, 2024
NY Discovery Reform Feud Simmers Between DAs, Defenders
Four years after New York imposed new requirements on prosecutors to more promptly hand over evidence to defendants in criminal cases, data suggests that district attorneys’ offices are still struggling to comply. In the meantime, experts and advocates say many are quietly working to tweak the reforms or potentially scale them back.
-
May 17, 2024
DC Circ. Affirms Ex-HUD Official's Conviction For False Docs
The D.C. Circuit on Friday upheld the documents falsification conviction of a former high-ranking staffer within the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of the Inspector General, rejecting his arguments that prosecutors had diverged at trial from the charges laid out in an indictment.
-
May 17, 2024
Feds Seek 10 Years In First Product Safety Conviction
The government is asking for a pair of 10-year prison sentences for two Gree USA Inc. executives convicted of failing to report defective humidifiers, after the two were found guilty of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
-
May 17, 2024
Feds Say Crypto Scammer Gave Nod To 'Seinfeld' Gag
The lie that the character George Costanza told on "Seinfeld" appears to have inspired a New York City fraudster, as federal prosecutors announced Friday that a Brooklyn man admitted to running a million-dollar crypto and real estate scam in part through a phony company called Vandelay Contracting Corp.
-
May 17, 2024
Off The Bench: Golf Star Arrest, Fla. Gambling, Gruden V. NFL
In this week's Off the Bench, the world's top-ranked golfer is arrested after a traffic incident outside the PGA Championship, the federal government urges the U.S. Supreme Court to stay out of Florida's sports gambling dispute and Jon Gruden's defamation brawl with the NFL heads to arbitration.
-
May 17, 2024
Koch-Tied Group Says Transparency Law Offends Federalism
The Corporate Transparency Act is unconstitutional because it does not regulate interstate commerce yet mandates that state-registered entities disclose personal information, a conservative group affiliated with the billionaire Koch brothers told the Eleventh Circuit on Friday.
-
May 17, 2024
Feds Want Prison For Kiosk Salesman Who Faked Deductions
An electronic-sweepstakes kiosk salesman from Chicago should spend more than two years in prison for submitting false tax returns that fabricated more than $400,000 in business expenses and more than $60,000 in church donations, federal prosecutors told an Illinois federal court.
-
May 17, 2024
Paul Hastings Team Seeks $2.6M In New Kwok Ch. 11 Fees
With senior attorneys and Chapter 11 trustee Luc A. Despins billing close to $2,000 an hour, Paul Hastings LLP has filed two motions seeking court approval to be paid an additional $2.6 million in fees for work performed on Chinese exile Ho Wan Kwok's bankruptcy in January and February.
-
May 17, 2024
Baldwin Wants 'Rust' Case Tossed, Says Grand Jury Was Duped
Alec Baldwin's attorneys urged a New Mexico state judge during a hearing Friday to throw out involuntary manslaughter charges against the actor in the "Rust" movie shooting, arguing prosecutors misled the grand jury in the case.
-
May 17, 2024
Good Behavior Can Shave Contempt Sentences, Judge Rules
A Michigan federal judge on Friday said he would not ask the state's highest court to decide whether civil litigants held in criminal contempt in state court can get time off their sentences for good behavior, saying he was confident justices would agree with him that they can.
-
May 17, 2024
Jury Convicts NC Provider In Medicaid, COVID Fraud Scheme
A clinical social worker in North Carolina was found guilty Friday of defrauding South Carolina's Medicaid program and falsely obtaining COVID-19 relief checks following a nine-day trial in Charlotte's federal courthouse, prosecutors said.
-
May 17, 2024
Judge Will Drop Some Charges For Convicted Atlanta Exec
A Georgia federal judge moved forward Thursday with the government's request to drop four criminal counts against convicted Atlanta city hall official Mitzi Bickers after recent case law made the wire fraud charges nonviable.
-
May 17, 2024
Industry Emboldened After Justices Galvanize Agency Attacks
In the year since the U.S. Supreme Court said "extraordinary" and "far-reaching" attacks on administrative enforcers can skip agency tribunals and go straight to federal district court, ambitious challenges to regulatory powers are rapidly gaining traction, and the high court is poised to put them on an even firmer footing.
Expert Analysis
-
Opinion
Stronger Attorney Rules Are Needed To Avoid A Jan. 6 Repeat
Given the key role lawyers played in the events leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, the legal profession must shore up its rules before this year’s presidential election to make clear that lawyers who undermine the rule of law will face severe penalties, including disbarment, says Ray Brescia at Albany Law School.
-
What One Litigator Learned Serving On A Jury
Kilpatrick attorney April Isaacson shares insights for trial lawyers from her recent experience serving on a jury for the first time, including lessons about the impact of frequent sidebars, considerations for using demonstratives, the importance of clear jury instructions, and the unconscious habits that can drive jurors mad.
-
4 Legal Ethics Considerations For The New Year
As attorneys and clients reset for a new year, now is a good time to take a step back and review some core ethical issues that attorneys should keep front of mind in 2024, including approaching generative artificial intelligence with caution and care, and avoiding pitfalls in outside counsel guidelines, say attorneys at HWG.
-
Bribery Settlement Gives Insight On DOJ Policies
Chemical company Albemarle’s recent $218 million settlement with the government to resolve foreign bribery claims provides valuable data points for companies on the U.S. Department of Justice’s voluntary self-disclosure policy and its clawback pilot program, say Michael DeBernardis and Tiauna Mathieu at Hughes Hubbard.
-
SEC Case May Expand Scope Of Insider Trading Liability
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's first-of-its-kind enforcement action against an individual in a case involving "shadow trading" demarcates an expansion of insider trading liability to circumstances in which there is a market connection between the source of information and the issuer of the securities traded, say attorneys at Steptoe.
-
Securities Question Stands After Contradicting Crypto Rulings
The debate about the regulation of crypto-assets came to a head in 2023 when two New York federal judges came to opposite conclusions about whether crypto-assets were securities by using the Howey test, highlighting the uncertainty facing the crypto industry as it seeks to resolve definitional questions, say attorneys at Ballard Spahr.
-
What Last Year's Trends Mean For Compliance In 2024
In 2023, compliance teams grappled with questions related to artificial intelligence, data analytics and corporate culture — trends that are likely to become even more prominent in the year to come, says Hui Chen at Ropes & Gray.
-
What The Law Firm Of The Future Will Look Like
As the legal landscape shifts, it’s become increasingly clear that the BigLaw business model must adapt in four key ways to remain viable, from fostering workplace flexibility to embracing technology, say Kevin Henderson and Eric Pacifici at SMB Law Group.
-
4 PR Pointers When Your Case Is In The News
Media coverage of new lawsuits exploded last year, demonstrating why defense attorneys should devise a public relations plan that complements their legal strategy, incorporating several objectives to balance ethical obligations and advocacy, say Nathan Burchfiel at Pinkston and Ryan June at Castañeda + Heidelman.
-
SDNY Ruling Highlights Fed's Broad Master Account Power
In denying a Puerto Rican bank’s recent motion for injunction against the New York Fed, a New York federal court went beyond the specifics of the case in holding that financial institutions have no statutory right to a master account with a Federal Reserve bank, emphasizing the Fed’s unilateral discretion in these matters, say attorneys at Ballard Spahr.
-
4 Ways The DOJ Is Changing Its Approach To Insider Trading
The U.S. Department of Justice’s recent increased focus on insider trading cases and the manner in which the DOJ is pursuing prosecutions reflect a break from historical practices and signal that the DOJ is branching into new areas to pursue perceived illicit trading activities, say attorneys at Davis Wright.
-
How State AGs Process And Prioritize Consumer Complaints
Recent state attorneys general actions illustrate how their offices triage, monitor and respond to consumer complaints — and why businesses need to be proactive in addressing these issues as they arise, say Meghan Stoppel and Hannah Cornett Land at Cozen O'Connor.
-
Charting The Course For Digital Assets In 2024
Although 2023 was a tough year for the digital asset industry, upcoming court decisions, legislation and regulatory action will bring clarity, allowing the industry to expand and evolve, and the government will decide what innovation it will allow without challenge, says Joshua Smeltzer at Gray Reed.
-
Law Firm Strategies For Successfully Navigating 2024 Trends
Though law firms face the dual challenge of external and internal pressures as they enter 2024, firms willing to pivot will be able to stand out by adapting to stakeholder needs and reimagining their infrastructure, says Shireen Hilal at Maior Consultants.
-
The Most-Read Legal Industry Law360 Guest Articles Of 2023
A range of legal industry topics drew readers' attention in Law360's Expert Analysis section this year, from associate retention strategies to ethical billing practices.