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White Collar

  • August 05, 2025

    2nd Circ. Nixes Madoff Feeder Fund Clawback Suits

    About 300 clawback lawsuits filed by the liquidators of British Virgin Islands-based funds that invested in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities should be dismissed, a Second Circuit panel said on Tuesday, finding the deals were protected by the U.S. Bankruptcy Code's safe harbor for securities transactions.

  • August 05, 2025

    Ex-ComEd Lobbyist Gets 1 Year For Masking Madigan Bribes

    A former lobbyist for Commonwealth Edison was sentenced to a year and a day in prison Tuesday for allowing his lobbying firm to serve as a pass-through for the utility to pay associates of ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan for little to no work, as it sought his support for favorable energy legislation.

  • August 05, 2025

    Shuttered NJ Importer Pleads Guilty To Hiding AC Fire Risks

    A defunct New Jersey importer of consumer appliances pled guilty on Tuesday to one count of willfully violating the Consumer Product Safety Act for its failure to report dangerous defects in more than 33,000 portable air conditioners that have been linked to more than 40 fires and one death, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

  • August 05, 2025

    SEC Fines Platform Founder $10M Over Crypto-Backed Scam

    The owner of a shuttered lending platform has agreed to pay over $10 million to end a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission case accusing him of defrauding customers by using their money to buy millions of dollars' worth of TerraUSD before the stablecoin collapsed.

  • August 05, 2025

    States Push DOJ To Crack Down On Illegal Offshore Gambling

    Attorneys general from several states have written a letter asking the U.S. Department of Justice to target the "rampant spread" of illicit offshore online sports betting and gambling operations, which they say are harming United States citizens and depriving states of tax revenue.

  • August 05, 2025

    Trump-Tied SPAC Exec Rips SEC Suit After Deal Talks Fizzle

    The former CEO of the special-purpose acquisition company that took President Donald Trump's social media platform public has renewed his bid to dismiss the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's suit alleging he failed to timely alert investors to the prospective deal after settlement talks broke down.

  • August 05, 2025

    Ghislaine Maxwell Slams Feds' Bid To Unseal Grand Jury Docs

    Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for trafficking children for late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, urged a New York federal judge Tuesday to deny the government's bid to unseal grand jury transcripts, saying release of the sealed materials could jeopardize the appeal of her 2021 conviction.

  • August 05, 2025

    Disbarred North Carolina Atty Admits To Wire Fraud Scheme

    A disbarred lawyer in North Carolina has copped to criminal wire fraud charges stemming from the misuse of his trust account after federal prosecutors said he used escrow funds earmarked for the sale of personal protective equipment to pay back another company.

  • August 05, 2025

    Binance Founder Seeks Exit From FTX $1.76B Clawback Suit

    Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao asked a Delaware bankruptcy judge to dismiss him from a clawback suit filed by the estate of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX seeking to recover $1.76 billion it says FTX illegally transferred before its collapse two years ago, saying the transaction was outside the court's jurisdiction.

  • August 05, 2025

    Lottery.com SPAC Exec Wants Info From California Fraud Case

    A Manhattan federal judge said Tuesday that he will weigh a request by a special purpose acquisition company CEO accused of fraud in a merger involving Lottery.com Inc. to have New York prosecutors provide discovery from a California criminal case.

  • August 04, 2025

    Citibank Ignored Red Flags About $45M Wire Fraud, Suit Says

    Citibank failed to stop scammers from absconding with $45 million from a real estate property transaction when it processed payment orders even after it detected name mismatches between the identified transaction beneficiary and the account holder, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in California federal court. 

  • August 04, 2025

    Firms Not Covered In Ford's $100M RICO Suit, Insurer Says

    An insurer said it has no duty to defend or indemnify law firms and attorneys accused of running a billing scheme that defrauded Ford out of more than $100 million, telling a California federal court that the suit doesn't involve a claim arising out of the performance of legal services.

  • August 04, 2025

    Nurse Agrees To Repay $614K For False Claims In Conn.

    A nurse who owned a medication management business and two Connecticut residential care homes agreed on Monday to settle state and federal False Claims Act allegations for $614,000, ending allegations that he billed Medicare and Medicaid impossible daily hours and for clients that were hospitalized or dead.

  • August 04, 2025

    DC Circ. Backs FBI Agent's Bribery Sentence

    The D.C. Circuit Court has affirmed a former FBI special agent's two-year sentence for taking a bribe in connection with a property-buying scheme, finding that he accepted at least $6,500 from a real estate developer in exchange for illegally sharing information from a protected database to which the FBI subscribed.

  • August 04, 2025

    NY Atty Found Guilty Of Duping Lender Who Backed Lien Biz

    A Manhattan federal jury on Monday convicted a former compliance lawyer of pilfering from a $20 million line of credit extended to his tax-lien business by a subsidiary of Emigrant Bank.

  • August 04, 2025

    Mass. Ambulance Cos. Settle State FCA Allegations For $6M

    Two Massachusetts ambulance companies have agreed to pay $6 million to settle allegations that they "upcoded" claims to the state's Medicaid program, MassHealth, billed it for unnecessary services, and committed other False Claims Act violations, the state attorney general's office announced Monday.

  • August 04, 2025

    Funeral Home Owner Pleads Guilty To Fraud, Again

    For the second time, an owner of a southern Colorado funeral home pled guilty on Monday in connection to claims that her company illegally stored nearly 200 decaying bodies and committed more than $1 million in fraud.

  • August 04, 2025

    Plaintiff Bar Urges FINRA To Reject Industry's Arbitration Recs

    The Public Investors Advocate Bar Association on Monday urged the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority to reject industry recommendations to loosen its arbitration rules, calling on the brokerage industry regulator to "resist pressure from industry groups seeking to dilute hard-won safeguards."

  • August 04, 2025

    Feds Get 2nd Crack At Regeneron FCA Case After Key Ruling

    The government may pursue an alternate theory of its False Claims Act kickback case against Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. and try again for a pretrial win after a First Circuit ruling created a "critical shift" in the law, a Massachusetts federal judge said Monday.

  • August 04, 2025

    Ex-CNBC Pundit Gets 5 Years For $2.7M Investor Fraud

    A California federal judge sentenced former frequent CNBC guest James Arthur McDonald Jr. to five years in prison Monday for defrauding investors out of at least $2.7 million after he admitted he "betrayed" some of his close friends as part of his scam.

  • August 04, 2025

    FinCEN Urges Industry To Stay 'Vigilant' On Crypto ATM Fraud

    The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network on Monday cautioned about rising fraud involving crypto ATMs, saying criminals are increasingly using the kiosks to launder money and scam vulnerable consumers, especially seniors.

  • August 04, 2025

    Connecticut Justices Say Atty Due Extra $300K For ID Theft

    The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled on Monday that an attorney whose identity was stolen by scammers can receive punitive damages under the state's unfair trade practices statute in addition to a separate award of treble damages under a different law, holding that a lower court misjudged the allowable recovery.

  • August 04, 2025

    UBS To Pay DOJ $300M To Settle Inherited Credit Suisse Case

    Swiss bank UBS said Monday it has agreed to pay the U.S. Department of Justice $300 million to settle outstanding obligations inherited from the mortgage-backed securities business of Credit Suisse, the lender it acquired in 2023.

  • August 01, 2025

    NJ Court Will Mull Legality Of Habba's US Atty Appointment

    If Alina Habba was illegally appointed acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey, a pair of defendants in a drug trafficking case are not entitled to dismissal of the indictment, but it "appears appropriate" that Habba would be barred from prosecuting them, a federal judge ruled Friday.

  • August 01, 2025

    Oppenheimer Says OFAC Is Looking Into Its AML Policies

    Wall Street brokerage and investment bank Oppenheimer Holdings Inc. said Friday that the U.S. Department of the Treasury's sanctions arm is investigating its anti-money laundering compliance program.

Expert Analysis

  • Opinion

    Budget Act's Deduction Limit Penalizes Losing Gamblers

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    A provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that reduces the deduction for gambling losses is unfair to professional and recreational players, risks driving online activity to offshore sites, and will set back efforts to legalize and regulate the industry, says Walter Bourdaghs at Kang Haggerty.

  • Opinion

    The Legal Education Status Quo Is No Longer Tenable

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    As underscored by the fallout from California’s February bar exam, legal education and licensure are tethered to outdated systems, and the industry must implement several key reforms to remain relevant and responsive to 21st century legal needs, says Matthew Nehmer at The Colleges of Law.

  • The Int'l Compliance View: Everything Everywhere All At Once

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    Changes to the enforcement landscape in the U.S. and abroad shift the risks and incentives for global compliance programs, creating a race against the clock for companies to deploy investigative resources across worldwide operations, say attorneys at Dentons.

  • 'Pig Butchering' Seizure Is A Milestone In Crypto Crime Fight

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    The U.S.' recent seizure of $225 million in crypto funds in a massive "pig butchering" scheme highlights the transformative impact of blockchain analysis in law enforcement, and the increasing necessity of collaboration between law enforcement agencies, cryptocurrency exchanges and stablecoin issuers, says David Zaslowsky at Baker McKenzie.

  • E-Discovery Quarterly: Rulings On Relevance Redactions

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    In recent cases addressing redactions that parties sought to apply based on the relevance of information — as opposed to considerations of privilege — courts have generally limited a party’s ability to withhold nonresponsive or irrelevant material, providing a few lessons for discovery strategy, say attorneys at Sidley.

  • How DOJ's New Data Security Rules Leave HIPAA In The Dust

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    The U.S. Department of Justice's recently effective data security requirements carry profound implications for how healthcare providers collect, store, share and use data — and approach vendor oversight — that go far beyond the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, say attorneys at Nelson Mullins.

  • Opinion

    Section 1983 Has Promise After End Of Nationwide Injunctions

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    After the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down the practice of nationwide injunctions in Trump v. Casa, Section 1983 civil rights suits can provide a better pathway to hold the government accountable — but this will require reforms to qualified immunity, says Marc Levin at the Council on Criminal Justice.

  • Reel Justice: 'Oh, Hi!' Teaches Attys To Return To The Statute

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    The new dark comedy film “Oh, Hi!” — depicting a romantic vacation that turns into an inadvertent kidnapping — should remind criminal practitioners to always reread the statute to avoid assumptions, meet their ethical duties and finesse their trial strategy, says Veronica Finkelstein at Wilmington University School of Law.

  • How Banks Can Harness New Customer ID Rule's Flexibility

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    Banking regulators' update to the customer identification process, allowing banks to collect some information from third parties rather than directly from customers, helps modernize anti-money laundering compliance and carries advantages for financial institutions that embrace the new approach, say attorneys at Bradley Arant.

  • Opinion

    Premerger Settlements Don't Meet Standard For Bribery

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    Claims that Paramount’s decision to settle a lawsuit with President Donald Trump while it was undergoing a premerger regulatory review amounts to a quid pro quo misconstrue bribery law and ignore how modern legal departments operate, says Ediberto Román at the Florida International University College of Law.

  • Series

    Playing Soccer Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Soccer has become a key contributor to how I approach my work, and the lessons I’ve learned on the pitch about leadership, adaptability, resilience and communication make me better at what I do every day in my legal career, says Whitney O’Byrne at MoFo.

  • Grappling With Workforce-Related Immigration Enforcement

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    To withstand the tightening of workforce-related immigration rules and the enforcement uptick we are seeing in the U.S. and elsewhere, companies must strike a balance between responding quickly to regulatory changes, and developing proactive strategies that minimize risk, say attorneys at Fragomen.

  • DOJ-HHS Collab Crystallizes Focus On Health Enforcement

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    The recently announced partnership between the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to combat False Claims Act violations, following a multiyear trend of high-dollar DOJ recoveries, signals a long-term enforcement horizon with major implications for healthcare entities and whistleblowers, say attorneys at RJO.

  • What To Do When Congress And DOJ Both Come Knocking

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    As recently seen in the news, clients may find themselves facing parallel U.S. Department of Justice and congressional investigations, requiring a comprehensive response that considers the different challenges posed by each, say attorneys at Friedman Kaplan.

  • Series

    Law School's Missed Lessons: Learning From Failure

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    While law school often focuses on the importance of precision, correctness and perfection, mistakes are inevitable in real-world practice — but failure is not the opposite of progress, and real talent comes from the ability to recover, rethink and reshape, says Brooke Pauley at Tucker Ellis.

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