Fraud

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With enactment of the CARES Act on March 27, Congress appropriated $2.2 trillion, the largest economic stimulus package in history, to combat COVID-19 and the serious economic damage it has wrought to all facets of the economy. Along with this mammoth government subsidy, however, comes the prospect of unprecedented fraud and abuse in sectors of…

The Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 provides that defendants convicted of crimes committed by “fraud or deceit” must compensate victims for the full amount of their losses. A question that courts often face is whether the government and victim have provided sufficient evidence of their actual losses to obtain restitution under the MVRA. The…

We are seeing a growing number of False Claims Act (“FCA”), 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729 – 3733 cases where defendants test the sufficiency of relators’ pleadings, which is the heightened pleading standard under Rule 9(b). Rule 9(b) acts as a gatekeeping function by requiring that “in alleging fraud” a “party must state with particularity the…

Early in 2015, the FBI launched a new program aimed at routing out foreign bribery in which it established three dedicated international corruption squads, based in New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. The FBI reported that members of these three squads—agents, analysts, and other professional staff—have a great deal of experience investigating white-collar…

The Justice Department announced that it secured over $3.5 billion in settlements and judgments from civil cases involving fraud against the government in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2015 (“FY2015”). This is the fourth year in a row that the Justice Department has recovered more than $3.5 billion in cases under the False Claims…

The U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has issued a groundbreaking enforcement action against Ripple Labs, Inc., a Northern Californian virtual currency company.

FinCEN announced on May 5th that Ripple Labs has been ordered to pay $700,000 in penalties and fines for violating FinCEN’s money transmitter regulations. The company has been charged with…

The United States Sentencing Commission has voted to change the sentencing guidelines for persons convicted of fraud. The proposed changes, which remain subject to congressional approval, are intended to better account for harm to victims, individual culpability, and the offender’s intent.

Three changes proposed by the Commission are especially noteworthy:

  1. Offenders would receive harsher penalties

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In an unprecedented move, the Utah Legislature has approved a measure to create the country’s first white-collar crime offender registry. Similar to convicted sex offenders registries, the measure calls for the publication of white-collar offenders’ names and aliases, a recent photograph, a physical description, and a list of their crimes.

Pointing to the trusting nature…

By:  David Jimenez, Bob Peabody, Paul Kelly and Shawn Kee

An official of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) recently reported that the Agency has established three new squads of enforcement officials and stands ready to deploy them to the FBI’s three largest field offices.  Jeffrey Sallet, the head of the Agency’s public corruption and…