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Several current and former federal officials recently sent letters to the President and the Attorney General urging action to protect persons in custody or facing arrest and detention during the COVID-19 crisis. In response, Attorney General Barr has issued separate directives to all U.S. Attorneys and DOJ Department Heads and to the Director of the…

In a letter to the President dated tomorrow (March 27, 2020), several hundred federal judges, former U.S. Attorneys, Assistant U.S. Attorneys, and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials are asking the government to implement a plan to dramatically reduce the number of incarcerated individuals in the federal prison system and to address “the threat of disastrous…

The Department of Justice Criminal Division has clarified its policy on the Department’s assessment of a company’s claim that it cannot afford to pay a criminal fine in a memorandum issued on October 8, 2019.  Criminal Division department head Brian Benczkowski had previewed the memorandum during a speech in September.

While the DOJ already permitted…

Former NHL player Kevin Stevens avoided a federal prison sentence yesterday following a hearing in U.S. District Court in Boston.  Stevens, who played in the NHL for 16 years (1987-2002), including  parts of 11 seasons with the Pittsburgh Penguins, also starred at Boston College and for the 1988 U.S. Olympic team.  In the early 1990s, …

Whether the government can freeze all of a defendant’s assets before trial, even where those assets are not tainted by any connection to alleged federal offenses, thereby preventing a defendant from paying for his own defense, will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in Luis v. United States, No. 14-419.

The federal Mandatory…

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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Two former executives at one of the nation’s leading healthcare claims processing firms, MultiPlan, Inc., were recently sentenced to serve one year and one day in federal prison for their role in a scheme to steer contracts to technology vendors in exchange for $3.4 million in bribes and kickbacks.

Keith Bush, MultiPlan’s former Vice President…

The Mandatory Victim Restitution Act of 1996 (“MVRA”) provides that defendants convicted of crimes committed by “fraud or deceit” compensate victims for the full amount of their losses.  Whether the amount of restitution may be offset if an employer-victim actually profited from the fraud or deceit has been a question for the courts.

According to…

After a long period of steadily increasing federal prison terms for economic crimes, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has announced that it is considering changes to the guidelines for calculating punishments for many white collar crimes.  On August 14, 2014, the Commission identified its policy priorities for the current cycle for proposing amendments to the federal…