As investor demand for socially responsible investing continues to rise, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has increased its focus on compliance practices of investment advisors and funds. After the change in...more
4/20/2021
/ Business Strategies ,
Capital Investments ,
Corporate Governance ,
Corporate Social Responsibility ,
Disclosure Requirements ,
Environmental Social & Governance (ESG) ,
Investment Management ,
Publicly-Traded Companies ,
Regulatory Standards ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Sustainability
For each of the past nine years, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Division of Examinations (previously called the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, or OCIE, and hereinafter referred to as...more
Earlier this week at a talk before the Council of Institutional Investors, U.S. Securities and Exchange (“SEC”) Commissioner, Caroline Crenshaw, argued that the enforcement must play a “central role” with regulators and...more
The New Year is still young, but major changes are already afoot in securities enforcement as Congress amended the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Exchange Act”) on January 1, 2021. It was easy to miss these changes to the...more
2/4/2021
/ Amended Regulation ,
Disgorgement ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Government Investigations ,
Kokesh v SEC ,
Liu v Securities and Exchange Commission ,
NDAA ,
Penalties ,
Securities Exchange Act of 1934 ,
Securities Regulation ,
Securities Violations
Last year, we reviewed the Second Circuit decision in United States v. Blaszczak, which made it easier to prosecute trading on inside information. A divided panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals declined to extend the...more
The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (“DHHS OIG”) recently issued a Special Fraud Alert regarding fraud and abuse concerns related to speaker programs offered by pharmaceutical and medical...more
1/12/2021
/ Anti-Kickback Statute ,
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ,
Fraud Alerts ,
Fraud and Abuse ,
Health Care Providers ,
Healthcare Fraud ,
Life Sciences ,
Medical Devices ,
OIG ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Speaker Programs ,
Stark Law
The SEC has just announced settled charges against The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated for making misleading disclosures about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its business operations and financial condition. The SEC...more
12/8/2020
/ Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Disclosure Requirements ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Form 8-K ,
Infectious Diseases ,
Misleading Statements ,
Publicly-Traded Companies ,
Restaurant Industry ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Regulation ,
Securities Violations ,
Settlement Agreements
Late last month, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York pushed for a heavy prison sentence against one of the founders of Centra Tech, Inc. (“Centra Tech”). As discussed earlier this year on the BitBlog,...more
12/2/2020
/ Celebrity Endorsements ,
Criminal Prosecution ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Debit and Credit Card Transactions ,
Digital Currency ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Influencers ,
Initial Coin Offering (ICOs) ,
Investment Opportunities ,
Securities Violations ,
Token Sales ,
Unregistered Securities
The U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) filed a civil forfeiture complaint detailing two hacks of virtual currency exchanges by North Korean actors. These actors stole millions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency or other...more
9/16/2020
/ Blockchain ,
Civil Forfeiture ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Data Breach ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Financial Crimes ,
Financial Services Industry ,
FinTech ,
Foreign Exchanges ,
Hackers ,
Money Laundering ,
North Korea ,
Virtual Currency
The U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) filed a civil forfeiture complaint detailing two hacks of virtual currency exchanges by North Korean actors. These actors stole millions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency and...more
9/15/2020
/ Civil Forfeiture ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Data Breach ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Financial Crimes ,
Financial Services Industry ,
FinTech ,
Foreign Exchanges ,
Hackers ,
Money Laundering ,
North Korea ,
Virtual Currency
On August 27, 2020, the head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (“DOJ”), Makan Delrahim, spoke at the Thirteenth Annual Conference on Innovation Economics and emphasized that one of the DOJ’s top...more
9/11/2020
/ Anti-Competitive ,
Antitrust Division ,
Antitrust Provisions ,
Blockchain ,
Critical Infrastructure Sectors ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
FinTech ,
Innovative Technology ,
Monopolization ,
Virtual Currency
On August 14, 2020, the Department of Justice issued a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) Advisory Opinion—the first of its kind in nearly six years. The DOJ’s opinion advised a U.S. investment company that the...more
Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued a significant ruling that a business owner who made a $4.5 million disgorgement deal with the SEC to resolve civil fraud claims cannot escape...more
Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the money laundering convictions of Thomas Costanzo, a bitcoin broker. According to Costanzo, the bitcoin transfers at issue, which originated from and were...more
4/25/2020
/ Asset Transfer ,
Bitcoin ,
Blockchain ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Digital Currency ,
Digital Wallets ,
Federal Jurisdiction ,
Financial Transactions ,
Interstate Commerce ,
Money Laundering ,
Peer-to-Peer ,
Popular ,
Virtual Currency
Earlier this month, the United States Supreme Court issued an opinion enabling state prosecutors to use information found in federal I-9 documents when prosecuting unauthorized immigrants for identity theft....more
3/29/2020
/ Criminal Convictions ,
Form I-9 ,
Identity Theft ,
Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) ,
Kansas v Garcia ,
KS Supreme Court ,
Preemption ,
Reversal ,
SCOTUS ,
State Law Claims ,
Undocumented Immigrants
Recently, the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut issued its order in United States v. Hoskins, vacating a jury’s November 2019 conviction of a foreign entity’s executive for violating the Foreign...more
Jody Hunt, Assistant Attorney General for DOJ’s Civil Division, and Michael Granston, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Commercial Litigation Branch, spoke recently about False Claims Act (“FCA”) enforcement at the Federal...more
3/6/2020
/ American Bar Association (ABA) ,
Corruption ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Elder Issues ,
Electronic Medical Records ,
Enforcement Guidance ,
False Claims Act (FCA) ,
Fraud and Abuse ,
Government Investigations ,
Health Care Providers ,
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ,
Healthcare Fraud ,
Medicare Advantage ,
Medicare Billing Privileges ,
Nursing Homes ,
Qui Tam ,
Regulatory Oversight ,
Voluntary Disclosure
With the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) giving increased attention to Foreign Agent Registration Act (“FARA”) enforcement, companies that have international business operations or otherwise deal with foreign governments and...more
12/17/2019
/ Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Disclosure Requirements ,
Exemptions ,
Foreign Agents ,
Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) ,
Foreign Corporations ,
Foreign Governments ,
Foreign Nationals ,
Government Investigations ,
Legal Representatives ,
Lobbying ,
Lobbying Disclosure Act ,
National Security ,
Registration Requirement ,
Reporting Requirements
Earlier this year, the Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division publicly confirmed the Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) intention to make Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”) a criminal enforcement...more
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has issued an update to the “Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs” released by the Fraud Section in 2017. ...more
In a shift in policy, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced on November 29, 2018, that the DOJ would relax certain policies, dating back to 2015...more