DOJ has announced that Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS) has agreed to pay $35 million in criminal penalties and forfeiture to address its participation in a six-year scheme to prepare and file more than 1 million fraudulently signed and notarized mortgage-related documents. The settlement follows the November 2012 felony guilty plea by Lorraine Brown, the former… Read more »
The two men who played key roles in the perpetuating R. Allen Stanford’s $7 billion ponzi scheme were each sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday. Gilbert T. Lopez Jr. had served as chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group Company, and Mark J. Kuhrt had been the global controller of Stanford Financial Group Global… Read more »
In the appeal of former Pennsylvania State Senator, Vincent J. Fumo, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has ordered Fumo to pay a larger share of the restitution to one of his victims. With its decision, the Court rejected the arguments raised by Fumo in his appeal and only partially granted the… Read more »
The D.C. Court of Appeals has reversed a district court’s findings that a news reporter had a common law right of access to reports by an independent consultant who was hired by AIG as part of a 2004 settlement with the SEC. SEC v. American International Group, No. 12-5141 (D.C. Cir. Feb. 1, 2013). The court’s… Read more »
Notwithstanding the image perpetuated in our popular culture, it has never been ok to simply park taxable income or assets in offshore accounts in order to avoid taxes. A California man, Christopher B. Berg, has learned that lesson in stark terms. On January 30, 2013, Berg entered a plea of guilty in the U.S. District… Read more »
In a recent precedential opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated and remanded a fraud case where the sentencing court erred in its calculation of the loss amount. U.S. v. Diallo, No. 10-3771 (3d Cir. Jan. 15, 2013). The Defendant, Issa Diallo, was arrested in 2008 after using a counterfeit credit card… Read more »
This article was originally published in the February 2013 issue of New Jersey Lawyer Magazine, a publication of the New Jersey State Bar Association, and is reprinted here with permission. Related Information: Collateral Consequences of Healthcare Prosecutions
When it comes to certifying interlocutory appeals, if the government says it is so, then it must be so. At least that it is the conclusion reached by the Second Circuit in a Per Curiamorder denying a motion to dismiss the government’s appeal of a suppression order handed down by Judge Dora L. Irizarry in the… Read more »
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals recently reversed a $20 million criminal restitution order, finding that the order exceeded the mandate of its prior remand of the case to the district court. United States v. Pileggi, No. 10-5273 (4th Cir. January 2, 2013). With that decision, the court vacated the restitution order and remanded the case with… Read more »
On December 10, 2012, DOJ announced that British contractor APTx Vehicle Systems Limited had entered into an agreement to plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States, the Coalition Provisional Authority that governed Iraq from April 2003 to June 2004, the government of Iraq and JP Morgan Chase Bank. The case centers on a… Read more »