By: Sara Kropf For years now, the calling card of a big-firm white-collar lawyer has been, “I do FCPA work.” But all the focus on foreign bribery work overlooks the domestic bribery schemes that are regularly pursued by the federal government. FCPA work may sound...
By: Sara Kropf Frank Castaldi’s story serves as a cautionary tale for anyone trying to cooperate with the government to get a better deal. In 2008, Mr. Castaldi turned himself in to government investigators, revealing his $77 million Ponzi scheme. Mr. Castaldi fully...
By: Sara Kropf Government contracting fraud has been a hot area for the Department of Justice these last few years. And who can blame it? It’s a huge amount of money being handed out by many agencies, sometimes with less oversight than is appropriate. There’s even a...
By: Sara Kropf As someone who handles litigation and white-collar criminal matters, I'm often troubled by my clients' corporate audit department. It will author lengthy, non-privileged reports about processes at companies that don’t work. Those reports put everyone on...
By: Sara Kropf Sorry it’s been so long since I last posted. I took a few weeks off for the holidays and then tried and won a defamation trial in Virginia last month, sort of. It’s back to the grindstone now, though. There were quite a few interesting white-collar...
By: Sara Kropf For the government, sentencing seems to be a science, not an art. Let the probation office calculate the guideline range. Request a sentence within it, usually at the high end. Done. But for defense counsel, sentencing is an art, not a science,. You...
By: Sara Kropf The kind folks at White Collar Crime Prof Blog let me post over there today (thanks Ellen!). The Second Circuit issued a great opinion for white collar defendants limiting the continuing conspiracy theory. Finally, a court has reined in the government's...
By: Sara Kropf The government loves to encourage us to be “green.” Drive a Prius and get a tax credit. Put solar panels on your house and get a tax credit. Heck, buy the right kind of heat pump for your house and get a tax credit. But these are small scale. The...
By: Sara Kropf It’s the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, so I’m taking a break from serious white collar prosecutions. The “Batkid” story has been all over the internet the last few weeks. It’s an amazing, heartwarming story about how thousands of people in San Francisco...
By: Sara Kropf In certain fraud cases, defendants allegedly target groups of victims, such as the elderly or members of an ethnic or religious group (commonly known as “affinity” fraud). But, today, I bring you two cases that involve a very specialized group:...