By: Andrea Moseley Your company applied for money under the terms of the CARES Act: Are you at risk of facing scrutiny from DoJ because of your application? To understand the answer to this question, you must be aware of DoJ's fleet-footed approach to snuffing out...
Jeffrey Epstein is Dead. Now What?
By Dan Portnov (photo from USAToday.com) In perhaps the biggest news story of a slow August, Jeffrey Epstein apparently hung himself in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Manhattan early Saturday morning.[1] Epstein’s suicide launched multiple...
Fighting Back Against OIG Investigations (But Losing)
By: Sara Kropf Office of Inspector General—or OIG—investigations can have wide reaching consequences. I’ve written before about the lack of procedural fairness surrounding these investigations. Now, you might think that OIG investigations affect only federal agency...
David Ganek’s Valiant Effort to “Fight the Power” Fizzles—Where’s the Remedy When Law Enforcement Lies?
By: Sara Kropf I’ve written several times before about hedge fund owner David Ganek’s groundbreaking lawsuit against federal agents and prosecutors in New York. See my posts here and here. As I described the case: The plaintiff is David Ganek, the former head of...
Government’s “Big” Case Against Compliance Officer Ends Up Kind of Small
By: Sara Kropf The Treasury Department and former MoneyGram Chief Compliance Officer Thomas Haider have settled their civil claims. This was the first-ever case against a compliance officer for failing to implement an appropriate anti-money laundering (AML) program at...
Fifth Circuit Takes a Goldilocks Approach to False Claims Act Standard for Imputing Knowledge to Corporation
By: Sara Kropf The Department of Justice is always busy prosecuting fraud related to government contracts. The two obvious reasons why this is a DOJ priority are (1) a lot of public money is spent through government contracts, and (2) the size and complexity of the...
Update on the Hedge Fund Founder David Ganek’s Lawsuit Against Preet Bharara
By: Sara Kropf A few weeks ago, I wrote about the lawsuit filed by Level Global founder David Ganek. Mr. Ganek sued Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, as well as other prosecutors and agents, claiming that they had harmed...
Where Are They Now? The First-Ever Case Against a Compliance Officer over Failure to Implement Anti-Money Laundering Program
By: Sara Kropf Nearly two years ago, I wrote about the government’s civil complaint filed against the former Chief Compliance Officer of MoneyGram. The defendant in that case is still fighting and the case appears headed for trial. As a quick reminder of the case: The...
Fight the Power, Part III: The David Ganek Complaint
By: Sara Kropf In Part I of the series, I introduced the idea that defense counsel are increasingly fighting back against DOJ in creative ways. In Part II, we talked about Sheldon Silver and his defense counsel's efforts to use DOJ's very public statements against Mr....
When Criminal Defense and Civil Litigation Collide—Taking the Fifth in Civil Litigation
By: Sara Kropf Most criminal defense lawyers would have no idea how to draft an interrogatory. That’s ok; it doesn’t come up in their practices. And most lawyers who handle civil cases would have no idea how to advise a client whose testimony may implicate criminal...