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 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 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:...
By: Sara Kropf Trade secret cases are fascinating. They give some insight into how companies develop research; how valuable that research is; and the steps these companies take to protect research from being leaked to competitors. Trade secrets are stored on...
By: Sara Kropf Michael Mitrow, Jr. and his brother Matthew Mitrow were recently charged in a superseding indictment for a corporate kickback scheme in the Southern District of New York. The Brothers Mitrow were executives of an unnamed marketing agency. According to...
By: Sara Kropf I don’t watch the TV show NCIS. But I get the premise: clean-cut agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigate crimes in the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. The agents are the good guys. The bad guys . . . are, well, the other people....
By: Sara Kropf For most white-collar cases, the key issue at sentencing is the calculation of the loss amount. Although not mandatory, the Sentencing Guideline range will unquestionably influence the final sentence. And the Guidelines rely heavily on the loss amount...