By Andrea L. Moseley As expected, fraud relating to the present COVID-19 pandemic is being prosecuted for the first time. These crimes of opportunity were predictable and the Department of Justice has come to the table, loaded for bear. Now, our white collar defense...
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...
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...
By: Sara Kropf After I wrote my last post, I was reminded about another big win that I should have mentioned before. Greg Poe, Preston Burton and Rachel Li Wai Suen won a complete acquittal for former high-ranking army officer Edwin Livingston. Here's a short summary...
By: Sara Kropf The government knows—and exploits the fact—that loss amount is the driver of white collar sentences. In criminal contracting fraud cases, the government has taken the position that the relevant loss is the entire amount of the contract that was...
Loss calculation drives sentencing decisions in many white-collar cases. The higher the loss amount, the longer the sentence.Courts usually take an expansive view of what counts as a “loss” for sentencing. In a recent Third Circuit case, however, the court rejected...
The calculation of loss amount drives sentencing decisions in many white collar cases. The higher the loss amount, the longer the sentence. Courts always seem to take an expansive view of what counts as a “loss” for sentencing. In a recent Third Circuit case, however,...
By: Sara Kropf Every trial lawyer has a few tried-and-truisms to use in the courtroom. For the admissibility of evidence: That goes to weight, not admissibility. For expert witnesses: The testimony would be helpful to the jury. And for relevance: They opened the door....
By: Sara Kropf Every few weeks, I review the press releases for the U.S. Attorneys' Offices across the country. In the blur of stories about drug busts and indictments for low-level health care fraud, sometimes a name sounds familiar. No, not because it’s a friend. Or...
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...