By: Sara Kropf The hardest appeal to win is one based on insufficiency of the evidence. It argues that “the jury got it wrong.” Courts of appeal do not look kindly upon this argument, not only because it forces the court to dig deep into the record but because it asks...
By: Sara Kropf On July 13, 2017, the Department of Justice issued a press release touting "the largest ever health care fraud enforcement action by the Medicare Fraud Strike Force." Most likely, none of these case will be particularly complex. DOJ loves to coordinate...
By: Sara Kropf Many of my white-collar clients are startled to learn how long a government investigation and criminal trial take. They think it will last a year, maybe 14 months. Instead, it can take years. Delay can work to my clients’ advantage, allowing us time to...
By: Sara Kropf Perhaps the most troubling type of criminal forfeiture is the pretrial restraint of untainted assets. The Department of Justice will seize assets, before proving a single allegation of wrongdoing, even where those assets are not linked to the...
In the past few months, there have been several big wins for white-collar defendants. Because we’re in desperate need for some good news as of late, here are highlights of those victories. As I’ve pointed out before, DOJ doesn’t publicize its losses, so it’s...
By: Sara Kropf It is very rare for a defendant in a white collar criminal case to be detained pretrial. The two primary factors under the Bail Reform Act are whether the defendant (1) is a danger to another person or to the community, or (2) is a risk of flight. 18...
The Fifth Circuit handed two corporate executives at a medical device company a big win recently. I’ve posted in the past about the indictments and trial of two former executives at ArthroCare, Michael Gluk and Michael Baker. They were found guilty in June 2014 of...
By: Sara Kropf Health care fraud has long been a focus of the Department of Justice. In 2014, DOJ recovered nearly $6 billion (that’s billion with a “b”) from civil health care fraud cases. DOJ has had its share of setbacks too. Just last week, a Northern Virginia...
The Department of Justice today unsealed the indictment of the former president of Warner Chilcott plc, a pharmaceutical manufacturer. A subsidiary of Warner Chilcott pleaded guilty to a single felony charge of health care fraud related to illegal marketing of certain...
By: Sara Kropf In recent years, the government has increasingly prosecuted individuals under the federal aggravated identity theft statute. This increase may be from the legitimate increase in identity theft but it may also result from the government’s realization...