Digital Commons Network^™

Should The Sec Be A Collection Agency For Defrauded Investors?, Barbara Black

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

One of the important functions of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("the SEC") is enforcing the securities laws and punishing violators. Collecting damages for defrauded investors was not, historically, an important part of the agency's mission; rather that was the function of private securities fraud class actions. Section 308 (the "Fair Fund provision") of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 gives the SEC a more prominent role in compensating investors and allows the agency, in some circumstances, to distribute civil penalties to defrauded investors. The SEC has established Fair Funds in a number of high-profile cases and has taken pride …

National Security, Carrie Newton Lyons, Alison G. Fitzgerald, Matthew Krell, Eve Pogoriler, Christopher B. Hynes

The International Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Concerning A Supplemental Appropriation To The Department Of Public Safety., Colorado General Assembly

Session Laws 2001-Present

No abstract provided.

Other People's Money: Drawing The Constitutional Line Between The Right To Counsel And Constraints On Obstructive Fee Advancement In The Wake Of United States V. Stein, Jonathan Bashi

Brooklyn Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sarbanes-Oxley, Kermit The Frog, And Competition Regarding Audit Quality, Matthew J. Barrett

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

What Is A Business Crime?, Richard A. Booth

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Sarbanes-Oxley Turns Six: An Enforcement Perspective, Linda Chatman Thomsen, Donna Norman

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Towards A Market For Bank Safety, Chris Jay Hooofnagle

Loyola Consumer Law Review

Imagine shopping for a car in 1960. Safety is important to you. How do you assess a car's performance in surviving a crash? What tools were available then to take an informed decision?

The modern consumer of financial services is in a similar position as the car shopper of the z96os. How does the modern consumer choose a bank that is relatively safe from identity thieves and other malicious individuals? Perhaps she chooses the larger institution, because it has more resources to address fraud. Or perhaps a smaller institution offers more protection, because it is more obscure. There is no …

"Unfit To Serve" Post-Enron, Regina F. Burch

Valparaiso University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Corporate America Fights Back: The Battle Over Waiver Of The Attorney-Client Privilege, Michael L. Seigel

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article addresses a topic that is the subject of an on-going and heated contest between the business lobby and its lawyers, on the one side, and the U.S. Department of Justice on the other. The fight is over federal prosecutors' escalating practice of requesting that corporations accused of criminal wrongdoing waive their attorney-client privilege as part of their cooperation with the government. The Department of Justice views privilege waiver as a legitimate and critical tool in its post-Enron battle against white collar crime. The business lobby views it as encroaching on corporations' fundamental right to protect confidential attorney-client communications. …

Parallel Proceedings In The Post-Enron Era: The Duty To Warn And The Case For Abolishing The Government Misconduct Test, Peter N. Downing

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Codes Of Ethics And State Fiduciary Duties: Where Is The Line?, Z. Jill Barclift

Faculty Scholarship

The important function of disclosure under federal securities laws and regulations, and the role of management in running the affairs of the corporation consistent with state fiduciary principles have a history of discord. The recent mandates of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (“SOX Act” or “SOX”), and the Security and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) implementing regulations continue to increase the disclosure obligations of public companies. This article examines the implementation of code of ethics requirements under SOX. It examines the SEC’s regulations, which implement SOX requirements on the disclosure of codes of ethics, and self-regulatory agency (“SRO” or “listing agency”) rules on codes …

Computer Crimes & Criminals, Bethany Hart

Senior Seminars

No abstract provided.

Evaluating The Mission: A Critical Review Of The History And Evolution Of The Sec Enforcement Program, Paul S. Atkins, Bradley J. Bondi

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

An Unholy Alliance: Perceptions Of Influence In Insurance Fraud Prosecutions And The Need For Real Safeguards, Aviva Abramovsky

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Fraud Not On The Market: Rebutting The Presumption Of Classwide Reliance Twenty Years After Basic Inc. V. Levinson, Matthew L. Mustokoff

UC Law Business Journal

This article explores a wave of recent federal court decisions addressing the applicability of the "fraud-on-the-market" presumption of reliance in securities fraud cases at the class certification stage. In the two decades since the US Supreme Court first recognized the fraud-on-the-market doctrine in Basic, Inc. v. Levinson, the district and circuit courts have taken somewhat divergent approaches to the question of classwide reliance. The most recent decisions, however, mark an emerging trend, one which signifies heightened judicial scrutiny - in many cases, going beyond the pleadings and involving extensive fact-finding and expert analysis. Among the decisions discussed are the Second …

An Analysis Of Networking Between Top Executives Of Companies Suspected Of Backdating Stock Options, Rebecca Kin-Ming Lo

Honors Theses

"More than 100 companies are under investigation for options backdating... If options backdating problems are found at more companies, Congress may be driven to act. ” - Brian Cleaiy (Cleary 2007). The purpose of this thesis is to analyze how the practice of backdating employee stock options has become so widely used. The first hypothesis for this research is that networking between executives and board members of corporations has caused the idea of backdating employee stock options to spread. The second hypothesis is that particular auditing firms are more likely than others to audit corporations accused of backdating employee stock …

Global Finance, Business And Human Rights, Faith Stevelman

Articles & Chapters

Global Finance, Business and Human Rights: With Commentary on Backer's Views on the 2008, Protect-Respect-Remedy Framework Presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council

Foreword, Corporate Governance Five Years After Sarbanes-Oxley: Is There Real Change, Faith Stevelman

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Sarbanes-Oxley, Kermit The Frog, And Competition Regarding Audit Quality, Matthew J. Barrett

Journal Articles

The regulatory scheme after Sarbanes-Oxley has significantly improved public company audits in the United States, or at least has demonstrated the potential to do so, but the obligation to preserve client confidentially still prevents auditors from competing for new clients on the basis of audit quality. This paper suggests a simple way for the SEC to facilitate such competition within the existing regulatory framework. The SEC should require issuers and registrants to disclose whether their independent audits uncovered any financial fraud and, within specified ranges, the number and amount of all audit adjustments incorporated into the financial statements filed with …

Are Leveraged Buyouts A Form Of Governance Arbitrage?, Dale A. Oesterle

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Corporate Governance On The Choice Of Transfer Pricing Methods In China, Xue Han

Lingnan Theses

Recent scandals involving related party transactions (RPTs) have attracted researchers’ and governments’ attention. Because imperfections exist in the legislation of RPTs, business groups might abuse transfer pricing of such transactions for certain purposes. These purposes include earnings management of listed companies that seek to attract investors and profit shifting from subsidiaries to parent companies. This study investigates the impact of corporate governance on the choice of transfer pricing methods in China.

I classify transfer pricing methods into two major groups (i.e., market-based and cost-based methods). I hypothesize that companies with weak corporate governance are more likely to use cost-based pricing …

Class Action Criminality, Lisa L. Casey

Journal Articles

This paper examines the criminal prosecution of Milberg Weiss, formerly the most successful plaintiffs’ securities class action firm in the country, for allegedly making undisclosed incentive payments to class representatives. In particular, the article examines the government’s primary charge - that the firm’s practice violated the “honest services” theory of mail and wire fraud. The government’s application of this theory presumes a fiduciary relationship between the class representatives and the class which has never been clearly delineated and, indeed, is against the weight of case law and the realities of class action litigation.

The Article proceeds on two different levels. …

Rediscovering Board Expertise: Legal Implications Of The Empirical Literature, Lawrence A. Cunningham

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This paper reviews and draws insights from recent empirical research in financial accounting on the value of director expertise for financial reporting quality. Among important consequences of Sarbanes-Oxley is an increase in the percentage of accounting experts on boards of directors, particularly on audit committees.

The research reviewed here documents the value of this expertise in promoting financial reporting quality measured in terms of "accounting earnings management" (artificial bookkeeping manipulations). These findings contrast with well-known evidence showing little value arising from director independence.

The research holds numerous implications and raises important questions, including the following:

1. It shows that accounting …

International Trafficking In Persons: Suggested Responses To A Scourge Of Humankind, Franklyn M. Casale

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

"International Trafficking in Persons: Suggested Responses to a Scourge of Humankind", a statement presented by Rev. Monsignor Franklyn M. Casale (St. Thomas University President) to the Distinguished Members of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs.

New Legal Frontier: Mass Information Loss And Security Breach, Chad Pinson

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Data Mining Techniques In Fraud Detection, Rekha Bhowmik

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The paper presents application of data mining techniques to fraud analysis. We present some classification and prediction data mining techniques which we consider important to handle fraud detection. There exist a number of data mining algorithms and we present statistics-based algorithm, decision treebased algorithm and rule-based algorithm. We present Bayesian classification model to detect fraud in automobile insurance. Naïve Bayesian visualization is selected to analyze and interpret the classifier predictions. We illustrate how ROC curves can be deployed for model assessment in order to provide a more intuitive analysis of the models.

Information Security Breaches: Looking Back & Thinking Ahead, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Business Risk In Early Design: An Approach, Rahul Basavaraj Patil

Masters Theses

"The Business Risk in Early Design (B-RED) method is a tool used to determine the potential risks in business, in the early business development stages. In order to launch a successful business in today's competitive market environment, the business should equip itself to face the risks involved in business. If the potential risks are identified even before the launch of the business, then there is an opportunity to avert risks with little or no impact to the budget and schedule. The B-RED method presented in this thesis helps entrepreneurs and people with little or no experience in business to identify …

Prosecuting Elder Abuse: Setting The Gold Standard In The Golden State, Arthur Meirson

UC Law Journal

This Note proposes amending California's elder abuse law. Currently, California Penal Code sections 368(b) and (c) allow the prosecution of any person who willfully causes or permits a person they know to be an elder or dependent adult "to suffer, or inflicts thereon unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering." The failing of this law is its focus on the subjective experience of the elder or dependent adult victim. Because the law only allows punishment where the victim suffers or experiences unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering, there are numerous circumstances that allow a perpetrator of abuse to escape prosecution. These …