Law Commons^™

Nefarious Notarios: Responding To Immigration Scams As White Collar Crime As A Matter Of Public Policy, Sarah Cossman

Refugee Law & Migration Studies Brief

Immigration scams targeting non-citizens can have devastating impacts on an individual's status and ability to remain in the United States legally. The phenomenon of notario fraud occurs when an individual misrepresents themself as a notario publico in an effort to defraud immigrants seeking legal services. In Spanish-speaking countries, a notario publico is a highly trained legal professional, akin to an attorney, who provides legal advice and drafts legal documents. The term is a false cognate. The English equivalent, a notary, is an individual with narrow witnessing duties and much less discretion. Problems arise when individuals obtain a notary public license …

Chief Loophole Officer Or Chief Legal Officer: Inside Lehman Brothers—A Film Case Study About Corporate And Legal Ethics, Garrick Apollon

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

This Article discusses the continuing legal education (CLE) visual advocacy documentary-style program, which Garrick Apollon (author of this Article) researched and developed. The case study for this CLE documentary-style program is the film Inside Lehman Brothers—a documentary film by Jennifer Deschamps which chronicles the story of the Lehman whistleblowers. The film presents Mathew Lee, former senior vice president overseeing Lehman’s global balance sheet; Oliver Budde, former in-house counsel (associate general counsel) of the Lehman Brothers; and the racialized female mid-tier manager whistleblowers, who all paid a steep price in the 2008 American subprime mortgage crisis, while many of the …

Game Theory Optimized Fraud: How The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act Created A Virtually Riskless Environment For White Collar Crime In Online Poker, Jeffrey Woolf

Upper Level Writing Requirement Research Papers

No abstract provided.

The Reverse Agency Problem In The Age Of Compliance, Asaf Eckstein, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

The agency problem, the idea that corporate directors and officers are motivated to prioritize their self-interest over the interest of their corporation, has had long-lasting impact on corporate law theory and practice. In recent years, however, as federal agencies have stepped up enforcement efforts against corporations, a new problem that is the mirror image of the agency problem has surfaced—the reverse agency problem. The surge in criminal investigations against corporations, combined with the rising popularity of settlement mechanisms including Pretrial Diversion Agreements (PDAs), and corporate plea agreements, has led corporations to sacrifice directors and officers in order to reach settlements …

Constraining Monitors, Veronica Root

Veronica Root

Monitors oversee remediation efforts at dozens, if not hundreds, of institutions that are guilty of misconduct. The remediation efforts that the monitors of today engage in are, in many instances, quite similar to activities that were once subject to formal court oversight. But as the importance and power of monitors has increased, the court’s oversight of monitors and the agreements that most often result in monitorships has, at best, been severely diminished and, at worst, vanished altogether.

The lack of regulation governing monitors is well documented; yet, the academic literature on monitorships to date has largely taken the state of …

Sweetheart Deals, Deferred Prosecution, And Making A Mockery Of The Criminal Justice System: U.S. Corporate Dpas Rejected On Many Fronts, Peter Reilly

Peter R. Reilly

Corporate Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) are contracts negotiated between the federal government and defendants to address allegations of corporate misconduct without going to trial. The agreements are hailed as a model of speedy and efficient law enforcement, but also derided as making a “mockery” of America’s criminal justice system stemming from lenient deals being offered to some defendants. This Article questions why corporate DPAs are not given meaningful judicial review when such protection is required for other alternative dispute resolution (ADR) tools, including plea bargains, settlement agreements, and consent decrees. The Article also analyzes several cases in which federal district …

Myth Of The Attorney Whistleblower, Carliss N. Chatman

Scholarly Articles

Notwithstanding the political grandstanding and legal regimes put in place to prevent the next Enron, this article explores whether attorney whistleblower provisions provided in the Standards of Professional Conduct for Attorneys Appearing and Practicing Before the Commission in the Representation of an Issuer and in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct are effective. When faced with attorney involvement in Enron, Congress passed § 307 of the Sarbanes Oxley Act (Sarbanes), which required the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to amend its standards governing the conduct of attorneys practicing before the SEC. In response, the SEC and the American Bar Association …

Perjury By Omission, Ira P. Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” There are few legal phrases that the layperson can repeat verbatim; this is one of them. But how many people truly understand the nuances and ramifications of testifying under oath? Many assume that if they do not provide the “whole truth” under oath, they will face a perjury charge. However, perjury is a charge often threatened but rarely used. The offense requires that the defendant willfully and knowingly make a false statement, under oath, regarding a material fact.

The federal perjury statute does not contemplate …

Mens Rea Reform And Its Discontents, Benjamin Levin

Publications

This Article examines the debates over recent proposals for “mens rea reform.” The substantive criminal law has expanded dramatically, and legislators have criminalized a great deal of common conduct. Often, new criminal laws do not require that defendants know they are acting unlawfully. Mens rea reform proposals seek to address the problems of overcriminalization and unintentional offending by increasing the burden on prosecutors to prove a defendant’s culpable mental state. These proposals have been a staple of conservative-backed bills on criminal justice reform. Many on the left remain skeptical of mens rea reform and view it as a deregulatory vehicle …

Sweetheart Deals, Deferred Prosecution, And Making A Mockery Of The Criminal Justice System: U.S. Corporate Dpas Rejected On Many Fronts, Peter Reilly

Faculty Scholarship

Corporate Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) are contracts negotiated between the federal government and defendants to address allegations of corporate misconduct without going to trial. The agreements are hailed as a model of speedy and efficient law enforcement, but also derided as making a “mockery” of America’s criminal justice system stemming from lenient deals being offered to some defendants. This Article questions why corporate DPAs are not given meaningful judicial review when such protection is required for other alternative dispute resolution (ADR) tools, including plea bargains, settlement agreements, and consent decrees. The Article also analyzes several cases in which federal district …

Insider Tainting: Strategic Tipping Of Material Nonpublic Information, Andrew Verstein

Northwestern University Law Review

Insider trading law is meant to be a shield, protecting the market and investors from unscrupulous traders, but it can also be a sword. Insofar as we penalize trading on the basis of material, nonpublic information, it becomes possible to share information strategically in order to disable or constrain innocent investors. A hostile takeover can be averted, or a bidding war curtailed, because recipients of such information must then refrain from trading. This Article offers the first general account of “insider tainting,” an increasingly pervasive phenomenon of weaponizing insider trading law.

Constraining Monitors, Veronica Root

Journal Articles

Monitors oversee remediation efforts at dozens, if not hundreds, of institutions that are guilty of misconduct. The remediation efforts that the monitors of today engage in are, in many instances, quite similar to activities that were once subject to formal court oversight. But as the importance and power of monitors has increased, the court’s oversight of monitors and the agreements that most often result in monitorships has, at best, been severely diminished and, at worst, vanished altogether.

The lack of regulation governing monitors is well documented; yet, the academic literature on monitorships to date has largely taken the state of …

Economic Ideology And The Rise Of The Firm As A Criminal Enterprise, William K. Black, June Carbone

Akron Law Review

Over the last 50 years, the institutions, ideology, nature, and power of firms in the United States have been radically transformed. Neoclassical economics has led that transformation, supplying an ideology that justified a dramatic increase in top executive compensation while dismantling the mechanisms that produced personal accountability tied to anything but relatively short term shifts in share prices. Yet, alongside the rise of the corporation, from the time of Adam Smith forward, has been concern that the separation of ownership and control creates opportunities to use the corporation as a “weapon” of fraud, and with the return of global financial …

Enforcing Integrity, Katrice Copeland

Katrice Bridges Copeland

Over the past several years, the marketing practices of large pharmaceutical companies have come under intense scrutiny. The government spends years investigating and building cases against pharmaceutical manufacturers that engage in illegal promotional activities to promote their drugs but does not prosecute them. Instead, the government enters into Corporate Integrity Agreements (CIAs) with the pharmaceutical giants. As a result, the pharmaceutical manufacturers are able to avoid the collateral consequences of conviction, such as exclusion from Medicare and Medicaid. Participation in Medicare and Medicaid is crucial for a pharmaceutical manufacturer because the government spends over $60 Billion per year through those …

Teaching The Art Of Defending A White Collar Criminal Case, Katrice Copeland

Katrice Bridges Copeland

This Article discusses the author's experience with effectively teaching a white collar crime course.

In-House Counsel Beware!, Katrice Copeland

Katrice Bridges Copeland

This Article argues that the prosecution of Lauren Stevens for covering up the alleged crimes of GSK was misguided both as a matter of law and a matter of policy. In particular, this Article contends that the government should not prosecute attorneys for obstruction of justice or other cover-up crimes for actions taken in good faith during a government investigation into a client's conduct. Part I provides background on the Lauren Stevens case and the convergence of the four prosecution trends that led the government to indict her. Part II argues that Lauren Stevens did not obstruct the government's investigation …

'White Collar Crime': Still Hazy After All These Years, Lucian E. Dervan, Ellen S. Podgor

Law Faculty Scholarship

With a seventy-five year history of sociological and later legal roots, the term “white collar crime” remains an ambiguous concept that academics, policy makers, law enforcement personnel and defense counsel are unable to adequately define. Yet the use of the term “white collar crime” skews statistical reporting and sentencing for this conduct. This Article provides a historical overview of its linear progression and then a methodology for a new architecture in examining this conduct. It separates statutes into clear-cut white collar offenses and hybrid statutory offenses, and then applies this approach with an empirical study that dissects cases prosecuted under …

How Criminal Law Can Help Save The Environment, Rena I. Steinzor

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Asset Forfeiture In Public Corruption Cases, Pamela S. Stanek

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

This publication is intended to be a practical guide to pursuing federal asset forfeiture where a public corruption crime is the underlying offense. Although the reader of this guide may be pursuing state crimes and forfeiture, reaching out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the experts in public corruption cases, is recommended. Addressing the laws of all fifty states is beyond the scope of this guide. Nonetheless, the considerations and guidance underlying federal forfeiture will generally apply to the pursuit of state forfeitures as the majority of the state statutes are modeled after the federal statutes and involve similar …

Closing Fireside Chat With The Assistant Attorney General For The U.S. Department Of Justice Antitrust Division, William Baer, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

This Closing Fireside Chat was the final session of the 16th annual Silicon Flatirons Center conference, The Digital Broadband Migration: The Evolving Industry Structure of the Digital Broadband Landscape, held on Feb. 1, 2016 in the Wittemyer Courtroom of the University of Colorado Law School.

"At the time this conference was held, William J. Baer was Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust in the United States Department of Justice. On April 17, 2016, President Obama asked Mr. Baer to become Acting Associate Attorney General of the United States. Video of this interview with Assistant Attorney General Baer is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C351xEX0h4g …

The Business Papers Rule: Personal Privacy And White Collar Crime, John S. Applegate

Akron Law Review

The first step in this endeavor will be the development of a definition of white collar crime which adequately accounts for the difficulty in combatting it. The next step will be to examine individually the two competing goals law enforcement and privacy - to try to get a sense of the requirements of each. This will lead into a discussion of the conflict between the goals. The article will then move on to consider several unsatisfactory resolutions of the conflict, making that the basis for sketching out the necessary specifications of a good solution. Finally, the "business papers rule" will …

Limiting Leukophobia: Looking Beyond Lockup. Debunking The Strategy Of Turning White Collars Orange, Jared J. Hight

Jared J Hight

The legal and political landscape of the past 30 years has resulted in the abandonment of the utilitarian principle of parsimony as applied to white collar criminals. In response to preceding decades of minor punishments meted out for serious white collar crimes, the Federal Sentencing Commission abandoned the typical past practices of sentencing judges and instead formulated Guidelines that are wildly excessive and no longer balance the need for community safety with the need for that same community to remain economically efficient. The guiding principles of deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation have been deemphasized in a new model that focuses primarily …

The Corporation As Victim Of White Collar Crime: Results From A Study Of German Public And Private Companies, Dr. Hendrik Schneider

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sentencing The Wolf Of Wall Street: From Leniency To Uncertainty, Lucian E. Dervan

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Symposium Article, based on a presentation given by Professor Dervan at the 2014 Wayne Law Review Symposium entitled "Sentencing White Collar Defendants: How Much is Enough," examines the Jordan Belfort (“Wolf of Wall Street”) prosecution as a vehicle for analyzing sentencing in major white-collar criminal cases from the 1980s until today. In Part II, the Article examines the Belfort case and his relatively lenient prison sentence for engaging in a major fraud. This section goes on to examine additional cases from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s to consider the results of reforms aimed at “getting tough” on white-collar offenders. …

Profile In Public Integrity: Cyrus Vance, Jr., Center For The Advancement Of Public Integrity

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., was first inaugurated as the District Attorney of New York County on January 1, 2010. Over the following four years, Mr. Vance enhanced the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office as a national leader in criminal justice by expanding the offices expertise on an array of 21st century crimes, including identity theft, cybercrime, white-collar fraud, hate crimes, terrorism, domestic violence, human trafficking, and violent and gang-related crimes.

Upon taking office, Mr. Vance modernized the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office by reorganizing its resources and creating new specialized bureaus and units, including the Cybercrime and Identity Theft Bureau, Major Economic …

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

Michael L Seigel

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. …

The Death Penalty’S “Finely Tuned Depravity Calibrators” Fairness Follies Of Fairness Phonies Fixated On Criminals Instead Of Crimes, Lester Jackson

LESTER JACKSON

It has been loudly and repeatedly proclaimed by opponents that capital punishment is “unfair.” In their view, it is unfair because (1) only some murderers receive the ultimate sentence and (2) they are not the most deserving. Underlying this view is the remarkable assumption that fairness is subject to “fine tuning” and “moral accuracy.” It is argued here that this assumption is indefensible both in theory and in practice. As a theoretical matter, it is insupportable to suggest that matters of conscience, right and wrong, are subject to calibration or “accuracy.” Right and wrong are not determined in the same …

Teaching The Methods Of White-Collar Practice: Investigatios, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

When Ijoined the George Washington University Law School [GW] faculty after practice as a federal prosecutor and white-collar criminal defense attorney, I quickly learned that a GW law student interested in exploring white-collar crime had a great many courses from which to choose. Several of my full-time colleagues teach courses that cover various topics relevant to white-collar crime, including a computer crimes course, a course in criminal tax litigation, and courses on anti-corruption in government contracting and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act [FCPA]. GW is also fortunate to have a dedicated and talented adjunct faculty, which includes a former senior …

2014 Jlepp Symposium On White Collar Crime Keynote Address, G. Robert Blakey

Faculty Lectures and Presentations

G. Bob Blakey gave the Keynote Address at the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy White Collar Crime Symposium held in the McCartan Courtroom, Notre Dame Law School.

Teaching The Art Of Defending A White Collar Criminal Case, Katrice Bridges Copeland

Journal Articles

This Article discusses the author's experience with effectively teaching a white collar crime course.