Analysis

'Parallel' DOJ, SEC Investigations Not So Parallel Anymore

By Phillip Bantz

The level of coordination between the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has decreased under the Trump administration, resulting in disjointed investigatory efforts and misaligned timing in parallel investigations, experts say.

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Blanche's AG Bid Could Face Rocky Path In Senate

By Courtney Bublé

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche will be tapped for the permanent role, but he might not have a smooth path to confirmation.

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SEC Disgorgement Powers Stay Intact After High Court Fight

By Jessica Corso

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday said that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could collect ill-gotten gains from alleged fraudsters without having to identify victims who were financially harmed by the fraud, declining to place further limits on the agency's disgorgement powers six years after it last did so.

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Bolton To Plead Guilty In Classified Info Case

By Jared Foretek

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton will plead guilty to charges that he illegally retained classified national defense information.

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Justices Say FCC Fines Can Stand Without Jury Trial

By Christopher Cole

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Federal Communications Commission's authority to issue monetary penalties Thursday, knocking down challenges to nearly $200 million in fines against the Big Three wireless carriers for failing to protect consumer data privacy.

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NY AG Must Preserve Cohen Docs In Trump's Civil Fraud Case

By Frank G. Runyeon

The New York state trial court judge overseeing President Donald Trump's civil fraud case granted his request to preserve notes from private meetings between state litigators and Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen after the key witness said he felt "pressured" to testify.

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Deepfake Mocks Judge Spearheading Judiciary Deepfake Rule

By Jeff Overley

The New York federal judge developing policies for phony audiovisual materials revealed Thursday firsthand experience with the subject: an artificial intelligence video on social media that depicts him as a maniacal Nazi who recently sentenced a private equity executive to prison "for being a Republican."

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Feds Tout Medicaid Fraud Crackdown In Ohio, Slam Hawaii

By Dan McKay

The Trump administration on Thursday praised Ohio's fight against Medicaid fraud and said Hawaii was doing too little, as federal officials pushed states to ramp up anti-fraud prosecutions or risk the loss of federal funding.

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Ex-FirstEnergy Execs Face New Bribery Charges After Mistrial

By Dorothy Atkins

An Ohio grand jury hit two former FirstEnergy executives Wednesday with a fresh round of corruption charges alleging they bribed a utility regulator to secure a controversial $1.3 billion bailout for two FirstEnergy nuclear plants, beefing up accusations against the executives after a jury deadlocked on the initial charges.

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Texas AG Says ActBlue 'Fraud' Outweighs Free-Speech Concern

By Julie Manganis

Counsel for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton urged a skeptical Massachusetts federal judge on Thursday not to block an enforcement action against Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue, arguing any "incidental" infringement of the group's First Amendment rights is outweighed by alleged evidence that it violated a Texas consumer protection law.

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Trump Era Worse Than McCarthy For Speech, Law Dean Says

By Bonnie Eslinger

The dean of UC Berkeley's law school told an audience of lawyers and artists on Thursday that America is experiencing "an unprecedented assault on the Constitution, on the First Amendment, and on freedom of speech," comparing the country under President Donald Trump unfavorably to the McCarthy era.

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DOJ Says Meta And Others Froze $3.8M Tied To Crypto Fraud

By Sydney Price

The U.S. Department of Justice announced that private sector corporations, including Meta Platforms Inc. and Google LLC, voluntarily froze over $3.8 million in stolen cryptocurrency during an event known as "Disruption Week."

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Brief

Ex-Newark Deputy Mayor Gets Prison In Bribery Scheme

By Carla Baranauckas

A former Newark deputy mayor was sentenced to just over a year in prison in New Jersey federal court for accepting cash and luxury gifts from two real estate developers involved in redevelopment projects for city-owned properties.

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Baker Donelson Seeks 'No Recovery' Ruling In Ponzi Fallout

By Emily Sawicki

Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz PC on Thursday asked a Mississippi federal court to issue a single check-box form ruling that states the firm does not owe a monetary judgment stemming from a jury's verdict finding it committed negligent supervision amid a timber company's nine-figure Ponzi scheme, which was perpetrated in part by two of the firm's then-partners.

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Insurers Say NY Law Firm, Providers Exaggerated Injury Suits

By Danielle Ferguson

Insurance companies have alleged in a new federal complaint that a New York law firm coordinated a racketeering and fraud scheme with medical providers to manufacture and inflate personal injury litigation and exploit medical treatments for profit.

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NC Doctor Seeks Probation In $11M Medicare Fraud Case

By Parker Quinlan

A North Carolina doctor convicted of making false statements as part of an $11 million Medicaid fraud scheme has asked a federal judge in the state to not send her to federal prison and instead give her probation after a jury found her guilty.

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Goldstein Seeks Sentencing Delay, Citing New Tax Claims

By Jared Foretek

SCOTUSblog founder Thomas Goldstein renewed his push Wednesday in Maryland federal court for a delayed sentencing, saying prosecutors blindsided his defense by including additional uncharged years of alleged tax avoidance in the government's sentencing memorandum.

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Jury Hears Closings In Trial Over Alleged Tax Shelter Scheme

By Rachel Konieczny

Prosecutors told a Colorado federal jury Thursday that four individuals defrauded the government by using their businesses to help promote and sell abusive and illegal trust tax shelters, while the defendants argued they lacked knowledge of the alleged scheme and can't be held responsible.

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Ex-Surgeon Agrees To $7.7M Tax Bill From Offshore Scheme

By Natalie Olivo

A retired plastic surgeon reached a $7.7 million settlement with the federal government to resolve an Internal Revenue Service case alleging that he ran an offshore employee leasing scheme, according to an agreement filed in an Ohio federal court.

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Live Nation Remedies Discovery To Wait On New Trial Motions

By Bryan Koenig

A New York federal judge said that state attorneys general will have to wait on discovery to bolster their bid for a Live Nation Entertainment Inc. breakup, preferring to first tackle the live music giant's bid to upend jury findings faulting the company for monopolizing the industry.

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Ex-Worker Pleads Guilty In Air Force Bid-Rigging Scheme

By Elaine Briseño

A former employee of a business that provided shelving and storage to the U.S. Air Force has pled guilty in Georgia federal court to two felony charges that accused him of conspiring to rig bids and defraud the U.S. Department of Defense.

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Perfectus Settlement Illuminates DOJ's Tariff Fraud Strategy

The Department of Justice's recent False Claims Act settlement with Perfectus Aluminum illustrates the government's continuing interagency focus on customs and tariff enforcement, and the related criminal indictment provides insight into conduct enforcers may associate with tariff evasion schemes, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

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Citron Founder Verdict Tests Reach Of 'Half-Truth' Fraud

A California federal jury's conviction this week of Citron founder Andrew Left may be remembered less as a conventional manipulation prosecution than as a case about how far the "half-truth" doctrine can reach when applied to modern market speech, says Elisha Kobre at Sheppard.

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Data Collection Push Signals New Era For Bank Compliance

An executive order pushing for broad bank collection of beneficiary data and a Financial Crimes Enforcement Network geographic targeting order in Minnesota should prompt financial institutions to run checks on customer diligence and privacy controls, as these directives may be part of a wider compliance shift, say attorneys at Faegre Drinker.

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Series

Competing At Poker Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Playing poker in male-dominated rooms taught me to treat skepticism as background noise when my opponents seem to underestimate me, to apply pressure when it matters and to adapt without losing strategic discipline — skills that are all indispensable in restructuring and insolvency matters, says Alexis Gambale at Pashman Stein.

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Roundup

UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

By Megan Norcott

The past week in London has seen the U.K.'s oldest Indian restaurant launch an appeal against King Charles III's property company in an effort to stop its eviction, trustees of a bankrupt former EY tax partner file a claim against his wife, and 37 leading insurers bring a lawsuit against agrichemical company Syngenta over an insurance dispute. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.

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Katten Is Latest Firm To Match Milbank Associate Pay Raise

By Kevin Penton

Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP has joined the growing list of firms that are largely matching a new pay scale for associates set earlier this week by Milbank LLP, with attorneys set to see annual pay increases of $10,000 to $20,000.

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Roundup

GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

Among the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week, investor advocates have questioned the legality of the SEC's plan to withdraw corporate climate disclosure regulations, and an insurance broker's report found claims made under policies for mergers and acquisitions have risen in frequency and severity.

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North Korea Sanctions Case Ends In Plea After 2 Mistrials

By Phillip Bantz

A Chinese national pled guilty on Thursday in D.C. federal court to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. in a sanctions evasion scheme involving North Korean tobacco smuggling, bringing an end to a protracted prosecution after two separate deadlocked juries.

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ICE Atty's Bid To Ax Contempt Order Is 'Absurd,' Amicus Says

By Emily Sawicki

A court-appointed amicus curae has told the Eighth Circuit that a Minnesota federal judge was right to hold a government attorney in contempt after finding that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flouted a court order, leading to a detained man being released hundreds of miles from his home without legal identification.

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Morgan & Morgan Explores Private Equity Investment Options

By Emma Cueto

The nation's largest personal injury firm, Morgan & Morgan, is exploring its options with regard to a potential private equity investment, with the firm saying Friday it is in the early stages of understanding what such an investment might mean and whether it is a good opportunity or "fool's gold."

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Winston Taylor leads this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the U.S. Supreme Court ended a patent suit over Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA Inc.'s generic version of a heart drug that uses a so-called skinny label.

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Titan Of The Plaintiffs Bar: Morgan & Morgan's John Yanchunis

By Matt Perez

John Yanchunis of Morgan & Morgan PA has been at the forefront of data privacy litigation for nearly three decades, but what stands out to his colleague Ryan McGee is not the litany of wins but the attorney's humility.

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Legal Job Market Surges With Special Litigation, Gov't Work

By Tracey Read

The legal sector saw 1,200 more jobs in May after gaining 1,900 positions the month before, according to seasonally adjusted data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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First Democrat Returns A Blue Slip For Judicial Nominee

By Courtney Bublé

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., is the first Democratic senator in the second Trump administration to return a blue slip for a judicial nominee.

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DLA Piper Urges 2nd Circ. To End 'Vexatious' Malpractice Suit

By Emily Sawicki

The Second Circuit should uphold the dismissal of a Chinese software company's legal malpractice suit and $635,000 in sanctions against it and its lawyers, DLA Piper has argued, citing previous favorable rulings in the matter by a federal magistrate judge, district court judge, state justice and five-judge panel of the New York state appeals court.

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In Case You Missed It: Hottest Firms And Stories On Law360

For those who missed out, here's a look back at the law firms, stories and expert analyses that generated the most buzz on Law360 last week.

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