On October 6, 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced its plans for increased scrutiny of the cryptocurrency market with the creation of a National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) to pursue criminal investigations and actions against cryptocurrency misuse. The NCET will focus on “crimes committed by virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, and
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Department of Justice Announces Increased FCA Enforcement Through New Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative
On October 6, 2021, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a new Civil Fraud Cyber Initiative to “combine the department’s expertise in civil fraud enforcement, government procurement and cybersecurity to combat new and emerging cyber threats to the security of sensitive information and critical systems.”…
Gleanings From DOJ’s 2021 Healthcare Takedown Announcement
On Sept. 17, the U.S. Department of Justice released the results of its 2021 Healthcare Takedown — an annual announcement aggregating months of investigations and indictments across the country involving fraud in the healthcare and life sciences industries.
Read on for details and analysis of criminal charges against 138 defendants, including 42 medical professionals, related…
DOJ Title IX Investigation Leads to $1.6M Agreement with San Jose State University
The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, and San Jose State University (SJSU) settled the government’s Title IX investigation into a decade’s worth of sexual harassment allegations. The June 2020 allegations of “employee-on-student sexual harassment” and retaliation within the University’s athletics department prompted the government’s…
Corporate Campaign Contributions Are a Crime, Independent Expenditures Legitimate: Sixth Circuit Explains the Difference
The Sixth Circuit has upheld the felony conviction of a former state party chair for illegal campaign contributions by a corporation he owned, in a case that both serves as an important reminder of the prohibition on corporate contributions to federal campaigns and shows that the Justice Department may be stepping up criminal election law…
Frequently Asked Questions About the New COVID-19 Vaccine Executive Actions
As McGuireWoods noted in a Sept. 10, 2021, alert, President Biden’s broad six-part strategy to combat the COVID-19 pandemic is raising many questions for employers. While employers await the much-anticipated regulations, a few answers to questions regarding the proposed federal vaccine requirements already are available.
For answers to frequently asked questions about the COVID-19…
Income Share Agreements – Risks, Rewards, and Regulators
An Income Share Agreement (ISA) is a contract in which a lender gives a student money for education, and in return, the student promises to pay the ISA-provider a fixed percentage of the student’s income for a set amount of time after graduation. The student may repay more or less than the amount received, depending…
FINRA’s Important Reminder to Firms—Don’t Forget to Supervise Third-Party Vendors
Broker-dealers, like most companies, rely on third-party vendors for a wide variety of functions. This common practice of outsourcing does not relieve a broker-dealer of its regulatory compliance and supervision obligations over the outsourced functions. Accordingly, management and supervision of third-party vendors present important issues that merit careful attention from regulatory, compliance, and legal…
Sanctions and Export Compliance Strategies for Supply Chains
The following is an excerpt from McGuireWoods’ recent contribution to the Global Investigations Review’s (GIR’s) The Guide to Sanctions – Second Edition published in July 2021. Authors Alex Brackett, Pat Rowan and Jason Cowley, each partners in the firm’s Government Investigations and White Collar Litigation department, penned a chapter on the Impacts of Sanctions and…
Tide Is Turning Against FCA Case Dismissals
According to a July 28 article in Law360 by McGuireWoods lawyers Michael J. Podberesky, John S. Moran, Todd R. Steggerda, David Pivnick and Cassandra M. Burns, the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision declining to review an appeal of a Seventh Circuit case that could have resolved a three-way circuit split regarding…