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Vacating Lay’s Indictment and Conviction
The Houston Chronicle reports (here) that former Enron CEO Ken Lay’s appellate attorney has moved to appear before the federal district court on behalf of his estate to seek dismissal of the indictment and conviction against him. As discussed in an earlier post (here), under the abatement doctrine as applied in the Fifth Circuit, a…
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Lawyers Everywhere
The second criminal case coming from the options-timing investigations, against three former Comverse Technology executives, should send every executive at the 80 or so companies that have disclosed being caught up in the various criminal and civil investigations looking for their own counsel. The prospect of criminal charges naturally has the effect of putting everyone…
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How Did You Know He Wasn’t a Lawyer?
There was a lawyer licensed to practice law in Pennsylvania named Jeffrey A. Riddell who gave up his bar card and left the state. Along came another man, one Jeffrey P. Riddell, who began representing clients by apparently assuming the identity of Jeffrey A, or at least his credentials. This went on for a while…
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Three Former Comverse Executives Charged in Options-Timing Case
Three former senior executives of Comverse Technology, Inc., CEO Kobi Alexander, CFO David Kreinberg, and chief legal counsel William Sorin, have been charged with conspiracy to commit securities, mail, and wire fraud in a criminal complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn). The charge relates to backdating options by the former executives,…
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ABA Attacks More of the Thompson Memo
Perhaps emboldened by recent decisions by Judge Kaplan in the KPMG tax shelter prosecution (U.S. v. Stein), the American Bar Association adopted the Report (here) issued by its Task Force on Attorney-Client Privilege that urges the Department of Justice to disavow certain practices related to the determination of whether to charge a corporation with a…
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Founder of Private Boys School Charged
The United States Attorney for the Western District of Virginia has charged the founder and CEO of Wellspring Academy in Sutherlin, Virginia with "bank fraud, assisting in the preparation of false tax returns, mail fraud, wire fraud, perjury, and money laundering." The 36 count indictment emanating from a bankruptcy proceeding alleges that the accused, in…
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Reporting Directly to Prison
One advantage that white collar offenders seem to get more often than the street offenders, is that they often are allowed to report directly to prison. Oftentimes street offenders are either in jail at the time of trial, or immediately incarcerated upon conviction. As noted in the Atlanta Jrl Constitution here, Bill Campbell is being…
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Challenging the Brocade Options-Timing Charge
Federal prosecutors filed the first criminal charge from the various stock options-timing investigations against the former CEO of Brocade Communications, Gregory Reyes, and a human resources executive, Stephanie Jensen, on July 20. Rather than seeking a grand jury indictment at the time, however, prosecutors chose to proceed by issuing a criminal complaint, which contains a…
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Investigations Can Ruin a Career
The Columbus Dispatch here reports that Bob Ney, a republican congressman from Ohio, will remove himself from running for re-election. Ney has had his name mentioned in connection with former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. For background see the following here, here, and here. (esp)
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Martha Settles With SEC
The SEC has issued a press release here announcing a settlement on the "insider trading charges against Martha Stewart and Peter Bacanovic relating to Stewart’s sale of ImClone Systems stock in December 2001." The press release states: "Under the settlement, Stewart agrees to an injunction, disgorgement of losses she avoided, and the maximum penalty of…
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