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Booker Decision Announced
From the SCOTUS blog, this brief discussion of the Supreme Court’s decision announced Jan. 12 in U.S. v. Booker: The Supreme Court ruled today that the federal Sentencing Guidelines must satisfy the standards of the Sixth Amendment as applied in the Court’s ruling in Blakely v. Washington. Justice Stevens wrote an opinion on that point,
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The Credibility Battle at Ebbers Trial
A front page article in the Wall Street Journal (Jan. 12) describes the relationship between Bernie Ebbers, former WorldCom CEO whose criminal fraud trial begins later in January, and Scott Sullivan, the company’s former CFO who has agreed to a plea bargain and will be the government’s key witness. As noted earlier (Jan. 6 post),
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TASER International’s Open Letter to Shareholders
TASER International Inc., which disclosed on Jan. 7 (post here) that it was the subject of an informal SEC inquiry into its public disclosures regarding the safety of its security products and possible revenue recognition problems, issued an open letter on Jan. 11 to its shareholders to address concerns about the company, whose stock has
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Money Laundering Conspiracy Does Not Require Overt Act
Although the Supreme Court did not issue an opinion in the much awaited sentencing cases of Booker and Fanfan, it did rule in Whitfield v. United States. The Court held that a conspiracy to commit money laundering premised upon 18 U.S.C. 1956(h) does not require an overt act. The key issue before the Court was
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Scrushy Motions
On Jan. 10, U.S. District Judge Karon O. Bowdre denied Richard Scrushy’s motion to suppress tape recordings made by former CFO William Owens in March 2003 while he was wearing a hidden tape recorder. The tapes were made over a two-day period right before the government executed a search warrant at HealthSouth that ultimately lead
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Fraud Indictment of Former PurchasePro.Com and AOL Executives
Two former executives with AOL and four former executives of PurchasePro.Com, including former CEO Charles "Junior" Johnson, were charged with securities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy related to a scheme to inflate the revenues of both companies through a swap arrangement in an indictment returned in the Eastern District of Virginia. PurchasePro.Com was a software
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Former MarketWatch.Com Commentator Settles SEC Scalping Complaint
Thom Calandra, a co-founder of CBS.MarketWatch.Com and publisher of a newsletter (The Calandra Report), agreed to settle an SEC complaint accusing him of securities fraud in connection with stock recommendations in his newsletter while he secretly accumulated shares in the companies right before the recommendation and then sold them shortly thereafter once the recommendation caused
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Plea Agreement in Former Georgia School Superintendent Prosecution
A post on Nov. 12 (here) discussed the indictment of Linda Schrenko, the first woman elected School Superintendent in Georgia and a one-time rising star in the state Republican party who was charged with defrauding over $600,000 in education funds from the federal government that she used for her failed campaign for the nomination for
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Spy Case Dismissed for Prosecutorial Misconduct in Plea Agreement
The government’s efforts to keep one defendant away from another by inserting a clause in a plea agreement forbidding the cooperating defendant from speaking with the other defendant’s lawyer has resulted in a dismissal of the indictment against the remaining defendant for prosecutorial misconduct. The government’s prosecution of Katrina Leung for allegedly spying on behalf
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Rowland’s Plea Plays the Sentencing Guidelines Game
As discussed on the Sentencing Law & Policy Blog, a New York Times article (Jan. 10) reviews the plea deal former Connecticut Governor John Rowland agreed to right before Christmas (see post here) that included an admission to receiving unlawful gifts totaling approximately $107,000. According to the article: [P]rosecutors wanted Mr. Rowland to admit to
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