New Orleans attorney Gregory Joseph St. Angelo, former general counsel at a failed First NBC Bank who pleaded guilty earlier this month to a bank fraud charge, was indefinitely suspended following a Louisiana Supreme Court order, reports Louisiana Record.

St. Angelo had pleaded guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to commit bank fraud after the former general counsel reached a plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“By the time First NBC Bank failed in late April 2017, the balances on loans issued to St. Angelo and certain entities totaled approximately $46.7 million, and First NBC Bank had also paid St. Angelo approximately $9.6 million for purported tax credit investments,” a criminal bill of information said.

Read the Louisiana Record article.

The 2016 death of Blaise Gamba, an associate in the Tampa office of Carlton Fields, has been declared an accident, despite her family’s suspicions that her husband may have been responsible.

The  Tampa Bay Times reports on the case, which involved a $1 million life insurance policy and her husband’s alleged infidelity.

Blaise and William Gamba were visiting fishing spots near Tampa in their 22-foot boat when something went horribly awry, writes the Times‘ Kathryn Varn.

William Gamba claimed he was scuba diving when he looked up and saw his wife in distress above him. He hoisted her into the boat and sought help. She was pronounced dead at a hospital the next day.

“Suspicion first turned toward William Gamba five days later, when detectives spoke to two of his wife’s close friends,” Varn writes.

Read the Times  article.

Actions by two Massachusetts lab technicians over several years led to courts retroactively dismissing nearly 38,000 drug convictions dating back a decade. Now, the prosecutors who handled the case are facing their own legal troubles, reports The Washington Post.

The Massachusetts state bar has filed disciplinary charges against three of the assistant attorneys general who withheld evidence from defendants, and a federal judge has ruled that one of the prosecutors is not entitled to immunity and can be sued by one-time defendant Renaldo Penate for violating his civil rights, writes the Post‘s Tom Jackman.

Records indicate one of the technicians was suspected of stealing and using illegal drugs that had been submitted to her for testing.

Read the  Post article.

An attorney for a contractor accused of passing envelopes of cash in restaurant bathrooms to Atlanta’s former purchasing director said that if his client made payments to imprisoned city official Adam Smith, it was out of generosity to a cash-strapped friend and not with corrupt intent, reports The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“It is not illegal to give a gift, goodwill, friendship,” unless it’s for a dishonest purpose to influence that official, said Steve Sadow, an attorney for contractor Jeff Jafari.

Sadow also said in a federal court hearing that evidence provided by prosecutors so far suggests that Smith took money from more people than prosecutors have revealed, but that those individuals haven’t been prosecuted.

Read the Journal-Constitution article.

A longtime lawyer with Gay Chacker & Mittin of Philadelphia has been charged with diverting clients from the plaintiff personal injury firm for a decade to outside attorneys in exchange for a cut of their fees, reports Philadelphia Business Journal.

Neil I. Mittin, 64, was a name partner with the firm for 38 years. The firm name is called Gay & Chacker.

Prosecutors, who charged him with mail fraud, said Mittin engaged in a 10-year-long scheme to steal cases from his longtime firm by referring them to outside attorneys. Prosecutors said the impacted clients did not know he was referring the cases, nor did they ask for referrals, writes the Journal‘s Jeff Blumenthal.

Read the Business Journal article.

Five years after a Florida law professor was gunned down in his driveway, prosecutors are preparing to prosecute the crime that led to shocking revelations of alleged Miami hit men and a wicked murder-for-hire plot that stunned Tallahassee, a tight-knit law scholar community and the world beyond.

The Tallahassee Democrat updates the story of the murder of Dan Markel, a lawyer and Florida State law professor who was 41 when he was murdered.

A convicted Miami gang leader already in prison for other crimes has made a deal with prosecutors to testify against two other people in exchange for a lighter sentence. Prosecutors contend Markel’s ex-wife’s family ordered his killing, according to the Democrat‘s Karl Etters.

Read the Tallahassee Democrat article.

The former compliance officer and president of pharmaceutical distributor Miami-Luken were charged alongside two West Virginia pharmacists by federal prosecutors in Ohio Thursday with conspiring to distribute controlled substances.

ABC News reports Miami-Luken’s former compliance officer, James Barclay, and former president, Anthony Rattini, were charged.

“In one instance, prosecutors claim that Miami-Luken distributed 3.7 million hydrocodone pills to a single pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia — a town with a population of about 400 people from 2008 to 2011. That averages out to 9,250 hydrocodone pills for every resident of the town,” reports ABC’s Luke Barr.

Read the ABC News article.

A disbarred attorney from Wading River, NY, was sentenced Tuesday to 24 months in federal prison for a wire fraud scheme that duped investors out of $2 million in supposed real estate investments, reports Newsday.

A U.S. district judge handed down the prison sentence to Alice Belmonte, 53, along with an order to pay $2 million in restitution to her victims. The former lawyer previously had served 30 months in state prison for operating a separate $4 million Ponzi scheme, officials said.

“Alice Belmonte, falsely holding herself out as an experienced practicing attorney, prevailed upon investors to trust her with their money and stole it from them,” Eastern District U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue said in a statement.

Read the Newsday article.

The Houston Chronicle reports that a Houston oil executive was sentenced to state prison for defrauding investors who thought they were paying for the drilling and testing of wells — but instead paid the executive’s mortgage.

Daniel Walsh, a Galveston oilman, was sentenced to 18 years in state prison on Friday in Wichita County, according to the Chronicle‘s Erin Douglas.

The former CEO of Houston-based Western Capital Inc. had pleaded  guilty to money laundering Wednesday after raising money for the drilling and testing of oil wells in Galveston between 2007 and 2009, but spent the money on his personal expenses instead.

Read the article.

A Texas judge faces decades in prison after a federal jury convicted him Thursday of taking bribes from an attorney, including a $15,000 pickup truck and an envelope stuffed with $5,500, according to a Courthouse News Service report.

Rodolfo “Rudy” Delgado, 65, of Edinburg, resigned from the 93rd District Court in Hidalgo County after a federal grand jury returned a six-count indictment in February 2018, according to Courthouse News reporter Cameron Langford.

The Brownsville Herald reported that Edinburg attorney Noe Perez testified during Delgado’s five-day trial that after a client paid for his services with a $15,000 pickup truck in 2008, Delgado learned of the deal and asked him about the truck’s condition, then took the truck and never paid for it.

Read the Courthouse News article.

The ABA Journal reports that a partner at Husch Blackwell in Madison, Wisconsin, has left the law firm after receiving a reprimand for allegedly punching a bar manager and driving while intoxicated.

The firm announced that Jeffrey McIntyre had withdrawn from the firm in wake of the state supreme court’s reprimand. “Obviously, our firm does not condone or tolerate his behavior,” the firm said in a statement.

The reprimand cites an incident that happened in the early-morning hours of Christmas 2017, in which a manager of a bar in Madison told police that McIntyre was with two women who were not happy that the bar was closing. The manager said the situation escalated, with McIntyre punching him in the nose.

McIntyre also pleaded guilty to a driving while intoxicated charge in 2018.

Read the ABA Journal‘s article.

The Associated Press is reporting that a former Equifax executive who sold stock a week and a half before the company announced a massive data breach was sentenced Thursday to serve four months in federal prison for insider trading.

Jun Ying is the former chief information officer of Equifax’s U.S. Information Solutions. His prison time is to be followed by a year of supervised release, and he was also ordered to pay about $117,000 in restitution and a $55,000 fine, the U.S. attorney’s office in Atlanta said in a news release.

“The SEC has said that at the time of the breach, Ying was often entrusted with nonpublic company information,” according to the AP. “He was a leading candidate to become the global chief information officer of Equifax, a job he was offered on Sept. 15, 2017, the same day the company announced then-CIO Dave Webb would retire.”

Read the AP report.

Investigators say the wife of Atlanta commercial real estate lawyer Gary Farris shot and killed her husband and then tried to conceal the crime by burning his body and hiding the remains on their property.

Melody Farris was extradited late Wednesday from Tennessee to Georgia, where she faces charges of malice murder, aggravated assault and concealing a death, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The victim’s body was discovered July 5.

“It took weeks for authorities to determine the extensively burned remains were that of 58-year-old Gary Farris, an attorney for the regional law firm Burr and Forman and the founder of its Atlanta office,” write Chelsea Prince and Christian Boone. “Even after his identity was confirmed by the GBI, sheriff’s investigators were not ready to identify a suspect in his death.”

Read the Journal-Constitution article.

An executive from the biologics arm of Korean conglomerate Samsung faces arrest as part of a probe into the company’s accounting practices. according to MedCityNews.

The arrest of the executive, surnamed Lee, is part of an accounting scandal in which Samsung BioLogics allegedly inflated its value ahead of its 2016 initial public offering, after which executives from the company – led by CEO Kim Tae-han – destroyed evidence of the maneuver, reports MedCityNews’ Alaric Dearment.
“Kim appeared in court two weeks ago in Seoul for a hearing to determine whether to issue a warrant for his arrest,” Dearment writes. “Lee is the eighth Samsung BioLogics executive to be arrested.”

Read the MedCityNews article.

Boeing has assembled a deeply connected defense team to respond to a federal criminal investigation related to the 737 MAX, reports The Seattle Times.

One of the members of the defense team represented Vice President Mike Pence in the Russian interference investigation, another has served as the nation’s deputy attorney general, and a third played a central role in the Russian probe and the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, according to Times reporter Steve Miletich.

Federal prosecutors are using a grand jury in Washington, D.C., to examine the design and certification process of the 737 MAX, after one crash on Oct. 29 off Indonesia and another in Ethiopia on March 10 killed 346 people and led to worldwide grounding of the plane.

Read the Seattle Times article.

Dan Markel, a Florida State University law professor and one of America’s most eminent legal scholars, died at the hands of hired killers, prosecutors say.

Miami New Times reports the accused triggerman and his girlfriend will soon face trial in Tallahassee on first-degree murder charges.

Reporter Steve Miller of the New Times writes that police believe Markel’s ex-mother-in-law and her son paid $100,000 to have Markel killed.

“According to law enforcement, they hoped to free Wendi to move with her two pre-school-aged sons to South Florida, where she grew up. But almost five years after the murder, neither has been criminally charged,” writes Miller.

Read the Miami New Times article.

An assistant public defender in Illinois has been fired after her boss discovered she is not an attorney, reports the Belleville News-Democrat.

Kelcie Miller was hired in October and had worked for the Madison County public defender’s office until last week, when her boss, John Rekowski, fired her.

“Rekowski said during the news conference he found out that Miller was not an attorney after a judge had checked the state’s Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission database of registered lawyers because a court reporter had asked the judge how to spell Miller’s first name. She was not listed,” write the News-Democrat‘s Lexi Cortes and Mike Koziatek.

Read the News-Democrat article.

The Miami Herald reports that a federal judge ordered top Carnival Corporation executives, including chairman Micky Arison and president Arnold Donald, to appear in court on June 3 because the company is charged with violating its probation.

“Federal prosecutors announced last week that they had reached a deal with Carnival Corp. on the charges, which include dumping plastic into Bahamian waters and falsifying records. At the June 3 hearing, Judge Patricia Seitz will review the deal, and she wants Carnival Corp.’s C-suite to be there,” explains the Herald‘s Taylor Dolven.

The world’s largest cruise company was put on probation for its 2016 conviction for environmental crimes on its Princess Cruises ships. Carnival paid $40 million as part of its guilty plea and began its five-year probation in April 2017. It was Carnival Corp.’s third conviction for the same crime of dumping oily waste into the ocean since 1998.

Read the Miami Herald report.

Bloomberg Law reports that the former co-chairman of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP pleaded guilty to conspiracy and faces the possibility of going to prison after admitting he bribed a consultant with $75,000 to have him rig his daughter’s college board scores.

Gordon Caplan is one of the highest-profile parents ensnared in a national college-admissions cheating scandal, according to Bloomberg’s Patricia Hurtado and Janelle Lawrence. “He admitted May 21 he conspired with William Rick Singer, the mastermind behind the scam, and funneled the payment through a charity that Singer ran.”

Prosecutors have said they’ll recommend that Caplan a term as low as eight months in prison and pay a fine of $40,000 on the charge of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest-services mail fraud.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

A law firm in Washington, D.C., and a law office in Wellesley, Massachusetts, are among the victims of malware attacks by an overseas cybercrime network, according to an ABA Journal report.

A Department of Justice press release announced the dismantling of the cybercrime network in an international law enforcement operation. The release did not identify the law firm or law office, other than to reveal their locations.

“The operation was highlighted by the unprecedented initiation of criminal prosecutions against members of the network in four different countries as a result of cooperation between the United States, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Germany, Bulgaria, Europol and Eurojust,” the press release states.

Read the ABA Journal report.