Reuters reports that Chris Collins, a former U.S. congressman from New York who was an early backer of President Donald Trump, was sentenced to 26 months in prison and fined $200,000 on Friday after pleading guilty to taking part in an insider trading scheme.

Collins, who resigned from Congress after being found guilty, was convicted of trading on insider information while a board member and 16.8% stakeholder of Australian biotechnology company Innate Immunotherapeutics Ltd.

Reuters’ Jonathan Allen explains Collins’ crime:

“After learning from an email sent by Innate Immunotherapeutics’ chief executive that an experimental multiple sclerosis drug had failed a clinical trial, Collins relayed the news to his son, enabling the son to sell shares before the news became public and eroded their value.”

Read the Reuters article.

Gray Reed partner Charles Sartain takes a look back at some of 2019’s malefactors in the energy business in a post in the firm’s Energy & the Law blog.

“To our bad guys, 2019 was a year flush with hope and opportunity; it ended with recidivism, more misery from Venezuela, a charlatan, an Okie who pulled a multi-million dollar fast-one on Chesapeake and, as in years past, a peek into the darker side of the human condition,” he writes.

The post describes six cases of fraud, conspiracy, money laundering, and outright theft.

Read the article.

A former solar company executive pleaded guilty to defrauding investors of $1 billion, leaving in the company’s wake a string of lawsuits from buyers, suppliers and fired employees, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

DC Solar Solutions of California made solar generators mounted on trailers that provided event lighting and emergency power for communications companies, writes the Chronicle‘s Mallory Moench.

She explains the scheme: “Prosecutors allege DC Solar sold the generators through special funds for investors to get federal tax credits. The company then purported to lease those generators to third parties to generate revenue, little of which it actually made, prosecutors say; instead, they say, early investors were paid with funds from later investors — a classic Ponzi scheme.”

Read the  SF Chronicle article.

A suspect has been arrested in connection with the stabbing murder of a prominent Illinois litigator.

The victim, Randy Gori, practiced asbestos, benzene and personal injury litigation in both Illinois and Missouri, according to the Belleville News-Democrat.

According to charging documents, Timothy Banowetz, 28, of Missouri, bound the hands of Gori and two minors in Gori’s home before using a knife to stab Gori, killing him. Banowetz stole cash and two cell phones from the victims before fleeing in the stolen car, investigators said.

The commander of the investigation team said that Gori’s last acts “likely saved the lives of others,” referring to the minors who were in the home at the time of the attack.

Investigators have not established a connection between Gori and Banowetz.

Read the News-Democrat article.

A suspended Rhode Island lawyer has admitted to illegally collecting more that $200,000 in pension funds for a deceased client for nearly a dozen years after the man’s death, reports the Providence Journal.

Oleg Nikolyszyn, 65, pleaded guilty to two counts of mail fraud and one of theft from an employee benefit pension fund for collecting $234,586 from December 2003 through September 2015 in the name of a former employee of the City of Providence, the report explains.

In a separate case,  Newsday reports that an attorney from Long Island was indicted on a grand larceny charge for stealing more than $300,000 from an elderly client.

Peter Rand stole funds from an irrevocable trust created by the client, a man in his 80s, between April 1, 2014, and Feb. 3, 2015, officials said.

Read the Providence Journal article.

Read the Newsday article.

The Louisville Courier Journal is reporting that Kentucky’s attorney general is asking the FBI to investigate former Gov. Matt Bevin’s pardons.

Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Republican, cited concern for public safety in a letter he wrote to state legislators who had asked him to launch a state investigation into the pardons. The 650 pardons and commutations included cases involving a convicted child rapist and a man convicted of reckless homicide and robbery.

Cameron told the legislators he and his office will assist federal, state and local investigators as needed.

Read the  Courier Journal article.

Image by Mike Mozart

Bloomberg reports that federal officials have arrested a Virginia lawyer accused of trying to extort a chemical manufacturer in connection with litigation over a common weedkiller.

Timothy Litzenburg was arrested for allegedly threatening “to inflict substantial financial and reputational harm” if an unnamed company didn’t provide a $200 million payment disguised as a “consulting agreement,” according to a Justice Department complaint.

Litzenburg — charged with attempted extortion, transmitting interstate communications with the intent to extort, and conspiracy — was one of the lawyers who represented a plaintiff who won jury verdict against Bayer AG in 2018 after alleging that the company’s product, Roundup, caused his terminal non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Read the Bloomberg article.

A federal appeals court has issued an unusual reprimand to a Connecticut judge who had decided to allow an accused sex offender to ask jurors to find him innocent by arguing that the laws he is accused of violating were unjustly applied and the accompanying prison sentences too harsh, reports the Hartford Courant.

In the trial, U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill’s ruling would have permitted a defense lawyer to argue a concept known as jury nullification. It applies in cases where juries nullify or ignore statutes that would result in likely conviction because jurors are persuaded the laws are somehow unfair, explains the Courant’s Edmund H. Mahony.

The trial adjourned abruptly the morning it was to have begun so federal prosecutors could appeal.

Read the  Courant article.

A Philadelphia lawyer who was convicted on six counts of laundering money for a multimillion-dollar drug ring, was disbarred this week in Pennsylvania by the state’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer.

J. Michael Farrell, 65, is serving a three-year federal sentence in Philadelphia, writes the Inquirer‘s Sam Wood. His license to practice law has been suspended since 2017, when a jury found him guilty on a total of 10 charges that also included witness tampering.

Prosecutors alleged Farrell worked with a crime family based in Baltimore that distributed thousands of pounds of illegal marijuana throughout the Mid-Atlantic states.

Read the Philadelphia Inquirer article.

The former chief executive of Bumble Bee Foods LLC, Chris Lischewski, was found guilty of price-fixing on Tuesday, reports Bloomberg.

Prosecutors in a San Francisco court alleged that he conspired with colleagues and executives at rival companies on a “peace proposal” in order to boost prices and meet earnings targets set by Bumble Bee’s 2010 sale to Lion Capital, according to the report.

Bumble Bee pleaded guilty in 2017 to a felony charge of conspiring with competitors Starkist Co. and Chicken of the Sea Inc. to fix and raise prices of canned tuna in the U.S. from 2011 through at least late 2013.

Read the Reuters article.

Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP announced its 2019 FCPA & Anti-Bribery Alert, a comprehensive review of the cases, trends and enforcement actions that impacted anti-corruption law throughout 2018 and 2019. The Anti-Corruption & Internal Investigations Group has analyzed noteworthy developments in anti-corruption enforcement over the past year and highlight the actionable trends and lessons pertinent to general counsel and compliance professionals.

In a release, the firm said the Alert’s primary focus is on U.S. enforcement of the FCPA. The Alert details each FCPA resolution and ongoing criminal matter from 2018 through publication. The Alert details the underlying conduct related to each resolution, the actions of the companies throughout their investigations, and the resulting penalty. Walmart’s landmark settlement with U.S. authorities and the SEC’s $16 million enforcement action against Deutsche Bank for improper hiring practices in China and Russia are just a few of the cases studied in this year’s Alert.

As the fight against foreign bribery has taken root outside the United States, the Alert has been expanded to cover key developments from other jurisdictions as well. This year’s Alert includes Chapters on the anti-corruption enforcement developments in France and the U.K. and updates on the enforcement efforts in Brazil, China, and Mexico.

From a trend perspective, the lawyers at Hughes Hubbard note it is critical to look at the past as prologue. International coordination, U.S. law enforcement coordination, tailored monitorships, third party risk factors, technological developments, and the increasing importance of timely remediation are just a few of the trends discussed in the Alert. The insights provided for each of these trends can serve as useful tools for multinational companies considering how to manage their operations and identify and mitigate their most significant areas of anti-corruption risk, the firm said.

Bloomberg Law reports that an Ohio attorney who was found guilty of a felony for helping clients try to evade federal taxes was suspended for two years by the state’s highest court.

The Ohio Supreme Court found that actions of Gregory Thomas Plesich violated professional ethics rules prohibiting lawyers from helping clients break the law and that he violated rules that forbid lawyers from committing acts that reflect adversely on the legal profession and from acting dishonestly.

Bloomberg Law’s Melissa Heelan Stanzione explains:

“Plesich deposited two checks from them totaling almost $200,000 into his client trust account in 2013. The money was not payment for legal services. He then wrote 29 checks from that account over the course of a year ranging in amounts from $3,000 to $7,500 to the wife.”

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Mark Scott, a former equity partner at the law firm Locke Lord LLP, was convicted on Thursday of conspiracy to commit money laundering and bank fraud, reports FinanceFeeds.

He was one of the defendants in a lawsuit targeting individuals involved in the fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme OneCoin. Scott was suspected of laundering approximately $400 million in proceeds of OneCoin through fraudulent investment funds that he set up and operated for that purpose, writes FinanceFeeds’ Maria Nikolova.

Scott could face up to 20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering and up to 30 years for conspiracy to commit bank fraud.

Read the FinanceFeeds article.

Image by Gage Skidmore

After a weekslong search to find a lawyer who would represent Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer finally found a legal team to represent him in the criminal investigation into his activities related to Ukraine, reports The New York Times.

Although Giuliani has a wide range of close associates, “at least four prominent attorneys declined for various reasons, according to people familiar with the matter. They included Mary Jo White, who also once led the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District, as well as Theodore V. Wells Jr., a trial lawyer at Paul, Weiss, according to people familiar with those discussions,” the Times reports.

He announced he will be represented by three lawyers, including his longtime friend, Robert J. Costello. Giuliani and Costello crossed paths last year during the investigation of another Trump associate, Michael D. Cohen.

Read the NY Times article.

In a matter of days, President Trump will ask the Supreme Court to rule on his bold claim that he is absolutely immune from criminal investigation while he remains in office, writes Adam Liptak for The New York Times.

The new case, concerning an investigation by Manhattan prosecutors into hush-money payments to two women who said they had affairs with Trump, will be the Supreme Court’s first chance to consider the president’s arguments that he is beyond the reach of the justice system.

Liptak explains the Supreme Court’s options: Announce next month whether it will hear the case and to rule by June, or simply deny review, leaving in place the appeals court ruling and effectively requiring Trump’s accountants to turn over his tax returns.

Read the  NY Times article.

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against former special counsel Robert Mueller, rejecting a conspiracy theorist’s claim that Mueller pressured him to commit perjury during the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to a Courthouse News report.

Jerome Corsi alleged that Mueller violated the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure by leaking grand jury information about him to the media to pressure him into giving false testimony.

Courthouse News’ Jack Rodgers quotes the ruling: “The article explicitly references Mueller’s ‘case,’ indicating that the information relates to his investigation and not to the grand jury’s investigation. Moreover, the article does not attribute any information to Mueller or anyone else associated with the grand jury investigation.”

Read the Courthouse News article.

A New Jersey appeals court took the unusual step of booting county prosecutors off a drug case after the office spied on a defense attorney preparing for trial, finding that when Middlesex County detectives put a wire on a key witness, they may as well have been “hiding in the closet,” reports NJ.com.

The appellate court gave the state attorney general’s office 45 days to assign it to “untainted attorneys” in another jurisdiction and ordered a hearing over whether the prosecutors’ key witness will be allowed to testify, according to NJ.com’s S.P. Sullivan.

Detectives at the county prosecutor’s office paid an informant $180 to secretly record a meeting with defense lawyer Joseph Mazraani.

Read the NJ.com article.

Pacific Daily News reports that suspects were arrested in connection with the recent killing of Yap Acting General Rachelle Bergeron, Yap Gov. Henry S. Falan said in a statement Monday.

“The next stage in the investigation will be the court proceedings as the state moves toward the final stage of conviction,” the Yap governor said in a statement.

Bergeron, from Waukesha, Wisconsin, was shot to death in her backyard after an evening run on Oct. 14, just 11 days before she and her husband, Simon Hammerling, a missionary pilot with Pacific Mission Aviation, were to mark their first wedding anniversary.

Read the Pacific Daily News article.

One of President Donald Trump’s appointees to the federal bench issued a controversial opinion with a startling opening line that amounted to a ringing endorsement of law enforcement and a dire warning to its critics, reports CNN.

“If we want to stop mass shootings, we should stop punishing police officers who put their lives on the line to prevent them,” James Ho of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in an opinion.

His statement came in a dissent from a denial en banc. The case involved a wrongful death suit against Kaufman County, Texas, in the officer shooting of a man who was carrying a toy pistol.

A district court dismissed the case, holding that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity, according to CNN’s Ariane de Vogue. But a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit sent the case back down for further proceedings.

Read the CNN article.

Texas lawyer Jamie Balagia, 62, the “DWI Dude,” is on trial in federal court in Sherman, accused of shaking down his three Colombian clients — alleged drug kingpins — by making false promises of freedom in exchange for hefty fees, reports The Dallas Morning News.

Prosecutors allege that Balagia and his cohorts were paid roughly $1.5 million by Segundo Segura, his brother Aldemar Segura, and Hermes “Megatron” Ordonez, all of whom allegedly operated cocaine labs in the jungles of Colombia.

Prosecutors say that Balagia and his Florida investigator falsely told their clients that they could buy information to help reduce their sentences.

Kevin Krause of the Dallas News reports that evidence against Balagia harks back to a scandal that broke in Miami in 2000 with the arrest of a Drug Enforcement Administration informant named Baruch Vega.

Read the  Dallas News article.