A former New York City human rights lawyer was shot and killed on the tiny Pacific island of Yap where she was the acting attorney general — with friends saying Tuesday that she was planning to return soon to the U.S., reports the New York Post.

Rachelle Bergeron, 33, had just returned from her daily jog Monday when she was murdered. The FBI is sending a team to help the investigation, bureau spokesperson Michelle Ernst told the paper Tuesday.

Her husband, Simon Haemmerling, was inside the home and raced out at the sound of three gunshots, reports indicate.

Read the NY Post article.

A Wichita attorney known as “The Bull” has admitted his involvement in cyber threats against his critics, and a federal court ordered him to pay more than $425,000, reports The Wichita Eagle.

Brad Pistotnik pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of being an accessory after the fact to making an extortionate threat over the internet, according to the U.S. attorney. He must pay fines and restitution.

“In his plea, Pistotnik admitted that he paid David Dorsett for ‘reputation management services,’ writes the Eagle‘s Jason Tidd. “That service included Dorsett sending a flood of emails to Leagle, RipoffReport and Jaburg Wilk demanding that negative information be removed from their websites, prosecutors said. The emails threatened to target their advertisers.”

Read the Wichita Eagle article.

Robert Shapiro, the former chief executive of Woodbridge Group of Cos., received the maximum sentence of 25 years in prison for running a $1.3-billion fraud that caused more than 7,000 retirees and other investors to lose money, reports Bloomberg.

Shapiro lured investors with promises of returns as high as 10 percent from investments in loans to property developers. Instead, he used money from new investors to repay earlier ones and used $36 million to buy luxury homes, wines, paintings and custom jewelry for his wife, according to Bloomberg’s Bob Van Voris.

“Prosecutors said Shapiro moved money through a network of 270 limited liability companies that he controlled. Investors lost $450 million, according to the government,” Van Voris writes.

Read the Bloomberg article.

The trial of two people charged with murdering a prominent Florida law professor locked in a rancorous battle with his ex-wife and in-laws ended with a guilty verdict for one defendant and a mistrial for another.

The victim, Dan Markel, 41, was a professor at the Florida State University College of Law who had helped build a network of online legal scholarship. After a divorce, he and his ex-wife, Wendi Adelson, were given joint custody of their two young sons.

The New York Times reports that the state had charged three people with the murder, hoping to pressure them into revealing whoever may have financed the crime, according to Times reporter Patricia Mazzei.

The Tallahassee jury found Sigfredo Garcia guilty of first-degree murder but was unable to reach a verdict for defendant Katherine Magbanua.

Prosecutors argued that Markel was murdered because a court order prevented his ex-wife from relocating to South Florida with their children. They said her brother and mother then got involved, and arranged to pay the alleged killers $100,000 for the murder.

None of the former in-laws have been charged, and through their lawyers they have maintained their innocence.

Read the NY Times article.

Thomas Lagan, one of two lawyers who took part in a nearly $9 million scheme that victimized the elderly, has been sentenced to four to 12 years in prison, the New York state attorney general’s office announced.

Lagan and fellow lawyer and co-defendant Richard Sherwood were charged with stealing almost $10 million from family trusts they were responsible for overseeing, reports the Albany Times Union.

Lagan, 60, pleaded guilty to first-degree grand larceny in state court in Albany. He pleaded guilty to federal charges in August.

Sherwood, who has pleaded guilty, awaits sentencing.

Read the  Times Union article.

An attorney and former police officer was found guilty Friday in a Virginia federal court of defrauding his former employer, an autism education organization and the campaign of a Virginia Democratic political leader, reports The Washington Post.

“David Miller, 70, conspired with his wife to embezzle more than $1.5 million by creating fake law firms that siphoned funds from then-Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax), SkyLink Aviation, and the Community College Consortium on Autism and Intellectual Disabilities,” according to the Post‘s Rachel Weiner. “Linda Wallis Miller, who had served as Saslaw’s campaign treasurer, pleaded guilty to the three fraud schemes in 2015 and was sentenced to 56 months in prison. David Miller faces up to 20 years in prison on each of the 10 counts of conviction when he is sentenced Jan. 24.”

Read the Post report.

Elizabeth Holmes

Photo by Max Morse for TechCrunch

The Mercury News reports that lawyers representing disgraced Theranos founder and accused fraudster Elizabeth Holmes said in a civil case claim she hasn’t paid them for more than a year and probably never will, according to court records, and they don’t want to be her lawyers anymore.

“Ms. Holmes has not paid Cooley [LLP] for any of its work as her counsel of record in this action for more than a year,” lawyers Stephen Neal, John Dwyer and Jeffrey Lombard said in the filing. They are asking the court for approval to stop representing Holmes.

Holmes faces maximum penalties of 20 years in prison and a $2.75 million fine, plus possible restitution, according to Ethan Baron of the News.

Read the Mercury News article.

Gordon Caplan, who left his job as co-chairman of the prestigious New York law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP this year amid the U.S. college-admissions scandal, was sentenced Thursday to one month in prison, reports Bloomberg Law.

“I disregarded the values I’ve had throughout my life,” the once-highflying New York M&A lawyer told the U.S. district judge just before she sentenced him.

The sentence also includes a $50,000 fine and 250 hours of community service.

In his guilty plea, Caplan admitted he paid $75,000 to fix his daughter’s test scores. He asked for 14 days in jail, if he had to be incarcerated at all.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Over the past few decades, Republican and Democratic administrations have increasingly leaned on deferred prosecution agreements in corporate criminal cases and non-prosecution agreements to settle allegations against corporations, according to a Washington Post report.

For example, JPMorgan Chase, the country’s largest bank, has repeatedly resolved federal investigations over the last eight years by striking a deal: It wouldn’t be prosecuted as long as it stayed out of trouble, writes the Post‘s Renae Merle.

“This comes at a time when the Trump administration is prosecuting fewer white-collar crimes,” she explains. “The number of cases brought against corporations fell to 99 last year, compared with 181 in 2015, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Most were against small companies, 62.9 percent employed fewer than 50 workers, the commission reported.”

Read the Post article.

For nearly seven years, a small South Carolina law firm allegedly helped operate a nationwide scheme that authorities say preyed on desperate military veterans, misled investors and netted millions of dollars in profit, reports The Post and Courier of Charleston.

The Upstate Law Group, owned by Candy Kern-Fuller, allegedly worked with a network of salesmen to lure in cash-strapped veterans and persuade them to sign over their monthly pensions and disability payments, according to Post and Courier reporter Andrew Brown.

The businesses then persuaded retirees to invest in the federal benefit payments, promising up to an 8 percent return on their money. Participating veterans received a lump-sum payout for handing over several years of future income to the investors.

“The problem is the entire arrangement is illegal, according to state and federal authorities. Federal law prohibits veterans from assigning their pension or disability payments to another person,” Brown explains.

In a similar case, federal officials have arrested the alleged ringleader of a nationwide business in which veterans sold their military pensions.

Read the Post and Courier article.

Reuters is reporting that former Wall Street investment banker Sean Stewart was found guilty on Monday of insider trading a second time for passing tips about healthcare industry mergers to his father.

“Prosecutors said Stewart, who worked at JPMorgan Chase & Co and Perella Weinberg Partners, passed tips to his father Robert from 2011 to 2015,” reports Reuters’ Brendan Pierson. “They said the tips yielded $1.16 million of profit for Robert Stewart and his friend Richard Cunniffe, to whom he had forwarded some of them.”

Stewart was convicted on the charges in 2017, but an appeals court ordered a new trial. He had served about a year of his three-year sentence.

Read the Reuters article.

The Baltimore Sun reports that federal prosecutors obtained indictments for prominent Baltimore defense attorney Ken Ravenell on charges of conspiracy to commit racketeering, money laundering and drug distribution, accusing the veteran lawyer of covering up and aiding the crimes of one high-profile client, a Jamaican alleged marijuana kingpin.

Authorities rained his law offices in June and in 2014, and the law office of his attorney also was raided in June. The latest sweep by DEA and IRS agents nabbed more than 50,000 emails, reports the Sun‘s Tim Prudente.

Prosecutors accuse him of conspiring from 2009 to 2014 with a cross-country drug crew led by Richard Byrd in Baltimore.

Read the Baltimore Sun article.

U.S. prosecutors have accused three JPMorgan traders of rigging futures trades in precious metals for nearly a decade, making millions of dollars for the bank at the expense of counterparties that included the bank’s own clients, reports Bloomberg.

The charges outlined in the criminal indictments were the latest turn in a years-long investigation that has previously yielded guilty pleas from traders at several banks, including two from JPMorgan, according to the Bloomberg report.

Prosecutors said more than a dozen JPMorgan employees ultimately helped make manipulative “spoof” trades for the bank, in part by using the strategy their new colleagues brought in May 2008 after JPMorgan took over Bear Stearns.

Read the Bloomberg article.

A Fourth Circuit judge didn’t mince words Tuesday as he appeared unlikely to support allowing the government to continue to sift through thousands of emails confiscated in a raid on an unnamed Maryland law firm, reports Courthouse News Service.

Federal agents seized tens of thousands of electronic files during a raid earlier this year, and now the government and the law firm are at odds on what is privileged, writes CNS’ Brad Kutner.

On of the three judges hearing the case pushed back on the DOJ protocol that allowed the taint team to contact clients and ask for privilege waivers. Client lists are very much protected under attorney-client privilege, said U.S. Circuit Judge Robert King.

Read the Courthouse News Service article.

When it comes to trade secrets, companies should understand that the federal government is increasingly pursuing criminal prosecution, warns Procopio partner Mindy Morton.

“Criminal prosecution of trade secrets is nothing new,” she writes in a post on the Procopio website. “Trade secrets plaintiffs should always consider whether to involve the state or federal authorities in their investigations. In the past, however, the conventional wisdom was that it was difficult to interest district attorneys or U.S. attorneys in business disputes involving trade secret theft. Now, however, the scope of the problem and the government’s renewed focus on stopping international intellectual property theft have made parallel criminal and civil investigations commonplace.”

Read the article.

Steven Fabrizio, a high-level executive at the Motion Picture Association of America, has been fired by the organization following his arrest on charges he sexually abused and blackmailed a woman he contacted through an online dating service for “sugar daddies,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

The MPAA’s senior executive vice president and global general counsel for the MPAA was arrested Aug. 23 after the woman told Washington, D.C., police he coerced her into sex by threatening her, according to a report filed by the officers, writes the Times‘ Ryan Faughnder.

The MPAA is the lobbying arm of film studios Walt Disney Co., Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures and Netflix.

Read the LA Times article.

The Dallas Morning News reports that career Fort Worth defense contractor is in trouble for allegedly making false claims about the type of aluminum he provided under a contract for aircraft landing gear, court records show.

Ross Hyde, 63, has been charged in federal court and faces up to five years in prison, if convicted, writes the News‘ Kevin Krause.

Hyde’s company, Vista Machining Co., has supplied the Pentagon with parts for tanks, aircraft and other military equipment, but inspectors said many of his products were cheap replacements, some illegally obtained from China, which he tried to hide from the government.

Read the  Morning News article.

Image: Houston Police Department

A prominent Bellaire, Texas lawyer with a history in the criminal spotlight and four others were charged in a vast criminal conspiracy case involving allegations of tax evasion, witness tampering and obstruction of justice, and accusing them of barratry, or “ambulance chasing,” and unlawfully soliciting clients through recruiters, reports the Houston Chronicle.

Prosecutors say Jeffrey Stern, founding partner of a personal injury firm, led the scheme. Stern faces prosecution along with two personal injury lawyers, a legal aide and a clinic owner, writes the Chronicle‘s Gabrielle Banks.

He is charged with conspiring to defraud the government, willfully filing multiple false tax returns and aiding in the preparation of those returns.

Read the Chronicle article.

Federal prosecutors in Sacramento have charged an East Coast attorney with conspiracy to possess and distribute marijuana and hashish oil, alleging that he used his personal Learjet since last summer to fly the drugs around the country, reports The Sacremento Bee.

Manish Patel, an attorney licensed in New York and New Jersey, is named in a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday morning in federal court, according to the Bee‘s Sam Stanton.

The El Dorado County District Attorney accused Patel of flying marijuana and cannabis oil into California and other locales since at least August 2018, using a $345,000 Learjet he purchased mostly with cash.

Read the Sacremento Bee article.

Christopher Brady’s behavior spurred former employer Barak Law Group PA to get a restraining order that he has violated three times. The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office and the referee on his Florida Bar discipline case say surveillance video clearly shows Brady using a pickup truck to rip out the firm’s front doors and steal a safe last August, reports the Miami Herald.

And Brady was caught with a semi-automatic rifle he allegedly stole from the firm’s storage unit, the sheriff’s office says.

Now the 35-year-old lawyer faces two counts of burglary and one count of grand theft firearm.

Barak Law Group fired him in 2018.

Read the  Miami Herald article.