On April 5, 2023, the United States Sentencing Commission announced amendments to the United States Sentencing Guidelines that will come in to effect on November 1, 2023. Below is a summary of those changes as it relates to just fraud cases. Under proposed USSG 4C1.1, a client will receive a 2-level decrease…
What is Bitcoin money laundering? Bitcoin money laundering is the process of using Bitcoin to conceal the origins of illegally obtained money. This can be done by transferring the Bitcoin to multiple accounts, mixing it with other Bitcoin, or using it to purchase goods or services. Some believe that Bitcoin transactions…
We posed some questions about cryptocurrency using Bard (Google’s version of Chat GPT), First we asked, WHAT IS CRYPTOCURRENCY? Its response: Cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography for security. A cryptocurrency is difficult to counterfeit because of this security feature. A defining feature of a cryptocurrency, and…
On May 17, 2021, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the establishment of the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force. On March 10, 2022, Garland announced Associate Deputy Attorney General Kevin Chambers as the Director For Covid-19 Fraud Enforcement. In August, 2022, President Biden signed laws that give the Department of Justice and…
Here is the definition from the statute, cut directly from the 11th circuit’s jury instructions: It’s a Federal crime to commit aggravated identity theft. The Defendant can be found guilty of aggravated identity theft only if all the following facts are proved beyond a reasonable doubt: (1) the Defendant knowingly…
The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects against unlawful searches and seizures by the government. When the government wants to obtain a search warrant, an affidavit must be drafted and application must be made to a U.S. Magistrate judge (in federal matters). The affidavit can be more than a hundred pages…
The Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP) and the Non-Residential Abuse Program (NRDAP) are offered by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) to assist inmates suffering from substance abuse issues. RDAP consists of 3 intensive phases, totaling over 500-hours of voluntary individual and group treatment, and it is about 9-12 months long. This…
On April 11, 2022, the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta announced the creation of a new pretrial diversion court, the Accountability, Treatment, and Leadership Court “ATL Court“. It is formed with the Northern District of Georgia, the U.S. Probation Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the Federal Defender Program,…
Manhattan federal agents arrested Archegos Capital Management founder Sung Kook “Bill” Hwang on April 27, 2022 on fraud charges, roughly one year after the investment firm’s huge losses back in March 2021. Department of Justice prosecutors are charging both Hwang and Patrick Halligan, the firm’s chief financial officer, with racketeering…
Attorney General Merrick Garland made recent comments about what he considered to be the Department of Justice’s top priorities for 2022. Since taking office in March 2021, Garland has tried to combat crime in a tumultuous time. He has been criticized for his handling of January 6 investigation and has stated…