Last Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Black v. U.S. and Weyhrauch v. U.S., two of the three federal honest services fraud cases currently before the Court. On Friday, lawyers for Jeffrey Skilling submitted their brief in the third, Skilling v. U.S. This Monday, the Court…
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in another honest services fraud case: Skilling v. United States. Jeffrey Skilling, of Enron notoriety, is challenging his conviction for honest services fraud and the venue of his trial. The honest services fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1346, expands the definition of…
As we discussed in this post, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear media mogul Conrad Black’s appeal regarding whether the honest services fraud statute applies in a purely private setting where the defendant’s conduct risks no foreseeable harm to the putative victims. We are very interested…
Eleventh Circuit case law, the controlling federal law here in Georgia, is at risk of changing next fall, when the Supreme Court will likely decide a criminal case and resolve a split among the circuit courts of appeals. The mail fraud and wire fraud laws are the bread and butter…
In a previous post we discussed the federal statutes on money laundering, why they can prove complicated for criminal defense lawyers in defending cases, and how much broader they are than most people think, affecting even white collar cases. Last week President Obama signed the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act…
Some prosecutors are a little like complaining children, they are never satisfied unless they get their way, and they will continue to whine for a long time until they do. This past Friday, in an appeal involving a white collar federal criminal prosecution the Supreme Court took a case to…
The Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Justice issued a massive report earlier this week concerning how the various federal prosecutors around the country are doing (or not doing) their jobs. While there’s a lot of truth to the old saying about “lies, damn lies and…
The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit recently issued a very lengthy opinion that covers a variety of sentencing issues we see quite often in federal white collar cases. Although this case came out of the appellate court that covers Denver, we see similar issues in cases…