Justice Department leaders have reached a temporary staffing compromise to return white-collar units to the Criminal Division fraud section, after they’d been transferred to the Trump administration’s new fraud division, said two people familiar with the move. An organizational memo circulating internally Thursday states that market integrity and consumer fraud teams will go back to their original fraud section home,…
The legal theories advanced by DOJ and the CFTC in the Van Dyke case are not limited to classified information and can readily be deployed to charge insider trading in event contracts on the basis of confidential corporate information that was misused in breach of a duty.
For example, an employee, contractor, lawyer, banker, consultant, board member, vendor, or platform employee could face scrutiny for trading on event contracts tied to:
–an unannounced merger, acquisition, financing, or restructuring;
–clinical-trial results, regulatory approvals, or product recalls;
–earnings, layoffs, cybersecurity incidents, or major customer losses;
–litigation outcomes or settlement announcements;
–product launches, platform listings, or token-listing decisions;
–sports injuries, team-lineup decisions, or league disciplinary actions; or
–government contracts, sanctions, tariffs, enforcement actions, or procurement decisions.
A high-ranking New York federal prosecutor signaled that white-collar enforcement would ramp up after a slower year but also said the Justice Department’s focus is shifting. “If you have fewer people, you can bring fewer cases,” said Alixandra Smith, chief of the criminal division for the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, citing a hiring freeze…
Binance Holdings Ltd., the world’s largest crypto exchange, is moving toward a potential deal with the US Justice Department that would allow it to drop a key oversight requirement in its $4.3 billion settlement of allegations that it didn’t do enough to prevent money laundering, according to people familiar with the matter. Federal prosecutors are in discussions with Binance over…
A Justice Department official in Washington is pushing back on acting Los Angeles US Attorney Bill Essayli’s reliance on recent white-collar policy to dismiss charges against a fast-food executive who’s donated to President Donald Trump. Essayli’s court filing Tuesday pointed to a May memo from the head of DOJ’s criminal division to justify his office’s July 29 motion to dismiss…
The Justice Department will resume investigating foreign-bribery cases with a narrowed focus on matters that relate to U.S. strategic interests, including buttressing the ability of American firms to compete for business overseas. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the changes after a four-month review triggered by President Trump’s order earlier this year freezing corruption investigations. Trump said at the time…
The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday barred its attorneys from traveling to or speaking at American Bar Association events, in the latest salvo by President Donald Trump’s administration against the nation’s largest voluntary lawyer group. U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in a memo seen by Reuters said the ABA had been engaging in “activist causes” contrary to the…
In his four-page memo to staff titled “Ending Regulation by Prosecution,” U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) — created in 2022 under then-President Joe Biden — would be “disbanded effective immediately.” “The Department of Justice is not a digital assets regulator,” Blanche wrote in the memo seen by CoinDesk. “However, the prior Administration…
The U.S. Justice Department has begun building out its new pilot whistleblower program, and so far has received reports from more than 100 tipsters since it was launched last month, a senior department official said. The highly anticipated cash-for-tips program, announced in March, was officially launched on Aug. 1. The department has named Patrick Gushue, a trial attorney in the…