Episode 286 -- Matt Stankiewicz on the Ripple Decision and Celsius CEO Indictment
Blue Sky Laws: Defending State-Level Securities Violations
The Justice Insiders: The Administrative State is Not Your Friend - A Conversation with Professor Richard Epstein
Four Decision Points in SEC Securities Investigations
Crypto Enforcement Is Here, and Always Has Been
Cryptocurrency: The Regulator’s Perspective
Investment Management Roundtable Discussion – Regulatory and Enforcement Update
As new areas of the law emerge, driven in part by technology and the free flow of information, federal agencies are becoming more aggressive with a tried and true carrot-and-stick approach to law and regulatory enforcement. ...more
The U.S. Department of Justice ("DOJ") won at trial in its first insider trading prosecution against an executive based exclusively on his sales of stock under 10b5-1 trading plans....more
The SEC recently charged Ilit Raz, the CEO of Joonko Diversity Inc., a failed recruitment startup, with "AI washing" based on allegedly false claims that her company had developed an “automatic recruiting solution” to help...more
Employers should check their confidentiality and severance agreements for a common oversight that, for some, is becoming a costly error. Recent enforcement activity by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Rule...more
2023 was another groundbreaking year for whistleblower litigation and bounty awards. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shattered records by issuing a $279 million award and continued to actively enforce the...more
On October 30, 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a civil suit against SolarWinds and their chief information security officer (CISO) for fraudulent cybersecurity information. The SEC claims that...more
On November 1, 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) brought charges against cryptocurrency project SafeMoon LLC and its U.S. subsidiary SafeMoon US LLC, along with...more
On September 29, 2023, Albemarle Corporation (“Albemarle”), a global chemical manufacturer, reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) to resolve...more
Two recent Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) actions – a Department of Justice (DOJ) Opinion letter and an SEC settlement – underscore key diligence questions that legal and compliance departments should address when...more
As discussed in our December 15, 2022 post, significant amendments to Rule 10b5-1 plan requirements took effect earlier this year. With the Justice Department announcing its first criminal prosecution challenging a Rule...more
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) on June 29, 2023 brought insider trading charges against several defendants in four proceedings. The insider trading cases demonstrate key focus...more
On Thursday, June 29, 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced the filing of four civil insider trading cases involving a variety of alleged insider trading violations. These cases were brought against a...more
Critics have repeatedly alleged that executives routinely take advantage of the many loopholes that exist regarding Rule 10b5-1 trading plans to engage in improper conduct. These criticisms finally seem to have been heard by...more
Government officials, especially those in SEC Enforcement, have been making noise about the potential for insider trading abuse of Rule 10b5-1 plans since at least 2007, when then-SEC Enforcement Chief Linda Thomsen expressed...more
The Justice Department recently indicted the Executive Chairman of Ontrak, Inc. alleging that he failed the “clean hands” requirement because he had been aware of material nonpublic information relating to the potential loss...more
In July of 2022, the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) each alleged insider trading violations against a former Coinbase employee Ishan Wahi (“Ishan”), his brother...more
A year ago, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) heralded data analytics in announcing parallel insider trading actions against a senior executive at a pharmaceutical company...more
On September 27, 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced settlements against 11 major financial institutions, resolving an industry sweep into employees improperly using personal messaging...more
Last week, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fined 16 Wall Street firms a total of $1.1 billion for recordkeeping violations based on the failure to maintain employees’ electronic communications, such...more
Recently the SEC filed suit for insider trading of securities against a high-level employee at the popular crypto exchange, Coinbase. The SEC filed its civil suit in Seattle on July 22, 2022, against and his co-conspirators....more
On July 21, 2022, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) each alleged insider trading violations against a former Coinbase employee, his brother, and another alleged acquaintance...more
On July 21, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced parallel civil and criminal actions against a former product manager at Coinbase...more
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged nine individuals with insider trading in three separate actions on July 25, 2022, alleging the misconduct resulted in ill-gotten gains totaling more than $6.8 million....more
With the enduring popularity of certain NFTs and the promise of their use in the Metaverse and beyond, the hype around the new technology has been accompanied by rising concerns over NFTs being the centerpiece of traditional...more
Significant parallel actions commenced this week by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) bring crypto fraud enforcement into the spotlight, with the SEC alleging that multiple...more