Fighting Fraud: The U.S. Attorney's Office in New York is launching a new unit in the civil division to focus on exclusively on litigation in pursuit of complex frauds, The New York Law Journal reports. U.S. Attorney Preet S. Bharara said the six-person civil frauds unit will be a complement to criminal prosecutions for bank, mortgage and other frauds, including False Claims Act cases. "Criminal enforcement is not the be all and end all of changing behavior and getting people to comply with the law," Bharara said. "The civil hammer is a pretty big hammer too."
Supreme Court Toss Up: The investment industry and critics alike are both claiming victory in yesterday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a dispute about adviser fees in Jones v. Harris Associates, The National Law Journal reports. The disagreement over the decision portends more litigation over alleged excessive fees flowing from investment advisers. A New York Times piece on the case is here.
Lawyer Sentenced: A former Arnold & Porter tax partner was sentenced Tuesday to three years of probation for marketing false tax shelters, The New York Law Journal reports via law.com. Peter Cinquegrani pleaded guilty in 2008 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to crimes that included conspiracy to commit tax fraud and aiding and abetting tax evasion. The presiding judge considered the impact a prison sentence would have as a deterrence for lawyers but decided to reward Cinquegrani for his cooperation with prosecutors.
Falling Short: The Justice Department needs to ramp up its effort to combat identity theft, including better coordination in the department and more leadership, the Office of the Inspector General said in a report published yesterday. The department, according to the report, isn't complying with many of the recommendations an identity theft task force made during the second Bush administration. Click here for The BLT write-up.
Shooting into a Crowd: At least nine people were injured, including four fatally, during a shooting in Southeast Washington on Tuesday night that marked one of the District's deadliest bursts of violence in years, The Washington Post reports. Three people are in custody following a police chase into Maryland.
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