White Collar Law & Investigations

The Foley Hoag White Collar Law & Investigations blog addresses the developing regulatory environment that confronts businesses and individuals in virtually any industry.  Whether federal or state investigations, enforcement actions, changing enforcement priorities, criminal prosecutions or related civil proceedings, the White Collar Law & Investigations blog will provide regular coverage and updates that draw on the deep experience of Foley Hoag’s White Collar Crime & Government Investigations practice.

Subscribe
Visit Blog
By: Foley Hoag LLP

Blog Authors

Yoni Bard
Samuel Bauer
Rachel Davidson
Caroline Donovan
Mark Finsterwald
Christian Garcia
Foley Hoag
Michael Hoven
Rachel Hutchinson
Michael Licker
John Marston
Ned Melanson
Stephen Stich

Latest from White Collar Law & Investigations

GettyImages-974208884-300x200.jpg
The Supreme Court has granted certiorari to decide whether the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission can seek and obtain disgorgement from a court as a remedy for a securities violation. A decision that the SEC does not have disgorgement authority would have significant consequences for litigants. In SEC v. Liu, a California District Court held that the defendants had defrauded Chinese individuals seeking to invest in a cancer treatment center to obtain visas under the…
GettyImages-625753392-1-300x193.jpg
Back in May, we wrote about substantial settlements totaling $125 million to resolve Department of Justice (DOJ) allegations that money donated by Astellas Pharma US, Inc. and Amgen Inc. to drug co-pay charities constituted illegal kickbacks under the False Claims Act (FCA).  At the time, we noted that the settlements were the seventh and eighth such resolutions in the District of Massachusetts since December 2017, with a total settlement amount of over $840 million.  As…
GettyImages-1025240716-300x200.jpg
The chief executive of a Boston-based biotech company, Frank Reynolds, was convicted of defrauding investors and obstructing an SEC investigation. Reynolds founded the biopharma startup PixarBio Corp. in 2013 and took the company public in 2016. By the next year PixarBio was in a tailspin and an SEC probe was opened. Reynolds is now facing possible jail time and millions in fines after he stoked the brief meteoric rise of PixarBio with promises of ground…
GettyImages-1130974196-300x200.jpg
The Supreme Court has granted certiorari to hear a challenge to the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).  While the CFPB won in the Ninth Circuit, the agency has since changed its mind and now agrees that its structure, which makes the single director of an independent agency removable only for cause, is unconstitutional, and also asked the Court to grant certiorari.  With the parties in agreement that the CFPB is unconstitutional as…
GettyImages-463115585-300x212.jpg
On November 6, 2019, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument for Retirement Plans Committee of IBM v. Jander to expand on its “more harm than good” pleading standard articulated in Fifth Third Bancorp v. Dudenhoeffer.  Both Dudenhoeffer and Jander deal with employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), retirement plans which primarily invest in the stock of the company that employs the plan participants.  In Dudenhoeffer, the Supreme Court found that Congress has encouraged the…
GettyImages-137169606-300x201.jpg
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders (titled Promoting the Rule of Law Through Transparency and Fairness in Civil Administrative Enforcement and Adjudication and Promoting the Rule of Law Through Improved Agency Guidance Documents) that require agencies to publish all informal guidance online and to limit its use in enforcement actions. In his Oval Office signing ceremony, the President defended the orders, arguing that “all too often, guidance documents are a…
As data breaches are seemingly reported on a daily basis, cybersecurity has emerged as a top enforcement priority for federal and state regulators and a key concern for companies of all sizes in a diverse range of industries. For example, compliance with federal cybersecurity regulations is required by nearly every government contract and the New York Division of Financial Services adopted a vast set of regulations that is applicable to all entities operating under NYDFS…
GettyImages-625753392-1-300x193.jpg
This is a follow-up to our September 13, 2019 post discussing the DOJ guidance on corporate claims of inability to pay. On Tuesday, October 8, 2019, the Department of Justice provided guidance on how its prosecutors should evaluate claims of corporate poverty.  This comes on the heels of Deputy Assistant Attorney General Matthew Miner’s comments last month suggesting that further guidance on corporate poverty claims was forthcoming.  The DOJ’s memo sets forth a framework for…
GettyImages-868576058-300x211.jpg
Thanks to inexact language in a settlement agreement, a for-profit hospital chain can challenge whistleblowers’ eligibility for attorneys’ fees under the False Claims Act (“FCA”).  The single sentence that spawned nearly 5 years of litigation was: “All Parties agree that nothing in this Paragraph or this Agreement shall be construed in any way to release, waive or otherwise affect the ability of CHS to challenge or object to [whistleblower’s] claims for attorneys’ fees, expenses, and…
GettyImages-1175705407-200x300.jpg
On September 18, 2019, the Department of Justice announced a $21.36 million settlement to resolve a False Claims Act (“FCA”) lawsuit alleging a fraudulent kickback scheme through which a pharmaceutical company (Patient Care America, or “PCA”) induced doctors to write expensive and unnecessary prescriptions to military veterans. A False Claims Act settlement of this magnitude is not unusual, particularly in the healthcare industry (which accounted for $2.5 billion of the DOJ’s $2.8 billion in FCA…