Federal and state prosecutors recently convened at the Boston Bar Association’s White Collar Crime Conference to discuss, among other topics, health care enforcement priorities. At the conference, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts (USAO) highlighted its recent focus on pharmaceutical companies that make donations to co-pay assistance foundations, an area where we have recently seen a flurry of False Claims Act (FCA) enforcement.… More

Imagine this scenario:  you’ve had a productive and mutually advantageous ongoing contractual relationship of several years with another party.  You have built up quite a bit of trust over the years, and communicate regularly over email.  Your email communications include you receiving invoices and then confirming payment; your email messages might include a note about an upcoming shipment or provision of services, or even a note wishing the family well.… More

Opioids, off-label marketing, and the home health industry will remain priorities for federal and state attorneys enforcing health care laws, according to comments made at the Boston Bar Association’s (BBA) White Collar Crime Conference.

The conference, held in Boston on April 22, featured speakers from the civil and criminal divisions of Boston’s U.S. Attorney’s Office and from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office.

Civil enforcement by the U.S.… More

Recently, in Lorenzo v. Securities and Exchange Commission, No. 17-1077, the Supreme Court held that an investment banker had committed securities fraud by copying and pasting false statements prepared by his supervisor into emails to prospective investors, even though he was not on the hook for making the statements himself.

The decision focuses on Rule 10b-5 of the Securities and Exchange Commission,… More

We hope this blog serves as a forum for spirited debate, challenge, and comment.  The attorneys in our White Collar Crime and Government Investigations practice group have a wide array of diverse experiences that we hope to share with you here.  While we are white-collar defense lawyers, many among us are former federal and state prosecutors, and we appreciate the demands of justice even as we provide our clients a vigorous legal defense. 

The topics we’ll cover are often directly implicated in our practice, others less so.  We would welcome a range of voices on all of these issues, as we believe the topics are best illuminated by a broad array of contributions. 

We plan to cover the full gamut of white collar and government investigations related issues, including the False Claims Act, FCPA and related anti-bribery and corruption issues, insider trading and SEC enforcement, as well as compliance-related topics. So, however you’ve arrived here, welcome, and we hope this is the start of a long and fruitful conversation.

Recently, a Florida federal judge dismissed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) False Claims Act (FCA) allegations against a compounding drug pharmacy and the pharmacy’s private equity (PE) owner.  For two reasons, the case may be illustrative of the DOJ’s increasingly aggressive pursuit of what it perceives as fraud within the healthcare industry.

First, it is noteworthy that DOJ suffered a dismissal of its FCA claims. … More

The Second Circuit recently decided a pair of insider trading cases that provide additional guidance on the law following the court’s 2017 decision in Martoma.  In United States v. Klein, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 858 (2d Cir. Jan. 10, 2019), the Second Circuit upheld Defendant Schulman’s insider trading conviction. Schulman, the “tipper,” did not directly trade on material, non-public information, but rather shared it with Klein,… More

The First Circuit recently revisited the pleading standard for retaliation claims under the False Claims Act, and reiterated its prior position that such claims are not subject to the same heightened pleading standard as direct FCA violation claims.

In Guilfoile v. Shields, 913 F.3d 178 (1st Cir. 2019), a former president for a group of healthcare entities that provided specialty pharmacy services to hospitals alleged the entities offered illegal “referral fees” to a consulting group to induce hospitals to award the entities contracts. … More

On January 28, 2019, the Department of Justice announced that a 13-count indictment against Chinese telecommunications conglomerate Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and various affiliated parties was unsealed earlier that day.  Huawei is charged with bank fraud, wire fraud, violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, obstruction of justice, and various related conspiracy charges.

All charges in the indictment stem from Huawei’s alleged long-standing ploy to deceive financial institutions and the U.S.… More

While it is often said that “you have to spend money to make money,” it is less often said, but equally true, that you have to spend money to avoid spending a whole lot more money later.  For a bank, investing in a strong Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) Officer with an ample anti-money laundering (“AML”) compliance staff could help avoid significant expense down the road.

The BSA,… More