So after catching one of the guys thought to have committed the Boston Marathon bombing (and a string of violent acts thereafter), the government said they weren’t going to read him his rights. Not just yet. Invoking the “public safety exception” to the Miranda rule, they said they wanted a...
Andrei Chikatilo was serial killer who murdered at least 56 young women and children starting in 1978 until his capture in 1990. The details are as bad as one might expect, and apparently the murders and mutilations were how he achieved sexual release. His killings seemed unpredictable to investigators at...
When we were just starting out in the law, we frankly had no problem with the concept of profiling. Not racial profiling — that’s just a logical absurdity along the lines of “most people who commit crime X are of race Y, therefore it’s reasonable to suspect people of race...
Wiretaps are arguably the greatest invasion of privacy that the government can do. They’re listening in on private conversations, not intended to be overheard by anyone else. So to get a wiretapping warrant, the government has to do more than for a normal search warrant. There has to be...
This’ll be quick, because we’re pretty busy working on a wiretap case, which is always time-consuming if done right. But as our mind’s on that topic anyway, we thought we’d quickly point out that the latest round of insider-trading cases is again largely derived from wiretaps. Here’s a roundup over...
The feds are really ramping up their insider-trading enforcement. But instead of going after real insiders, they’re going after consultants and investors who use them. This is a big risk for the feds, and they could lose big. It started a year ago, when the feds indicted a bunch...
The other day, we drew a contrast between the Manhattan DA’s new public integrity unit and the way the feds go after FCPA violations, and some folks asked just what exactly the feds do in these cases. That’s a good question. Especially now, as the FCPA has become a...
As we were coming out of court the other afternoon, we got a call from one of the nice folks over at the WSJ, asking us what we thought about the Manhattan DA’s new Public Integrity unit. We didn’t even know it had been formed — though we had...
It should come as no surprise to anyone with any experience in criminal law that perfectly innocent people will sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit. Perhaps they were in a suggestible state, and the police led them to believe they’d done it. Maybe they were broken by the...
For as long as we can remember, the word on the street has always been that cops cannot lie. So if you’re doing a drug deal with an undercover cop, and you ask him point blank if he’s a police officer, then he has to tell you the truth. He...
The SEC filed its suit about 2 weeks ago. Then during this past week, they referred it to the DOJ for criminal investigation. The fine folks at the Southern District are now looking into whether any criminal acts took place.
We’re sure the SDNY is going to be a lot more careful than, say, the Eastern District was with the Bear Stearns case. [Full Disclosure: We represented one of the BSAM fund managers in that case, who was ultimately not indicted.] You know, maybe actually reading emails in context, actually figuring out how hedging is supposed to work, stuff like that?
Nevertheless, it’s a tough job. So as a good citizen, unaffiliated with the case in any way, we’d like to make their job easier. We’ve pored over the factual allegations that have been made, and delved into the facts that have been publicly disclosed so far. And after a great deal of legal analysis and number-crunching (yes, we do this for fun), here is a complete list of all criminal activity that we have been able to identify at Goldman Sachs here:
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We apologize to our loyal readers for the unusual delay between posts. We’ve been on trial, and you know how that goes. Trial is all-consuming. And then there’s all the work that piles up in the meantime. And the wife and kids need a token appearance from us once in...
The Supreme Court heard a very important argument this week in the case of Maryland v. Shatzer. It was one of those situations where the oral argument makes a huge difference in the outcome of the case. We read the briefs earlier this month, and remarked to colleagues that both...
On our first day as a young Manhattan ADA, we were assigned to the office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for NYC. The purpose of Special Narcotics is to investigate and take down large-scale drug trafficking across the city. There were two parts to the office — the Special Investigations...
No law today. Let’s have a police procedural for a change. We’re in the mood for some white-collar stuff, so here goes. Forget about the Madoff case. Most financial crimes are nowhere near as headline-worthy, nor do they involve such massive amounts of other people’s money. But smaller scams...
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