Clientele Worldwide
Security clearances are crucial for protecting sensitive information. However, the secrecy and cachet of these clearances can also contribute to coverups or exacerbate certain violations. When someone with a job that requires security clearance reports wrongdoing, employers on occasion have retaliated by revoking the whistleblower's clearance. However, a new bill introduced in Congress seeks to prevent and penalize this retaliation.
Relevant considerations concerning federal tax fraud
Criminal fraud defense spans a truly wide universe of alleged misconduct, ranging broadly from client advocacy focused on mortgage, bank and health care fraud to schemes involving the Internet, insurance, the U.S. mail system and more.
Attorneys at the Houston-based Hilder & Associates law firm collectively command many decades of proven and on-point experience defending diverse and valued clients against state and federal fraud charges. We know that clients who come to us for help in fraud-linked matter have sobering concerns.
What are the elements of criminal conspiracy?
The term “conspiracy” is a common utterance in actual criminal cases and certainly on television shows and in movies that serve up ever-popular crime dramas.
And it can be a bit elusive and complex, right? Even law school students wrestle with the idea that an individual can be charged with both conspiracy to commit a certain crime and the commission of that offense itself.
World Series of Corruption?
The Department of Justice has, according to a September 28, 2018, Yahoo story, been conducting a federal grand jury investigation of Major League Baseball's "international dealings." It, sources told Yahoo, "has issued subpoenas to club officials and other personnel."
Are corporate officers immune from personal criminal liability?
A standard answer to the above blog headline is that, yes, executives in a corporation are usually immune from civil and criminal actions that posit wrongdoing and third-party damages (e.g., to consumers or a government entity).
The key word in the previous sentence is “usually. “It is simply not the case that a corporate officer or director can never be held personally liable for criminal conduct ostensibly carried out by the corporation itself.
Huge penalties levied on drug wholesaler for health care fraud
Hilder & Associates attorneys have a strong history of client advocacy in cases involving whistleblower claims brought under the federal False Claims Act (FCA). Those matters spotlight alleged wrongdoing aimed at defrauding federal and state governmental bodies and, thus, American taxpayers.
We note on a firm webpage addressing whistleblower activities in fraud-based matters that many FCA cases revolve around health care fraud. That is unsurprising, given the industry’s huge scope and the magnitude of programs like Medicare, Medicaid, the VA and TRICARE.
Commentary: wrong assumptions breed misguided criminal law outcomes
A noted behavioral specialist and criminal justice expert asks two pointed questions in a recently penned Psychology Today article.
University of Texas professor and research director William R. Kelly first poses this query: “What is it about being in prison that eliminates addiction to cocaine?” And he follows up that question with this one: How does a behind-bars outcome “mitigate a mental illness or improve executive dysfunction among those with cognitive impairment?”
Federal agency principals announce tough, focused stance on fraud
If there was a central pitch delivered by a united front of federal agency principals at a forum in New York last week, it was this: we’re not about to be complacent regarding fraud-based crime committed in the United States.
In fact, speakers from America’s most prominent regulatory and enforcement arms stated at a fraud risk-management summit that their organizations are now focused like never before on identifying and combating progressively sophisticated types of fraud.
Getting to know the The Dodd-Frank Act
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Act, also known as the Dodd-Frank Act, is an act that was created in 2010 by the Obama Administration. This act was a response to the financial crisis of 2008. It was named after two U.S. senators who worked on the legislation to create over 2,300 pages of reforms that would take place over a number of years. The act addresses the risks of the U.S. financial system and aims to reduce or eliminate them completely.
In 2018, the House of Representatives voted to roll back a number of pieces from this act.
Will IRS make nice or nasty following demise of tax program?
For readers of our criminal law blog in Texas and elsewhere seeking a bit of a refresher on the IRS initiative entitled the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program, here’s your update: The OVDP will cease to exist come September 28.
We actually informed our blog audience of that in a post from a few months ago, noting in our May 3 entry that flatly welcoming the program’s upcoming demise might be “an illogical response for many.”
