On October 6, 2021, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a new Civil Fraud Cyber Initiative to “combine the department’s expertise in civil fraud enforcement, government procurement and cybersecurity to combat new and emerging cyber threats to the security of sensitive information and critical systems.”
Gleanings From DOJ’s 2021 Healthcare Takedown Announcement
On Sept. 17, the U.S. Department of Justice released the results of its 2021 Healthcare Takedown — an annual announcement aggregating months of investigations and indictments across the country involving fraud in the healthcare and life sciences industries.
Read on for details and analysis of criminal charges against 138 defendants, including 42 medical professionals, related to schemes involving about $1.4 billion in alleged losses to federal healthcare programs.
DOJ Title IX Investigation Leads to $1.6M Agreement with San Jose State University
The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, and San Jose State University (SJSU) settled the government’s Title IX investigation into a decade’s worth of sexual harassment allegations. The June 2020 allegations of “employee-on-student sexual harassment” and retaliation within SJSU’s athletics department prompted the government’s investigation. In September 2021, the government announced its findings against SJSU under Title IX, and its implementing regulations, that SJSU failed to respond to sexual assault allegations even though SJSU had actual notice of these allegations. DOJ found that chief among SJSU’s investigatory failures was its incomplete interview of affected complainants. Additionally, DOJ determined that the school retaliated against two employees, one employee for urging the school to address the sexual harassment, including sexual assault, and the other employee for expressing opposition to retaliation against the reporting employee.
Corporate Campaign Contributions Are a Crime, Independent Expenditures Legitimate: Sixth Circuit Explains the Difference
The Sixth Circuit has upheld the felony conviction of a former state party chair for illegal campaign contributions by a corporation he owned, in a case that both serves as an important reminder of the prohibition on corporate contributions to federal campaigns and shows that the Justice Department may be stepping up criminal election law enforcement while the Federal Election Commission is consumed by deadlock.
Frequently Asked Questions About the New COVID-19 Vaccine Executive Actions
As McGuireWoods noted in a Sept. 10, 2021, alert, President Biden’s broad six-part strategy to combat the COVID-19 pandemic is raising many questions for employers. While employers await the much-anticipated regulations, a few answers to questions regarding the proposed federal vaccine requirements already are available.
For answers to frequently asked questions about the COVID-19 vaccine executive actions, see our latest alert.
Income Share Agreements – Risks, Rewards, and Regulators
An Income Share Agreement (ISA) is a contract in which a lender gives a student money for education, and in return, the student promises to pay the ISA-provider a fixed percentage of the student’s income for a set amount of time after graduation. The student may repay more or less than the amount received, depending on the terms of the ISA.
Compliance, Enforcement and Prosecution Policy and Trends, Financial Institution Regulation, Securities and Commodities
FINRA’s Important Reminder to Firms—Don’t Forget to Supervise Third-Party Vendors
- Overview
Broker-dealers, like most companies, rely on third-party vendors for a wide variety of functions. This common practice of outsourcing does not relieve a broker-dealer of its regulatory compliance and supervision obligations over the outsourced functions. Accordingly, management and supervision of third-party vendors present important issues that merit careful attention from regulatory, compliance, and legal departments within a broker-dealer.
Compliance, Enforcement and Prosecution Policy and Trends, Sanctions, Trade Embargo, and Export Controls
Sanctions and Export Compliance Strategies for Supply Chains
The following is an excerpt from McGuireWoods’ recent contribution to the Global Investigations Review’s (GIR’s) The Guide to Sanctions – Second Edition published in July 2021. Authors Alex Brackett, Pat Rowan and Jason Cowley, each partners in the firm’s Government Investigations and White Collar Litigation department, penned a chapter on the Impacts of Sanctions and Export Controls on Supply Chains. The full publication is available here.
Compliance strategies
Sanctions and export controls can be highly dynamic in the speed with which they can be implemented and adjusted. Accordingly, businesses operating with international supply chains need to be prepared to be equally nimble. Fortunately, there are relatively straightforward and scalable strategies that companies can deploy to ensure they have a robust and effective compliance framework through which to operate, as detailed below.
Tide Is Turning Against FCA Case Dismissals
According to a July 28 article in Law360 by McGuireWoods lawyers Michael J. Podberesky, John S. Moran, Todd R. Steggerda, David Pivnick and Cassandra M. Burns, the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision declining to review an appeal of a Seventh Circuit case that could have resolved a three-way circuit split regarding the proper standard for deciding government motions to dismiss whistleblower suits is a Pyrrhic victory for potential defendants, given bipartisan pressure in the Senate and from the White House to reign in such dismissals.
A New Avenue for Defendants in Securities Fraud Class Actions: Supreme Court Holds “Generic” Nature of Statements Is “Important Evidence” of Price Impact at Class Certification
Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a highly anticipated ruling holding that the generic nature of an alleged misrepresentation may be important evidence of price impact to rebut the Basic presumption of reliance and thus should be considered at class certification. See our post on the Class Action Countermeasures blog.