In November, the US Attorney's Office in the District of New Jersey filed a criminal complaint alleging that Indonesian jewelry company UBS Gold, its Indonesian co-owner Michael Yahya, and two company employees engaged in a five-year-long conspiracy to evade duties and tariffs owed for shipments of jewelry to the United States. The complaint alleges that defendants avoided over $86 million in duties and tariffs on more than $1.2 billion in jewelry shipments. This is [...]

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied the SEC's motion to strike certain affirmative defenses of the former CFO of cannabis company Acreage Holdings, Inc. In its complaint, the SEC alleges that the CFO orchestrated a series of fraudulent financial transactions designed to artificially inflate Acreage's cash balance, in violation of Section 13(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the Exchange Act). In his answer, the CFO asserts (i) a [...]

The facts before the Third Circuit in the recently decided case of Patel v. United States illustrate how parties can put themselves in a bind if they make factual admissions when resolving a criminal case involving fraud on the government while not simultaneously resolving the government's civil claims under the False Claims Act (FCA) for the same underlying conduct. Background Nita and Kirtish Patel, a married couple, owned and operated mobile diagnostic testing companies providing services [...]