Bruce Carton

Utah’s “White Collar Crime Offender Registry”—its effort to identify and shame its white-collar criminals—is now up and running. The Registry lists over 100 offenders in alphabetical order, including mug shot, birthday, height, weight, and “Qualifying Convictions.” Offenders will remain on it for (a) a period of 10 years for a first offense; (b) a second period of 10 years for a second conviction; and (c) a lifetime period if convicted a third time.

The FBI’s Cyber Division recently issued a Private Industry Notification alerting law firms that “[i]n a recent cyber criminal forum post, a criminal actor posted an advertisement to hire a technically proficient hacker for the purposes of gaining sustained access to the networks of multiple international law firms.” The criminals are said to be seeking access to material, nonpublic information that can be used for insider trading.

This week — finally(!) — the Senate Banking Committee held confirmation hearings for the two people nominated to be the next SEC commissioners: Hester Peirce and Lisa Fairfax. Presently, following the 2015 departures of SEC commissioners Luis Aguilar and Daniel Gallagher, the SEC is operating with just three commissioners (Chair Mary Jo White and commissioners Michael Piwowar and Kara Stein).

The SEC announced another blockbuster whistleblower award yesterday. The agency stated that it will pay nearly $2 million to three whistleblowers in a case — including a payment of approximately $1.8 million to one of the three whistleblowers.

The current head of the DOJ’s FCPA unit, Patrick Stokes, has been named Senior Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section. Daniel S. Kahn, Assistant Chief of the FCPA unit since 2013, will now serve as Acting Head of the FCPA unit.

On Monday, February 29, 2016, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York returned a verdict in favor of the SEC in the agency’s third federal court trial of FY 2016. The agency remains undefeated in FY 2016having been successful in SEC v. Payton and SEC v. Bonan Huang.

At least one commentator declared this week’s SEC insider trading case alleging illegal profits of just $1,083 to be the smallest insider trading case ever. Nope!

U.S.-based Stanford Law School announced earlier this month that it has teamed up with law firm Sullivan & Cromwell to launch the new Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Clearinghouse. The FCPA Clearinghouse is a free, public resource that provides a comprehensive, searchable, and very useful database of enforcement actions and information related to the FCPA.

Recent comments by an SEC official about five insider trading cases generated from the Enforcement Division’s “Analysis and Detection Center” over the last year generated some questions in the blogosphere. Now Enforcement Action has some answers!