When you look at the core of several major financial scandals, it is easy to point to problems with sales incentives and corporate culture. A company can rapidly grow due to the extraordinary performance of a company’s sales culture. In many cases, this sales culture creates real and significant risks for misconduct. To address such potential for misconduct, companies rely on internal controls to constrain...

The Justice Department’s criminal prosecution of the chicken producing industry took another significant turn.  Step-by-step, the Antitrust Division is building a large and comprehensive criminal prosecution of a significant cartel. Claxton Poultry Farms refused to plead guilty and cooperate in the Antitrust Division’s sprawling criminal prosecution.  Instead, Claxton Poultry Farms became the second producer to be charged and the first to be indicted rather than...

The Ethics & Compliance Initiative (ECI) is fielding a confidential survey about the applicability of compliance guidance documents issued by the US Department of Justice. A summary of the results will be shared publicly, and with the DOJ. If you are a Chief Compliance Officer, Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer or Chief Ethics Officer (or the equivalent) and want to share your views, please participate...

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California recently announced a settlement of a False Claims Act case against Tungsten Heavy Powder of San Diego (THP), which was filed and prosecuted by the Volkov Law Group on behalf of two relators, Global Tungsten & Powders Corporation (GTP), and Greg Caputo, a former employee of THP.  GTP and Caputo filed the original lawsuit under...

Corporate boards face exponentially escalating risks – at the heart of this development is the rapid escalation of board member accountability.  Board members are no longer operating in a sinecure, free from legal risks.  The walls are changing. A perfect example of the changing landscape of risk is the importance of cybersecurity oversight and protections.  The criminal cyberattack against the Colonial pipeline and the acknowledge...

Lawyers can “Break Bad” and veer from ethical and professional standards.  Somehow this is not so hard to envision.  Legal misconduct occurs more than most expect.  And the system reacts in variety of ways – professional responsibility enforcement actions and judges stand as the two most important watchdogs over legal professional conduct. In a curious and headline-making case, Judge Royce Lamberth, who is known for...

Under Armour settled its long-pending SEC investigation by agreeing to pay $9 million surrounding misleading statements and practices relating to its revenue growth and uncertainties as to future growth.  As part of the settlement, the SEC declined to bring charges against its CEO, Kevin Plank, and its CFO, David Bergman. The Justice Department inquiry appears to have lost steam since the middle of last year,...

In the run-up to the deadline for filing federal taxes, the Justice Department has a well-established practice of bringing tax-related enforcement cases against crooked tax preparers, fraudsters and corporate entities as an important reminder on the importance of tax compliance.  For years, the Justice Department struggled to bring Swiss banks to the enforcement table and eventually was successful in building cooperation in enforcement matters.  It...