White Collar Crimes

We’ve been discussing the issue of fraud in our last several posts, particularly the issue of intent in health care fraud cases. We left off discussing the Anti-Kickback Statute, and noted that when prosecutors are not able to provide sufficient evidence to...

Tampa readers may have seen in the news that a Florida man who formerly worked at Florida State University as a Finance Professor has been charged by a federal grand jury with embezzlement. According to the indictment, the man stole over $650,000 from funds held by...

charges in connection with his friendship with Florida eye surgeon Salomon Melgen. Earlier this week, the Senator was indicted on charges of conspiracy, fraud, making false statements on government documents and eight counts of bribery, each of which carries a maximum...

In our last couple posts, we’ve been exploring the topic of downward departures in the context of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. We’ve already discussed the basic approach used by the guidelines in determining a defendant’s sentencing range for...

In our previous post, we began looking at the issue of departures from federal sentencing guidelines. Departures, as we noted, can be either downward or upward depending on the circumstances. Downward departures, to be sure, present an opportunity for advocacy in...

Sentencing is an important aspect of federal criminal cases. Although Federal Sentencing Guidelines provide a sentencing range deemed appropriate to the offender’s convictions, judges do have the discretion to depart from the sentencing range. Sometimes judges...

Criminal defense is not always a matter of attempting to avoid all criminal liability. In fact, many cases of criminal defense involve minimizing the consequences of criminal charges by ensuring that prosecutors are able to provide sufficient evidence to support each...

Readers may have heard before of the U.S. Sentencing Commission or the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. The latter are rules which detail a uniform sentencing policy for federal judges to use in criminal cases. The rules are not binding on judges, but often determine...

It should come as little surprise to people in the Tampa area that federal prosecutors take their jobs very seriously, especially when it involves cases involving the defrauding of the federal government. In some cases, however, judges will not always impose the...