George R. Calhoun

In September 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced it had designated Ifrah Law’s client, a legitimate international business, as a transnational criminal organization. Our client had conducted its business for decades without incident, providing payment processing solutions for direct mail, eCommerce, gaming, charitable, and other customers.

The OFAC designation of a legitimate business was the first of its kind, having been previously limited to terrorist and organized crime entities, such as the Yakuza, MS-13, and Saddam Hussein. The designation indicated that OFAC was expanding its authority under its legal mandate. Given the novelty of this designation, the company contacted Ifrah Law based on our background and extensive experience representing payment processors: understanding their business was critical to our ability to combat the Government’s misperceptions about the payment processing business.

First, we began an internal investigation. As the OFAC designation was a surprise to the company, and the Treasury Department had no obligation to explain the basis for the designation, we needed to determine why our client had been targeted.

We also needed to address the reverberating effects of the designation on our client. An OFAC designation results in the prohibition of U.S.-based businesses including banks from working with a designee. Our client lost the ability to pay employees, vendors, and general expenses and eventually was forced to close its operations.

Ifrah Law achieved some of the swiftest ever removals from OFAC’s SDN list, including all of the 12 individuals named. One year after the initial listing, OFAC finally signed an agreement to remove our client’s companies, officers and employees from the SDN List. We continue to represent this client in actions concerning the financial situation of the now defunct company, and to ameliorate the damage caused by the listing on both individual and corporate reputations. Our work on this case was featured in The American Lawyer.

A former contractor for a long standing firm client filed a class action suit in the Eastern District of Virginia (the famed “Rocket Docket”) based upon alleged tax and Fair Labor Standard Act infringement claims in connection with contract services purportedly provided by the plaintiff to our client in connection with a government contract for security services at an overseas military base.

Ifrah’s team, led by partner George Calhoun, first succeeded in attaining a swift dismissal of the class action tax claims based on the inapplicability of the tax statute at issue to purported employee misclassification.  The plaintiff also was forced to amend its complaint to eliminate its employment law claims because the FLSA does not apply to contractors or employees based overseas. The client was thus relieved of the initial threat of a large scale and costly class action suit.

The plaintiff nonetheless continued to pursue the suit against our client based on an individual breach of contract claim. Through the effective discovery conducted by Ifrah’s litigation group, we were able to limit any possible claims by the plaintiff.  Most tellingly, we established that the plaintiff had made – and was making – inconsistent claims in his discovery responses and in a lawsuit brought against a third party.

Based on these facts, Mr. Calhoun persuaded opposing counsel to dismiss all claims, ultimately relieving our client from any financial or legal liability.

Partner George Calhoun recently secured a significant victory for a client in a long running effort to collect a multibillion dollar judgment.

The firm’s client, Motorola Solutions Credit Company LLC, secured a judgment in the United States against defendants who had sought to defraud the company.  In an attempt to avoid collection, the judgment debtors refused to provide discovery and hid their assets – using multiple nominee owners and shell companies all over the world.  Working with talented investigators, George located significant assets held through shell companies in far flung jurisdictions like Hong Kong, Singapore and Jordan.

George Calhoun led the effort to domesticate Motorola Solutions’ judgment in those foreign jurisdictions and collect from the defendants.  Ifrah’s team successfully navigated the disparate foreign laws and obtained judgment in Hong Kong and Singapore.  In response to those collection efforts, the debtors attempted to sell off assets held through a Jordanian holding company, which was itself the principle asset of the Hong Kong and Singapore entities.  Ifrah’s team succeeded in obtaining an injunction and then getting receivers appointed to halt the attempted transfer of assets.  Through the receivership process, Ifrah eventually achieved the sale of the Jordanian company’s primary asset – a controlling interest in a Jordanian bank.  That sale closed in January 2017 and Ifrah’s client received over $50 million from the sales proceeds in March, 2017.

We continue to seek full enforcement of the judgment through the continued search, identification and liquidation of the judgment debtors’ assets across international jurisdictions.

This case highlights Ifrah Law’s strong ability to follow up on judicial success by creating and implementing successful strategies to locate and collect judgments, especially in a global context. George, who leads our Financial Services and Commercial Litigation practice, brings litigation savvy coupled with decades of experience in insolvency and creditor’s rights law to our team. Over the course of his career, he has developed a strong network of relationships with international lawyers, regulators and organizations, giving him the ability to skillfully navigate domestic and overseas jurisdictions with widely divergent legal systems for the ultimate benefit of his clients.