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White-Collar Sentencing Under the Amended Guidelines: Fewer Steps, Same Dance
FEATURED
November 12, 2025
White-Collar Sentencing Under the Amended Guidelines: Fewer Steps, Same Dance
By: Robert Ward
For years, the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Guidelines Manual has guided courts through a three-step process to determine the sentence to be imposed. At a high level, that process looked like this: First, the court would calculate the guideline range based on relevant offense conduct and related factors, along with the defendant’s criminal history. Second, the court would consider the Sentencing Commission’s policy statements or commentary relating to “departures” from the guidelines as well as the defendant’s specific personal characteristics. Third, and finally, the court would consider the statutory factors set out in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) in determining the sentence to be imposed (whether within the guideline range or varying in either direction). As of November 1, 2025, this three-step…
Personal Information Flo-wing out of Control
October 20, 2025
Personal Information Flo-wing out of Control
By: Lauren Scribner
In September, a nearly $60 million settlement was reached in Frasco, et al v. Flo Health, Inc., Meta Platforms, Inc., Google, LLC, and Flurry, Inc. The case,[1] a class action filed in 2021, alleged inter alia that Flo Health Inc. (“Flo”), a popular women’s health tracking application estimated to have over 38 million monthly users, invaded the privacy of its users by sharing personal and…
New Laws for AI Developers: California’s Fork in the AI Regulatory Road
October 16, 2025
New Laws for AI Developers: California’s Fork in the AI Regulatory Road
By: Steven Hess
AI Regulation and The Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act Artificial intelligence (“AI”) products have become an increasingly significant aspect of U.S. innovation, growth, and development. Generative AI is being used to predict the structure of proteins and other biomolecules in pharmaceutical research,[1] to simulate wargames for the U.S. military,[2] and to drive an estimated hundreds of billions of dollars of growth in sectors from…
Settlement Indicates Widespread Abuse of SBA Preference Programs
November 5, 2010
Settlement Indicates Widespread Abuse of SBA Preference Programs
By: Ifrah Law
Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice settled a case with a Maryland company that shows, yet again, how common it is for companies to abuse the preference programs that the Small Business Administration runs. In this case, it was the SBA’s Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) program that was the target. Beltsville, Md.-based CSI Engineering and CSI Design Build – along with their president,…
GTSI Settlement Could Mark Crackdown on Contracting Abuses
November 3, 2010
GTSI Settlement Could Mark Crackdown on Contracting Abuses
By: Ifrah Law
The U.S. Small Business Administration has announced a tough settlement with GTSI Corp., one of the nation’s largest government contractors. GTSI, which had been accused of improperly obtaining contracts that are meant for small businesses, avoided a one-year suspension from new work for the federal government. But two of its top executives are stepping down, three others are suspended, and the company has agreed to…
In Federal Sentencing, Age Begins to Matter
October 29, 2010
In Federal Sentencing, Age Begins to Matter
By: Ifrah Law
On November 1, 2010, a new amendment to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines will go into effect that will allow a judge to consider a defendant’s age far more often than before in handing down a sentence in federal court. We think this change will have a major impact on sentencing in white-collar criminal cases. Defendants in financial crimes tend to be older, so even a…
The Foreclosure Crisis: Don’t Believe Everything You Read
October 22, 2010
The Foreclosure Crisis: Don’t Believe Everything You Read
By: Ifrah Law
Legal pressure is mounting against the firms involved in the nationwide foreclosure crisis. In the wake of reports that possibly fraudulent court documents were used to fast-track home foreclosures, a federal Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force is investigating possible criminal violations committed by banks and mortgage companies. We need to ask: What laws are available to prosecutors? After all, people can do plenty of things…
FTC Getting Serious About Full Disclosure in Endorsements
October 20, 2010
FTC Getting Serious About Full Disclosure in Endorsements
By: Ifrah Law
The Federal Trade Commission is taking steps to show that it is quite serious about enforcing the so-called blogger disclosure rules that it issued last year. The rules say, essentially, that when someone endorses or reviews a product or service, the person must disclose any relationship with the company that produces the product. So if a blogger gets a free item from a manufacturer, the…
