The Beggs & Lane Blog

White collar investigations necessarily impact many different people.  Federal and state white collar authorities use three different labels to categorize the individuals and companies they interact with: target, subject, and witness.  The Department of Justice’s policy is to inform individuals where they fall on the spectrum—target, subject, or witness. The differences are incredibly important. On one side of the spectrum is a target.  An example of a target is the executive who orchestrated financial fraud, or the suspect who pulled the trigger.  If you are a target, that means the government believes there is substantial evidence that you have committed [...]

Matthew P. Massey was a featured legal commenter in The New York Times’ ongoing coverage of the Sam Bankman-Fried trial in article published on October 9, 2023.  He analyzed Mr. Bankman-Fried’s strategy of advancing an advice of counsel defense and addressed some of the challenges with such a strategy.  Click on the button below to read the article  on the Times’ “DealBook” section. Read Article Matthew P. Massey is a Partner in the White Collar, Government Investigations, and Special Matters Group.  He is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of [...]

The “advice of counsel” defense can be an effective legal defense when used properly in white collar criminal cases.  This defense will likely be used in the case of United States v. Bankman-Fried, 1:22-cr-00673, which is set for trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.  This trial relates to the failed FTX cryptocurrency exchange and cryptocurrency hedge fund and its allegedly fraudulent relationship with Alameda Research. The “advice of counsel” defense is often used in high-profile cases such as the upcoming Bankman-Fried trial because, when used right, the defense team can use it [...]

August 16, 2023, will mark the one-year anniversary of the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”) (Public Law 117-169). Although there has been, and continues to be, spirited debate around the policies embodied in the IRA, one thing is not debatable; the IRA --dubbed by some as the “Green New Deal”-- is among the most significant pieces of climate and renewable energy legislation is United States history. This may come as a surprise to some, considering the title of the law makes no reference to “climate,” “renewable energy,” or the like. The IRA addresses many topics completely unrelated to [...]

Unfortunately, car accidents occur frequently in the state of Florida. According to preliminary data from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, in 2022, there were 381,156 car crashes across the state, with 242,622 involving injury and with 3,292 fatalities. Many of these accidents were rear end collisions. The question is, who is at fault for these collisions under Florida law? While the answer varies according to the facts of each accident, in Florida, the party who causes a collision from the rear is presumed to be at fault. Florida law states that all drivers must stay at [...]