According to a recent Chronicle article, Houston police arrested over 30 drivers on suspected felony driving while intoxicated charges during the month of February. The particular charges for each individual varied, depending on the circumstances. Some drivers had two or more previous DWI arrests...
In Texas, a juvenile criminal record can be sealed in two ways: Automatically restricted to everyone except criminal justice agencies Permanently sealed and concealed from all. The qualifications for each is as follows: Automatic restriction To qualify for automatic restriction, all of the ...
In Texas, sexting crimes committed by minors and adults are treated differently, with different laws used to prosecute minors versus adults and differing penalties as well. Minor Sexting Texas' law against electronically transmitting sexual depictions of children is used to prosecute teens suspec...
The mother of “affluenza” teen Ethan Couch, who received probation for killing four people while driving drunk, made the grave error of trying to help her son escape more trouble for violating his probation by driving him to Mexico. Now she is facing criminal charges and he is also on the hook f...
Typically, federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction over federal offenses and state courts have exclusive jurisdiction over state offenses. In some cases, certain crimes can qualify as both federal and state offenses. State jurisdiction If a crime occurs within a state's borders or within three...
Texas passed a stand your ground law in 2007, which allows for the use of force “when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to protect the actor against the other's use or attempted use of unlawful force.” Prior to the enactment of that law, the use of...
A Watertown, Massachusetts, man has been convicted of securities fraud after a federal jury in Boston found him guilty of profiting from an insider trading tip he received on a cocktail napkin at a golf club. He was acquitted of a separate charge of conspiracy to commit securities fraud. Real es...
The FBI is investigating the hacking of a Hollywood, California, hospital's computer system after the hospital paid $17,000 in ransom to regain control of its files, according to a news report. Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center said that a hacker used malware to infect the hospital's computer...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has launched a criminal investigation into a Pennsylvania cheese factory it says has put fillers such as wood pulp and cellulose into its grated parmesan cheese products that are distributed to some of the nation's largest grocery store chains. The FDA said t...
In January, the SEC provided a $700,000 whistleblower award to an individual who was not an employee or contractor of the company sanctioned by the SEC but who “conducted a detailed analysis that led to a successful SEC enforcement action.” Andrew Ceresney, SEC Enforcement Division Director, said...
The U.S. Department of Justice's Fraud Section will now require certificates of cooperation from companies negotiating a settlement agreement to acknowledge that the company has cooperated fully and released all information about any individuals involved in alleged misconduct, according to a Wall...
Bloomberg BNA has published its Outlook for Health Care Fraud for 2016, which includes information gathered from interviews with health care attorneys, trade association executives and health care consultants and recommendations on what health care providers can do to protect themselves. The repo...
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a significant insider trading case where its decision will clarify an issue upon which two circuits have split: the definition of “personal benefit” in regard to tipsters in insider trading cases. The case — Salman v. United States — involves a banker who...
The owner of a Dallas area home health care agency has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $25 million in restitution for taking part in a $375 million Medicare fraud scheme, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas. Patricia Akamnonu,...
Ex-NBA player Tate George has been sentenced to nine years in prison and ordered to pay $2.5 million in restitution for operating ] a real estate Ponzi scheme that cheated other current and former NBA players. George is a former UConn basketball standout and played in the NBA for the New Jersey N...
Last September, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a policy memo to its prosecutors urging them to demand evidence against employees “regardless of their position, status or seniority” from companies that are under investigation for corporate fraud or other white collar crime. The renewed focu...
The trial of a former Rockwall physician began in federal court recently amid allegations that he was the mastermind behind a massive Medicare home health care fraud scheme that resulted in bogus home health care services claims worth $375 million. Former doctor Jacques Roy, age 56, allegedly dev...
Embezzlement under Texas law is the misappropriation or misapplication of money or property that was entrusted to an individual's care, custody, or control. The difference between embezzlement and theft is the violation of financial trust between the owner of the money or property and the person ...
As technology usage continues to become a crucial part of everyday life, the potential for identity theft has increased exponentially. Identity theft occurs whenever an individual uses fraudulent or deceptive means to obtain another individual's personal information for his or her own economic ga...
A writ of habeas corpus is a way to challenge a criminal conviction in Texas state and/or federal court. This remedy is different from a direct appeal of your criminal sentence to a Texas appellate court, which can be based on any of the issues raised during the court trial that led to your convi...
The term “white collar crime” encompasses a wide variety of different crimes, including offenses such as mail fraud, insider trading, health care fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, and embezzlement. While a white collar crime might originate in the state of Texas, crimes such as these often inv...
Chapter 62 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure contains the rules for the Texas Sex Offender Registration Program. This law requires that all adult and juvenile sex offenders register with the local law enforcement authorities of the city in which they live, or, if they do not live within a c...
No matter how well-run your company is, a SEC investigation is always possible. Events such as a disgruntled employee, a business deal gone bad, lawsuits, and sharp changes in stock prices all can cause the SEC to begin looking into your business. While every investigation occurs differently, bas...
Both the federal and Texas state constitutions contain a prohibition on double jeopardy. On the federal level, the double jeopardy provision appears in the 5th Amendment, as part of the Bill of Rights. In its simplest terms, double jeopardy guarantees that you will not have to stand trial a secon...
While many individuals commonly think of assault and battery as two separate crimes, Texas law has essentially consolidated the two offenses in a single crime that is referred to as assault. The traditional definitions of both assault and battery both appear in the legal definition of assault und...