Fintech

  • September 24, 2024

    1st Circ. Affirms Tossing Of IRS Crypto Doc Seizure Case

    A New Hampshire federal court correctly dismissed a bitcoin investor's claim that the IRS violated his privacy and property rights when it seized his records from the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, the First Circuit ruled Tuesday, agreeing that he lacked a reasonable expectation that his account information would be kept private.

  • September 24, 2024

    Chancery Told SwervePay Deserves Sanctions In Earnout Suit

    A court-appointed special magistrate has recommended sanctioning e-payment venture SwervePay and related parties over up to 22 months of missing or deleted text messages sought by SPOSC Investment Holdings and others in a post-merger battle over an alleged multibillion-dollar overstatement of "monetizable" payment traffic.

  • September 24, 2024

    Star Witness Against Bankman-Fried Gets 2 Years In FTX Case

    A Manhattan federal judge sentenced former cryptocurrency executive Caroline Ellison to two years in prison Tuesday, crediting her decision to testify against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried but saying the $11.2 billion fraud was too big to warrant a "get out of jail free card."

  • September 24, 2024

    Baker Donelson Adds Financial Services Expert In DC

    Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz PC has hired a new shareholder who started her 15-year legal career as an attorney adviser in the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Banking and Finance Division, the firm announced Tuesday.

  • September 24, 2024

    DOJ Accuses Visa Of Monopolizing Debit Card Market

    The U.S. Department of Justice accused Visa on Tuesday of illegally maintaining a monopoly over debit card networks by using its dominance to thwart competition from new and existing rivals, as the Biden administration continues its push to combat high prices using antitrust law.

  • September 24, 2024

    SEC, CFTC Issue $118M Fines In Latest Text Message Actions

    Federal regulators said Tuesday that the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and nearly a dozen other financial firms have agreed to pay fines totaling nearly $120 million to settle recordkeeping violations tied to employee use of unapproved communication methods like text messages to conduct business.

  • September 23, 2024

    3rd Circ. Probes SEC's 'Close To Vacuous' Reply To Coinbase

    Members of a Third Circuit panel on Monday pressed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on its brief denial of crypto exchange Coinbase's request for rulemaking around digital assets, digging into how much of an explanation the agency owes the industry about its decision to forego setting rules for now.

  • September 23, 2024

    Crypto Miners Must Keep Fighting SEC's $18M Fraud Claims

    A Utah federal judge on Monday refused to throw out the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's suit accusing two Utah residents of running an $18 million crypto fraud scheme, rejecting their arguments that the transactions at the heart of the dispute do not involve securities subject to the SEC's regulation.

  • September 23, 2024

    Coinbase Brings On Ex-Citadel Legal Chief With SEC Chops

    Coinbase announced on Monday it has hired Ryan VanGrack to serve as its vice president of legal, where he will be overseeing civil litigation, regulatory probes, employment and intellectual property matters for the crypto exchange after spending seven years with Citadel Securities as general counsel.

  • September 23, 2024

    CFTC Fines Piper Sandler $2M In Latest Text Messaging Action

    The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission both announced settlements Monday in their ongoing probe into the financial industry's use of personal devices to discuss company business, with the CFTC issuing a fine against a subsidiary of Piper Sandler & Co. while the SEC said that a cooperative investment adviser would not have to pay anything. 

  • September 23, 2024

    DOJ Adds AI Risk To Corporate Compliance Program

    The U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division is now weighing how companies manage risk related to artificial intelligence and potentially stymie whistleblowers, one of several updates to the division's policies on evaluating corporate compliance programs announced by a senior official on Monday.

  • September 23, 2024

    SEC Scores $12M Judgment In Unregistered Dealer Case

    A Minnesota federal judge has ordered financial firm Carebourn Capital LP, its founder and an affiliated company to pay more than $12 million in disgorgement and prejudgment interest over U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claims they made millions selling securities as unregistered dealers.

  • September 23, 2024

    PNC, Plaid End Legal Battle With Customer Data-Sharing Deal

    PNC Financial Services Group and Plaid have reached an agreement to end nearly four years of trademark litigation that allows PNC customers to use Plaid to share their financial data with fintech companies like Venmo and Cash App.

  • September 23, 2024

    Davis Polk Vows Ex-Clerk Won't Touch Crypto Merger Suit

    Local counsel for Galaxy Digital Holdings Inc. has told a Delaware vice chancellor that Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP will ensure that an incoming associate who clerked for the state's Supreme Court won't share information with attorneys defending the digital assets company in a merger suit that the state's highest court revived in May.

  • September 23, 2024

    Shkreli Told To Provide More Info On Wu-Tang Album Copies

    A Brooklyn federal judge on Monday ordered Martin Shkreli to update the court on how many tracks he copied from a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album after the cryptocurrency group that now owns the work argued Shkreli could be holding out on surrendering all his copies amid the parties' legal battle.

  • September 23, 2024

    Holland & Knight Adds Former Treasury Adviser In DC

    A former adviser for the U.S. Department of the Treasury and counsel for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has moved his practice to Holland & Knight's office in Washington, D.C., the firm announced Monday.

  • September 23, 2024

    Autism Played Role In Bankman-Fried Case, 2nd Circ. Told

    A group of experts on neurodiversity told the Second Circuit that Sam Bankman-Fried, who has said he has autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, may have been hurt at trial by a "cognitive and communication style" that at times frustrated the trial judge.

  • September 20, 2024

    3rd Circ. CFPB Ruling Threatens Securitization, Justices Told

    Two major trade groups for the securities industry have urged the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Third Circuit decision allowing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to exercise enforcement authority over a collection of student loan securitization trusts, slamming the ruling as wrong and dangerous.

  • September 20, 2024

    Judge Won't Toss Fraud Suit Against Crypto-Forex Co. Execs

    A Florida judge decided that the CEO and a founding shareholder of purported foreign exchange currency broker FxWinning Ltd. have sufficient ties to Florida to keep them among the defendants of a suit alleging the business and its operators perpetrated a multimillion-dollar fraud.

  • September 20, 2024

    CFPB Pitches Remittance Rule Tweak For Consumer Inquiries

    The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau moved Friday to revise a longstanding remittance disclosure requirement, saying the agency thinks the wording may be causing it to get inundated with thousands of phone calls from consumers asking about their international money transfers.

  • September 20, 2024

    States Tell 10th Circ. To Back Colo. Interest Rate Opt-Out Law

    Attorneys general for 13 states and Washington, D.C., asked the Tenth Circuit on Friday to uphold a Colorado law imposing more restrictive interest rate caps on loans made to its residents by out-of-state banks, arguing that a federal judge's injunction "nullifies the authority granted to states by Congress" to protect consumers from abusive lending practices.

  • September 20, 2024

    NFT Buyers Bring Securities Suit Against Crypto Co. OpenSea

    Two Florida users of OpenSea hit the nonfungible token marketplace with a proposed securities class action claiming the assets the users bought on the platform are unregistered investment contracts in light of recent court decisions and regulatory scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

  • September 20, 2024

    2 SEC Commissioners Object To Whistleblower Award Secrecy

    U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissioners Mark Uyeda and Hester Peirce have objected to the agency's recent decision to hand out a total of $122 million in two awards to four whistleblowers and issued a statement taking issue with the regulator's policy of saying little to nothing about why the rewards are issued.

  • September 20, 2024

    Silvergate Wants Activist Investor's Board Seat Play Blocked

    The parent company of Silvergate Bank, a defunct bank that catered to the cryptocurrency industry, has asked the judge in its Delaware bankruptcy case to help head off what it described as an activist investor's effort to score a seat on the debtor's board so he can try to secure a payout for shareholders who are set to receive nothing under a Chapter 11 plan.

  • September 20, 2024

    Chevron's Demise May Not Bring Deluge Courts Had Feared

    Though the death of Chevron deference has opened a door to attacking administrative decisions, the expected uptick in litigation probably won't threaten to clog federal courts, numerous administrative law experts told Law360.

Expert Analysis

  • How Companies Are Approaching Insider Trading Policies

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    An analysis of insider trading policies recently disclosed by 49 S&P 500 companies under a new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rule reveals that while specific provisions vary from company to company, certain common themes are emerging, say attorneys at Gibson Dunn.

  • What To Know About CFPB Stance On Confidentiality Terms

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    A recent circular from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau represents a growing effort across government agencies to address overbroad confidentiality agreements, and gives employers insight into the bureau's perspective on the issue as it relates to the Consumer Financial Protection Act, say Holly Williamson and Elizabeth King at Hunton.

  • How Methods Are Evolving In Textualist Interpretations

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    Textualists at the U.S. Supreme Court are increasingly considering new methods such as corpus linguistics and surveys to evaluate what a statute's text communicates to an ordinary reader, while lower courts even mull large language models like ChatGPT as supplements, says Kevin Tobia at Georgetown Law.

  • Navigating New Enforcement Scrutiny Of 'AI Washing'

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    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recent lawsuit against Joonko Diversity, its first public AI-focused enforcement action against a private company, underscores the importance of applying the same internal legal and compliance rigor to AI-related claims as other market-facing statements, say attorneys at Fried Frank.

  • What's Next For Federal Preemption In Financial Services

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    The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's review of its preemption interpretations and growing pressure from state regulators signal potential changes ahead for preemption in U.S. financial services, and the path forward will likely involve a reevaluation of the entire framework, say attorneys at Clark Hill.

  • Increased Scrutiny Raises Int'l Real Estate Transaction Risks

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    Recently proposed regulations expanding the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States' oversight, a White House divestment order and state-level legislative efforts signal increasing scrutiny of real estate transactions that may trigger national security concerns, say Luciano Racco and Aleksis Fernández Caballero at Foley Hoag.

  • Why Attorneys Should Consider Community Leadership Roles

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    Volunteering and nonprofit board service are complementary to, but distinct from, traditional pro bono work, and taking on these community leadership roles can produce dividends for lawyers, their firms and the nonprofit causes they support, says Katie Beacham at Kilpatrick.

  • 'Pig Butchering': The Scam That Exploits Crypto Confusion

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    Certain red flags can tip off banks to possible "pig-butchering," and with the scam's increasing popularity, financial institutions need to take action to monitor entry points into the crypto space, detect suspicious activity and provide a necessary backstop to protect customers, say Brandon Essig and Mary Parrish McCracken at Lightfoot Franklin.

  • How Transaction Lookbacks Can Guide Fintech Companies

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    As transaction lookbacks continue to be a key focus of enforcement actions, newer financial institutions like fintech companies should know they can benefit from proactively investigating their potential failure to identify suspicious activity, creating a compliance road map and building trust with regulators in the process, say attorneys at Jenner & Block.

  • Firms Must Offer A Trifecta Of Services In Post-Chevron World

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    After the U.S. Supreme Court’s Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision overturning Chevron deference, law firms will need to integrate litigation, lobbying and communications functions to keep up with the ramifications of the ruling and provide adequate counsel quickly, says Neil Hare at Dentons.

  • Roundup

    A Day In The In-House Life

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    As more attorneys make the jump to fintech companies, and the regulatory landscape continues to shift, this Expert Analysis series follows in-house fintech counsel on an average workday as they grapple with everything from regulatory challenges and product launches to work-life balance and lunch orders.

  • Series

    A Day In The In-House Life: Narmi GC Talks Peak Productivity

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    On a work-from-home day in August, Narmi general counsel Amy Pardee chronicles a typical day in her life in which she organizes her time to tackle everything from advising on products and contract negotiations to volunteering and catching up on the New York Times crossword.

  • Opinion

    CFPB's AI Stance Backslides On Innovation Issues

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    The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's recent response to a Treasury Department's request for information about artificial intelligence in the financial services sector uses alarmist rhetoric about the technology's risks, ceding an opportunity to help shape this important discussion, says Mike Silver at Husch Blackwell.

  • How Ripple Final Judgment Fits In Broader Crypto Landscape

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    The Southern District of New York's recent $125 million civil penalty levied in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission v. Ripple will have a broad impact on the crypto industry as it was the first to hold that blind sales of digital assets are not securities, even if deemed securities in other circumstances, say attorneys at BakerHostetler.

  • 5 Tips To Succeed In A Master Of Laws Program And Beyond

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    As lawyers and recent law school graduates begin their Master of Laws coursework across the country, they should keep a few pointers in mind to get the most out of their programs and kick-start successful careers in their practice areas, says Kelley Miller at Reed Smith.

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