Mortgage fraud in South Florida continues to be in the news, as a multi-agency task force involving both federal agencies and local law enforcement continues to file criminal cases in both state and federal Courts. South Florida federal courts are known to be especially focused on sex crimes and white…
A former Boca Raton, Florida resident, Ms. Annette Bongiorno, age 66, was sentenced in Federal Criminal Court in New York. U.S. District Court. Judge Laura Taylor Swain sentenced Bongiorno to six years in Federal prison saying Ms. Bongiorno’s decision to follow Bernard Madoff’s instructions to perpetrate one of the largest…
The arrest is where it begins. A Federal criminal arrest can often be an almost civil event between professional U.S. agents and the target. Once arrested you are brought before a Magistrate for arraignment. At arraignment the matter of reading the indictment, determination of counsel, and conditions of pre-trial release,…
A recent New York Times article highlights 1,000 cases in which entrapment may see new life in courtrooms and legislatures throughout the United States. Entrapment laws go back to the 1930’s when the U.S. Supreme Court first put constitutional rights in play to restrain what the Justices called “outrageous government…
This past Wednesday, October 22, 2014, four former Blackwater contractors were convicted in the infamous 2o007 killings in Baghdad, by a federal jury. In 2007, at the height of the United States incursion in Iraq, seventeen Iraqi civilians were killed and eighteen wounded in a busy traffic circle in Bagdhad.…
The FBI has a policy that agents cannot use recording devices/systems when interviewing people who are arrested or are the subject of a criminal investigation; The “302” black hole. “Form 302” is the form used by the FBI, a “302” is a handwritten summary, written by an FBI agent, after…
The office of the US Attorney announced that several thousands of men and women in federal prison for conviction of federal drug laws will be eligible for early release. The review process means sentences that were given out in the past will be reduced, significantly reduced. That means, and this…
Federal Sentencing has been praised and pilloried since 1984 when the Sentencing Commission, a creature of the Congress, was created. Over the years it has been seen as race neutral, gender neutral, and fair. Heralded as removing judges from the influences of money and lawyers, it has both succeeded and…
Robert Mueller III is the Director of the FBI. He has 36,074 employees, 13,913 special agents, but he calls the shots. And if a shot across your client’s bow is going to come, he’s the man who brings the misery down on us. So if you advise clients, Boards of…
Many people think that if they are not doing anything wrong on the streets, that it is completely illegal for cops to stop them. In South Florida and many of its jurisdictions such as Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Broward County, Dade County and Palm Beach County, there are…