Tweet Lawyer added to OFAC List The U.S. Department of the Treasury has designated a lawyer, Jose Antonio Nunez Bedoya, to its Specially Designated Nationals List (“SDNL“). Mr. Bedoya was added to the SDNL for incorporating several companies on behalf of members of Mexican organized crime, the Sinaloa Cartel, in an effort allegedly to create […]
Tweet Mafia Crackdown in Rome Italian police arrested over 120 people today in its largest crackdown on mafia activities around Rome, including several lawyers alleged to have undertaken transactions and incorporated companies on behalf of the ‘Ndrangheta. According to the police, the ‘Ndrangheta ran multiple gambling operations and drug trafficking operations, and laundered the proceeds […]
Tweet Anti-Money Laundering Laws Infringe Independence of Bar The Court of Appeal for British Columbia ruled today that the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, as it applies to lawyers in that province, interferes to an unacceptable degree with the independence of the Bar as a principle of fundamental justice, and as a consequence, […]
Tweet In a much anticipated move, Kim Rothstein, the so-called “free-spending” wife of Scott Rothstein, the Florida lawyer convicted of money laundering for running a Ponzi scheme through his now-defunct law firm, has been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering. Kim Rothstein’s lawyer, Scott Saidel and her close friend, Stacie Weisman, were also charged […]
Tweet Judge extradited for suspected money laundering Colin Dines, a retired British judge and former criminal law lawyer, is being extradited from London to Rome to face charges by an Italian magistrate that he was part of a transnational criminal organization complicit in laundering £344 million at the behest of the Mafia. In 2010, an […]
Tweet Spanish lawyer Fernando del Valle, whom we wrote about here, was convicted of money laundering and sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to pay $3.4 million in fines. Authorities believe del Valle laundered up to $250 million through his law firm in Spain’s exclusive Marbella region. The case was one of the […]
Tweet Jonathan Bristol, a former partner at Winston & Strawn LLP in New York, pleaded not guilty in a Manhattan court yesterday to charges of laundering more than US$20 million through two firm escrow accounts to allegedly help Kenneth Starr, a former lawyer, defraud his celebrity clients. Prosecutors allege that Mr. Bristol used the accounts […]
Tweet Debra Villegas, former chief operating officer of the now-defunct Fort Lauderdale law firm run by Scott Rothstein, was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 10 years and ordered to pay US$363 million in restitution today in Florida. Villegas forged signatures on fabricated legal settlements that were sold to wealthy investors. Earlier this year, […]
Tweet Dalia Preldakaj, a paralegal in the New York law firm of Salvador Collazo, was sentenced today in Manhattan to 78 months in prison for money laundering, witness tampering, immigration application fraud and conspiracy to operate an immigration fraud mill. Collazo is a former Acting Justice of the New York State Supreme Court who was […]
Tweet South Carolina tax lawyer, John O’Connor, pleaded guilty today to a charge of money laundering in connection with his involvement in a conspiracy to liquidate and conceal money stolen by a former client. The former client, William Trier, embezzled approximately US$5 million over a ten year period from his employer by creating phoney invoices […]