New Multi-Agency Crackdown On White Collar Crime

“If the recent proliferation of taskforces and initiatives is any indication, the aggressive cross-border expansion of white-collar crime enforcement is only intensifying,” writes Dechert attorney Vincent H. Cohen, Jr. There is, for example, the new “Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative” coming out of DOJ; a new “Compliance Counsel” position in DOJ’s Fraud Section; and a special group dedicated to ferreting out money-laundering in luxury Manhattan and Miami-Dade real estate. All of this takes place in the context of DOJ’s new emphasis on targeting individuals – including a demand that companies determine personal responsibility for violations as the price for getting cooperation credits – as laid out in the Yates memo of last September. Meanwhile, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement has been strengthened by way of increased international cooperation, while an entirely new enforcement category – cybersecurity – has been taken up by three separate agencies at this point: the FTC, (which settled with the Wyndham hotel chain regarding a cyber breach); the FCC, with its $3.5 million settlement against TerraCom, Inc. and YourTel America; and the SEC, which extracted a $75,000 fine from investment adviser R.T. Jones Capital Equities Management.