In Florida, a person commits the crime of money laundering when he/she conceals the nature, source or location of proceeds of specified unlawful activity. Money laundering in Florida only applies to money or other property that comes from “specified unlawful activity”, but that term is defined very broadly and certainly…
We have written at length about various search and seizure issues including whether the police need a search warrant to conduct certain searches. As many people know, the Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures conducted by the government. However, in order to be afforded such protection, a…
When a person applies for most types of jobs in this country, he/she is normally required to provide information indicating he/she is either a United States citizen or otherwise legally authorized to work here. Of course, we all know that employers do not always check that information for various reasons.…
White collar crimes are not formally defined, but they generally refer to crimes involving fraud, money, technology and/or a large number of documents. If a person steals enough money and happens to work on Wall Street, he/she has a good chance of walking away with a fine and a stern…
As tax season approaches at the beginning of each year, we normally see quite a few tax return fraud cases, both in the news and as new criminal defense cases in the Jacksonville, Florida area. Most of these cases involve someone obtaining social security numbers and other identification information for…
In a case south of Jacksonville, Florida, a sheriff’s office deputy allegedly manipulated the sheriff’s overtime assignment computer program to give her more overtime hours as a security officer at a local hospital than the sheriff’s policy would normally allow. The defendant worked those overtime hours, and she was paid…
Here is an interesting article about how law enforcement officials have changed their tactics to catch Wall Street executives who are involved with insider trading. While wiretaps are traditionally thought of as tools to catch drug dealers, investigators decided to resort to using wiretaps in insider trading cases. Because insider…
According to an article at News4Jax.com, police arrested nineteen people they say were involved in a large car insurance scheme in the Jacksonville, Florida area and other parts of Florida. When a person purchases an automobile in Florida, he/she is required to also purchase insurance for the vehicle. While the…
According to recent announcements by the FBI, mortgage fraud is at unprecedented levels. This is somewhat of a surprise as mortgage fraud seemed to peak during the housing boom when home prices were skyrocketing and every bank was giving out mortgages to anyone regardless of their ability to pay. However,…
After President Obama was elected, he promised to make Medicare fraud a priority with the Department of Justice. It has been well publicized that the government suspected there was a tremendous amount of fraud with the Medicare process. The government alleged that medical providers all over the country were committing…