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☆ Vice owes FTI Consulting nearly $1 million, a new court filing alleges, one of multiple vendors chasing missed payments
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Claire Atkinson | Jack Newsham | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Vice Media owes FTI Consulting nearly $1 million in fees, some dating back to 2019, a court filing alleges. FTI is one of several vendors who say they've gone unpaid by the youth media company. The filing alleges that Vice Holding, the parent of Vice Media, hired Washington, DC-based FTI Consulting to help it with accounting projects and management and then failed to pay its bills. Ironically, Vice hired FTI to help it with "profitability analysis" and to design "cash management" tools, according to the filing. Fortress lent Vice $30 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, which confirmed Vice is in a process to sell itself.

The families, comprising more than 10,000 people, had asked U.S. District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan to put his Feb. 21 decision on hold while they appeal. "An important public interest lies in the enforcement of terrorism judgments," Daniels wrote. In ruling against the families, Daniels said awarding them the frozen assets would effectively recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan's legitimate government, which the Biden administration has not done. The president ordered $3.5 billion set aside to benefit the Afghan people, leaving the rest for the families to pursue. The case is In re Terrorist Attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No.

☆ JPMorgan says it is not liable for top banker's ties to Jeffrey Epstein
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Jonathan Stempel | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Lawyers for the U.S. Virgin Islands did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. After leaving JPMorgan, Staley became chief executive of Barclays Plc (BARC.L) but resigned in November 2021 amid a dispute with British financial regulators examining his ties to Epstein. Epstein's victims are also suing JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE), where Epstein was a client from 2013 to 2018. The case is Government of the U.S. Virgin Islands v JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No.

[1/3] Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at Florence Regional Airport in Florence, South Carolina, U.S., March 12, 2022. Trump said his post was "clearly about" and merely repeated his formal response to the first lawsuit, and was therefore covered by "absolute litigation privilege" under New York law, dooming the defamation claim. Carroll's lawsuit also includes a battery claim under New York's Adult Survivors Act, which lets sexual abuse victims sue their attackers even if statutes of limitations have run out. A Washington appeals court is deciding whether Trump should be immune from Carroll's first lawsuit, but not her second, because he was acting as president when he spoke. The case is Carroll v. Trump, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No.

NEW YORK, Feb 22 (Reuters) - The creator of a marketplace for National Basketball Association Top Shot non-fungible tokens must face a lawsuit claiming that the tokens are securities, a U.S. judge ruled on Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan rejected Dapper Labs Inc's bid to dismiss a proposed class action by purchasers of NBA Top Shot Moments, which are digital video clips of NBA game highlights. The lawsuit said Dapper should have registered the NFTs as securities because their value was tied to the success of Dapper's blockchain. It says there are more than 1.5 million users of NBA Top Shot, with sales exceeding $1 billion. The case is Friel v. Dapper Labs Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No.

☆ Steve Bannon's ex-lawyers sue him over nearly $500,000 in unpaid legal bills
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( Jacob Shamsian | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Steve Bannon's ex-lawyers filed a lawsuit saying he hasn't paid nearly $500,000 in legal bills. The firm represented Bannon when he defied his January 6 subpoena. The lawsuit, filed Friday, says the firm billed Bannon $855,487.87 but was paid only $375,000, leaving an outstanding balance of $480,487.87. Trump pardoned Bannon shortly before leaving office, but the Manhattan district attorney's office brought a similar case against him that remains pending. Bannon is having trouble with his lawyers in the Manhattan district attorney's case, too.

Feb 21 (Reuters) - Societe Generale SA (SOGN.PA) agreed to pay $157 million to settle a lawsuit accusing the French bank and several other banks of contributing to imprisoned Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford's estimated $7.2 billion fraud. The payout was disclosed on Tuesday in a filing in Houston federal court, and requires a judge's approval. Societe Generale denied wrongdoing, and settled to avoid the burden, "very substantial expense" and risk of litigation, settlement papers show. The banks have denied wrongdoing, saying they provided routine services to Stanford's bank and did not know about his fraud. Another bank, Mississippi-based Trustmark Corp (TRMK.O), reached a $100 million settlement of similar claims.

NEW YORK, Feb 21 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge said on Tuesday victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are not entitled to seize $3.5 billion of assets belonging to Afghanistan's central bank to satisfy court judgments they obtained against the Taliban. U.S. District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan said he was "constitutionally restrained" from finding that the Taliban was Afghanistan's legitimate government, a precursor for attaching assets belonging to Da Afghanistan Bank, or DAB. Daniels said letting victims seize those assets would amount to a ruling that the Taliban are Afghanistan's legitimate government. He said U.S. courts lack power to reach that conclusion, noting that Biden administration does not recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan's government. The case is In re Terrorist Attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No.

☆ U.S. SEC charges Terra founder Do Kwon with fraud
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Hannah Lang | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Kwon founded blockchain platform Terraform Labs and was the primary developer of two cryptocurrencies whose demise roiled crypto markets around the world last year. TerraUSD, an algorithmic stablecoin supposed to maintain a 1:1 peg to the U.S. dollar, derived its value through another paired token called Luna. Both tokens lost nearly all their value when TerraUSD, also known as UST, slipped below its 1:1 dollar peg in May 2022. Prior to its collapse on May 9, TerraUSD had a market cap of more than $18.5 billion and was the tenth-largest cryptocurrency. Reporting by Hannah Lang in Washington; Editing by Chris Reese and David GregorioOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ US SEC charges Terra founder Do Kwon with fraud
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

Kwon founded blockchain platform Terraform Labs and was the primary developer of two cryptocurrencies whose demise roiled crypto markets around the world last year. The SEC filing did not say where Kwon was living. According to the SEC’s complaint, Terraform Labs and Kwon misled investors about the stability of UST, and claimed that the firm’s crypto tokens would increase in value. Terraform Labs did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Globally, investors in TerraUSD and Luna lost an estimated $42 billion, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.

☆ SEC charges Do Kwon, Terraform with fraud in connection with Terra collapse
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Rohan Goswami | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Do Kwon, co-founder and chief executive officer of Terraform Labs, insists that he is not on the run from South Korean authorities. Terraform Labs, the company that Kwon founded, is behind the collapsed cryptocurrencies terraUSD and luna, which combined were worth $60 billion before they crashed. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Terraform Labs and its CEO, Do Kwon, with fraud, alleging that they orchestrated a multibillion dollar "crypto asset securities fraud," the SEC said Thursday. The SEC alleges that Kwon marketed those assets, including those mAsset swaps and Terra, as profit-bearing securities, "repeatedly claiming" the tokens would increase in value. Kwon is wanted in South Korea for his involvement in the collapse of TerraUSD.

☆ A female Google exec accused of sexually harassing a male coworker hits back in court, saying his time at the company was marked by 'repeated instances of misconduct toward women'
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Stephanie Stacey | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A female Google exec accused of sexually harassing a male coworker has hit back in court. Her lawyers say in a filing his tenure at Google was marked by "repeated" misconduct toward women. Olohan is suing Miller and Google in New York, saying among other things that Miller sexually harassed him and the company failed to address this behavior. Olohan's employment at Google was terminated on August 5, per his complaint. In a response to Olohan's complaint, filed on January 30, Google denied all allegations made against it, and asked the court to dismiss the case "with prejudice in its entirety."

[1/2] Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at Florence Regional Airport in Florence, South Carolina, U.S., March 12, 2022. Kaplan said Trump's offer would "almost certainly" delay a scheduled April 25 trial and unduly harm Carroll, who has long accused Trump of stalling. Joseph Tacopina, who joined Trump's legal team two weeks ago, and Carroll's lawyer Roberta Kaplan declined to comment. Carroll originally sought Trump's DNA to compare against a dress she said she wore when the alleged rape occurred. The second lawsuit came in November after Trump repeated his denial, using similar language, in a social media post the prior month.

The banks said there were no allegations they knew about or actively did anything to further Epstein's sex trafficking, and had no legal duty to protect the women from his abuses. The plaintiffs have said numerous cash payments from the banks were used to pay Epstein's victims. Epstein killed himself at age 66 in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The cases are Jane Doe 1 v Deutsche Bank AG et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-10018, and Jane Doe 1 v JPMorgan Chase & Co in the same court, No.

☆ Veterans Suing Over 3M Earplugs Want Bankruptcy Case Tossed
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-03 | by ( Bob Tita | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

3M Co. has said that its military earplugs are safe if service members receive proper training on using them. Lawyers for veterans suing 3M Co. over its earplugs have asked a federal judge to dismiss the bankruptcy filing of a 3M subsidiary that would shield the industrial conglomerate from court trials. The motion for dismissal filed late Thursday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Indiana followed a federal appeals court ruling this week that tossed out a chapter 11 filing by LTL Management LLC, a company created by Johnson & Johnson in 2021. J&J had transferred its talcum-powder-related liabilities to LTL, which then filed for bankruptcy, blocking plaintiffs from bringing additional lawsuits.

☆ Trader Is Charged in Alleged $110 Million Crypto Manipulation Scheme
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( Mengqi Sun | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +3 min

He faces charges of commodities fraud, commodities market manipulation and wire fraud in connection with what prosecutors said was manipulation of Mango Markets. Mr. Eisenberg remained in police custody on Thursday and will be arraigned Feb. 14, when he would be asked to enter a plea. PREVIEWThe Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed parallel civil charges against Mr. Eisenberg last month. The CFTC, which regulates derivatives markets, said the enforcement action against Mr. Eisenberg was the first of its kind against an alleged manipulation scheme involving a decentralized exchange. He allegedly artificially pumped up the price of MNGO on three different digital asset exchanges that Mango Markets used to determine the value of the derivative contracts.

☆ The criminal case against Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison could put jilted FTX customers in the backseat
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( Sindhu Sundar | Jacob Shamsian | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

The parallel criminal case against SBF, Caroline Ellison, and Gary Wang may be to blame. But they told a Delaware bankruptcy court recently that they hit a roadblock, accusing Sam Bankman-Fried and those close to him of not playing ball with them. The criminal case takes priorityEllison and Wang separately reached plea deals with federal prosecutors in Manhattan, copping to charges including wire fraud and conspiracy. But, experts told Insider, the deals require them to focus on working with prosecutors in the criminal case — even if it could be at the expense of other parties. But when both criminal and civil proceedings are ongoing, it's the criminal case that goes first in line, Snyder said.

Google said the new DOJ case, filed jointly with eight states last month, which also alleges advertising-related abuses, overlaps with multidistrict litigation in New York that formed in 2021. Google has disputed the claims in the new lawsuit, saying it "duplicates an unfounded" one that Texas filed and now is part of the New York litigation. "They just want DOJ versus Google, nobody else," Vladeck said. Fox also said there is a new federal law that gives state plaintiffs their preference for venue in antitrust litigation. The case is In re Google Digital Advertising Antitrust Litigation, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, 1:21-md-03010-PKC.

☆ Amazon cited by Labor Department for second time in a month over warehouse injuries
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( Annie Palmer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Federal safety inspectors on Wednesday issued citations against Amazon at three of its warehouses for putting workers at risk of serious injury, the second such penalty in a month. The move comes after OSHA last month cited Amazon for failing to keep workers safe at three other facilities. "Amazon's operating methods are creating hazardous work conditions and processes, leading to serious worker injuries," said Doug Parker, assistant secretary for Occupational Safety and Health, in a statement. Amazon also faces a separate investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office's civil division that centers around worker safety hazards at the e-retailer's facilities nationwide. As part of the probe, investigators are also looking into whether Amazon has accurately reported worker injuries and if it misrepresented those injuries to lenders to obtain credit.

☆ Roomster must face lawsuit by U.S. FTC, six states over fake reviews
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( Jonathan Stempel | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW YORK, Feb 1 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Wednesday ordered the roommate matching service Roomster to face a lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission and six states claiming it used fake listings and reviews to take millions of dollars from people struggling to find affordable housing. In seeking a dismissal, the defendants said they had ceased the alleged improper conduct in 2018, that the FTC lacked power to sue, and the user reviews were not deceptive under state laws. The lawsuit sought civil penalties and an injunction against violations of federal and state unfair trade laws. In October, the FTC sought public comment on whether to adopt a rule to combat deceptive or unfair endorsement practices, such as by using fake reviews, suppressing negative reviews and paying for positive reviews. The case is FTC et al v Roomster Corp et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No.

☆ Elon Musk seeks to end lawsuit over 'inadvertent' late disclosure of Twitter stake
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Jonathan Stempel | Industry Insight | Upcoming Sec Climate Disclosure Rules Bring Urgency To Esg Data Strategy Planning | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW YORK, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Elon Musk asked a U.S. judge to throw out a lawsuit claiming that his delayed disclosure of a large stake in Twitter Inc defrauded shareholders who sold Twitter stock at artificially low prices because they were kept in the dark. Under the SEC rule, investors must disclose within 10 days when they have acquired 5% of a company, which for Musk's Twitter investment would have been last March 24. Twitter shares rose 27% on April 4, to $49.97 from $39.31, after Musk disclosed his 9.2% stake, which investors viewed as his vote of confidence in San Francisco-based Twitter. The case is Oklahoma Firefighters Pension and Retirement System v Musk et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Jonathan OatisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Donald Trump sues Bob Woodward for releasing audio of their interviews
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( David Goldman | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New York CNN —Former President Donald Trump has sued journalist Bob Woodward for copyright violations, claiming Woodward released audio from their interviews without Trump’s consent. Woodward conducted several interviews with Trump for “Rage,” the author’s second book on the former president that hit bookstores in September 2020. Woodward later released “The Trump Tapes,” an audiobook featuring eight hours of raw interviews with Trump interspersed with the author’s commentary. That book, which went on sale October 25, 2022, contains the 20 interviews Woodward conducted with Trump from 2016 through 2020, including those for “Rage.”But Trump, in the lawsuit filed Monday in the Northern District of Florida, claims he did not give Woodward permission to release the audio of the interviews. In that case, US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks of the Southern District of Florida wrote that Trump has demonstrated a “pattern of misusing the courts to serve political purposes” as he ticked through several other failed lawsuits Trump has brought in recent years.

☆ Dealer Convicted in Fentanyl Overdose Deaths of Three New Yorkers
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( Margot Patrick | Julie Wernau | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Deaths involving cocaine in New York City surged to 1,261 in 2021 from a few hundred annually a few years ago as fentanyl spread into supplies. A New Jersey man was convicted of causing the deaths of three New Yorkers to whom he sold cocaine laced with fentanyl, a spate of poisonings that The Wall Street Journal reported on last year. Billy Ortega was found guilty on Monday of all charges by a federal jury in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York of supplying the cocaine with fentanyl that killed three professionals in Manhattan in March 2021. At a sentencing scheduled for June 2, he could face 25 years to life in prison on five convictions related to selling and distributing drugs that led to the deaths and using firearms to protect the operation. A lawyer representing Mr. Ortega said he plans to appeal the verdict.

An infant who was recently returned to his mother from an alleged kidnapping died Saturday after being rushed to the hospital. Ky’air Thomas and his twin brother, Kason, were found alive last month after a woman allegedly stole a car with them still inside. The Honda Accord was later found, with Kason inside, abandoned near a Papa John’s restaurant in Indianapolis. After Jackson was arrested, the two women said they went out to eat and spotted the Honda with Kason inside. She was also charged with two counts of kidnapping a minor in the Southern District of Ohio after an indictment earlier this month.

☆ DOJ charges 3 men in murder-for-hire plot against journalist critical of Iran
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Https | Media-Cldnry.S-Nbcnews.Com Image Upload Newscms Rebecca-Shabad-Circle-Byline-Template.Jpg | Rebecca Shabad | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

Soon after the charges were announced, Masih Alinejad revealed that she was the target of the assassination plot. “Fortunately, their plot failed because we didn’t,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said at a press conference announcing the indictment. Amirov, a citizen of Azerbaijan and Russia who was living in Iran during the plot, was taken into custody in New York on Thursday. Omarov then directed Mehdiyev to carry out the plot against Alinejad and Amirov and Omarov arranged to pay Mehdiyev $30,000 in cash. Before he could carry out the plot, however, Mehdiyev was arrested near Alinejad's home in July with the assault rifle in his possession.

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