Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
After initially entering a not guilty plea last year, Christiane Kathleen Irwin on Tuesday pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud. The government accused her of inflating her $140,000 salary at Simon Greenstone Panatier when she submitted biweekly payroll, taking home an extra $1.48 million over three years.
Lawyers in the Fort Worth Office of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission have charged an internet marketing guru turned cryptocurrency network founder with securities fraud and using $12.1 million of investor funds to buy a Ferrari Roma sports car, a Rolex Daytona Eye of the Tiger watch and a 555-carat black diamond called “The Enigma.”
The jury cleared Richard Hall of conspiring to defraud the government but convicted him on charges of paying kickbacks and conspiring to launder money. Hall, the former owner of Rxpress Pharmacy and Xpress Compounding, faces decades in prison.
This article highlights U.S. Department of Justice guidelines regarding employee conversations on encrypted chat applications such as WhatsApp and offers guidance for companies to mitigate risk.
The Texas Lawbook visited with Hodge to learn more about her vision for leading the firm's ESG Risk and Investigations practice, what it's like to be reunited with her former classmate and how she sees ESG evolving over the next several years.
George Lock Paret, chief pharmacist at one of two Fort Worth compounding pharmacies co-owned by criminal fraud defendant Richard Hall, says he routinely modified the mixtures of ingredients in prescribed medicines to “make us more money.” Paret is one of several former associates of Hall’s testifying against his former boss in what prosecutors say was a $55 million bribery and kickback scheme to defraud federal insurance programs.
Prosecutors claim Richard Hall of Fort Worth recruited “a vast network” of marketers who signed up doctors to prescribe custom drug creams, which were billed to the U.S. government at thousands of dollars per tube.
“Defrauding the government is an affront to American taxpayers,” says Leigha Simonton, U.S. attorney in Dallas. “Defrauding the government during a pandemic — at a time when millions of hardworking entrepreneurs struggled to make payroll and rent — is pouring salt in a wound.”
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