Category: enforcement archive

Lynda Bennett, 65, of Maggie Valley, North Carolina, was a primary candidate for North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District in 2020. In late December 2019, Bennett borrowed $25,000 from a family member, representing that she needed the money for personal expenses because she had to spend a large amount of her own money on her campaign. The day after depositing the loaned money into a personal account, Bennett then caused $80,000, including the $25,000 in loaned funds, to be transferred to the bank account of Lynda Bennett for Congress (LBC), her authorized federal campaign committee. Under the FECA, Bennett was required to report a loan from a third-party individual as a campaign contribution. Bennett knowingly and willfully violated the FECA by reporting through LBC that the full $80,000 was a loan to her campaign using her own personal funds, rather than disclosing that $25,000 of that amount was a loan from another individual.

The United States today announced the unsealing of a warrant for the seizure of a Boeing 737-7JU aircraft owned by PJSC Rosneft Oil Company (Rosneft), a Russian integrated energy company headquartered in Moscow, Russia, headed by Igor Ivanovich Sechin. According to court documents, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security issued sanctions against Russia. The sanctions impose export controls and license requirements to protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. The Russia sanctions expanded prohibitions on the export, reexport or in-country transfer of, among other things, U.S.-manufactured aircraft to or within Russia without a valid license or license exception for aircraft owned or controlled, or under charter or lease, by Russia and/or Russian nationals. In this case, these sanctions bar a plane that was built or manufactured in the United States from entering Russia without a valid license. 

A military veteran accused of telling an undercover FBI agent about a plan to “wipe out” the nation’s Jewish population was convicted on Tuesday of storming the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. A federal judge heard trial testimony without a jury before convicting Virginia resident Hatchet Speed, a former Navy reservist who was assigned to an agency that operates spy satellites. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden is scheduled to sentence Speed on May 8 for his role in a mob’s attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. McFadden convicted Speed of all five charges.

The FTC sued Raging Bull and its owners in December 2020 as part of Operation Income Illusion, a nationwide law enforcement effort targeting deceptive income claims. The FTC charged that the company used bogus earnings claims to trick people into paying for investment strategies and recommendations, and then trapped them into hard-to-cancel subscription plans with costly fees. The FTC’s complaint noted that consumers who purchased the site’s services lost millions of dollars in their investments.

In March 2022, Raging Bull and its owners agreed to a settlement with the FTC that required them to pay $2.425 million, end their earnings deception, get affirmative approval from consumers for subscription sign ups, and provide them with a simple method to cancel recurring charges.

The United States and California filed the suit alleging that HVI Cat Canyon, which previously owned and operated multiple oil and gas production facilities in Santa Barbara County, California, was liable for:

12 oil spills into waters of the United States in violation of the Clean Water Act;
17 oil spills into waters of the state in violation of state law;
Reimbursement of the federal and state governments’ costs of cleaning up the oil spills;
Natural resource damages under state law for harm to fish, plant, bird, or animal life and habitat; and
Numerous violations of federal Oil Pollution Prevention Regulations identified in 16 EPA inspections across 11 facilities.

The U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have entered into a consent decree with the City of Gloucester, Massachusetts, to resolve violations of the Clean Water Act regarding the city’s water pollution control facility that discharges undertreated effluent into Massachusetts Bay.

Undertreated sewage from the city’s existing water treatment facility results in a variety of harmful discharges into Massachusetts Bay, including disease causing organisms and toxic pollutants.

Royal Park Investments (RPI), the so-called “bad bank” of the former Fortis, has filed a billion-dollar claim against rating agency S&P. De Tijd writes this and appears from media reports in the Cayman Islands, the place where the lawsuit was filed.

Sean Colville Niven has been permanently banned from providing financial services and engaging in credit activities, after he was convicted in the Perth Magistrates Court for two counts of offences contrary to the Bankruptcy Act. The court found Niven guilty of making a declaration that he knew was false, and for disposing of property intending to defraud creditors.

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York has filed a civil forfeiture complaint against six real properties located in New York, New York; Southampton, New York; and Fisher Island, Florida, worth approximately $75 million. The complaint alleges that the properties beneficially owned by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg are the proceeds of sanctions violations and were involved in international money laundering transactions. The case arises in the wake of the indictment of Vekselberg’s alleged strawman, Vladimir Voronchenko, a fugitive previously charged in the Southern District of New York. In the Eastern District of New York, a five-count indictment was unsealed today charging Ilya Balakaev, 47, of Moscow, with various offenses related to a years-long scheme to illegally smuggle sensitive devices used in counterintelligence operations from the United States to Russia for the benefit of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), the principal intelligence and security agency of the Russian government.

Balakaev is further charged with illegally exporting a gas detector and related software from the United States to Russia for the benefit of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea). Concurrent with today’s action in the Eastern District of New York, the Department of Commerce separately issued a Temporary Denial Order denying the export privileges of Balakaev and his company, Radiotester OOO (aka Radiotester LLC), for 180 days with the possibility of renewal.

According to court documents, Jo Ann Macrina, 66, of Daytona Beach, Florida, served as the Commissioner of Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management from 2011 through May 2016. During Macrina’s tenure, the City of Atlanta awarded millions of dollars in contracts to an architectural, design, and construction management and services firm based in Atlanta. Macrina took multiple steps to steer lucrative contracts toward the firm’s joint venture. Those actions included casting aside prior final scores ranking potential vendors where the joint venture ranked near the bottom, replacing two evaluators who previously represented the Department of Watershed Management with herself and Macrina’s employee, and scoring the joint venture higher than all other evaluators during a reevaluation.

In exchange for providing the firm’s executive vice president with access to confidential information and preferential treatment on City of Atlanta projects, Macrina was offered a job and accepted things of value. For instance, Macrina accepted $10,000 in cash, a diamond ring, a room at a luxury hotel in Dubai, and landscaping work at her home from the firm’s executive vice president either directly or through another employee of the firm. Shortly after Macrina’s employment with the City of Atlanta ended, she began working for the firm. Between June 2016 and September 2016, the firm and its executive vice president paid Macrina $30,000 in four separate payments.

On Feb. 22, Vladimir Antonio Arevalo-Chavez, aka Vampiro de Monserrat Criminales (Arevalo-Chavez), Walter Yovani Hernandez-Rivera, aka Baxter de Park View and Bastard de Park View (Hernandez-Rivera), and Marlon Antonio Menjivar-Portillo, aka Rojo de Park View (Menjivar-Portillo), were located by Mexican authorities and expelled from Mexico via the United States. When Arevalo-Chavez, Hernandez-Rivera, and Menjivar-Portillo arrived at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, they were placed under arrest by the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Earlier today, the defendants had their initial appearances in the Southern District of Texas, pending removal to the Eastern District of New York..

The strike force’s goal is to “…protect U.S. national security by preventing …sensitive technologies from being used for malign purposes” by “nation-state adversaries” such as China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea. The “sensitive technologies” at issue include supercomputing and “exascale” computing, quantum computing, biosciences, and, of course, artificial intelligence.

This development reflects the Administration’s continuing focus on using export control policy and enforcement to advance its national security priorities—of which economic security has become a key subset. The Administration has used the Foreign Direct Product Rule and coordinated its use, particularly regarding advanced semiconductor technology and related tooling, among its allies and partners outside of the traditional multilateral frameworks.  This is yet another example of how the Administration has scaled-up its use of export controls to generate desired outcomes in the areas of technology security and economic competitiveness – both national security priorities – vis-à-vis, in particular, China. The creation of the Disruptive Technologies Strike Force is the latest step by the Administration toward institutionalizing a “whole of government” approach to its novel use of export control policy and enforcement to counter this geopolitical rival.  

According to court documents, Jessie R. Benton, 45, of The Woodlands, schemed with another political advisor to funnel political contributions to a 2016 presidential campaign from a Russian national seeking to meet and take a picture with the presidential candidate. Benton arranged for the Russian national – whose nationality Benton concealed from the campaign and the candidate – to attend a campaign fundraising event and to take a picture with the candidate.

As such attendance and engagement required a contribution, Benton caused the Russian national to wire $100,000 to Benton’s political consulting firm to make an illegal foreign contribution to the campaign. To disguise the scheme, Benton created a fake invoice, which falsely identified the funds as payment for consulting services. Benton acted as a straw donor and contributed $25,000 of the Russian national’s money to the campaign, falsely identified himself as the contributor, and pocketed the remaining $75,000. Because Benton falsely claimed to have given the contribution himself, the relevant campaign entities unwittingly filed reports with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that inaccurately reported Benton – instead of the Russian national – as the source of the funds.

In November 2022, Benton was convicted at trial of conspiring to solicit and cause an illegal campaign contribution by a foreign national, effecting a conduit contribution, and causing false records to be filed with the FEC.

An indictment was unsealed today in the District of Connecticut charging a Connecticut man and a foreign national with conspiracy, multiple counts of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), and money laundering in connection with an alleged scheme to pay bribes to Brazilian officials to win contracts with Brazil’s state-owned and state-controlled energy company, Petróleo Brasileiro S.A. – Petrobras (Petrobras).  

Michael S. Flynn was sentenced on Feb. 10 in Bridgeport, Connecticut to fifteen months’ imprisonment and restitution of $1,062,155 for his participation in bid-rigging and fraud schemes targeting public and private entities in Connecticut. This is the seventh sentencing arising out of the investigation into the insulation contracting industry.

Two Amazon marketplace sellers and four of their companies have pleaded guilty to price fixing DVDs and Blu Ray Discs. On Feb. 10 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, Bruce Fish of Hayfield, Minnesota, along with BDF Enterprises, Inc., a corporate entity owned by Fish, admitted to participating in a conspiracy to fix the prices of…