Can the Feds not put Bank Executives (or their employees) in Prison for Fraud? I see stories such as this one quoted below where a Wells Fargo exec who headed phony accounts unit collected $125 million. Basically the notion is that big fat cat bankers can swindle people out of BIG money and have absolutely no consequences, and they actually still benefit from defrauding others and be set for the rest of their lives. On Thursday, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $185 million, including the largest penalty ever imposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to settle claims that that it defrauded its customers. The bank’s shareholders will ultimately have to swallow the cost of that settlement. Tolstedt, however, is walking away from Wells Fargo with a very full bank account--and praise. In the July announcement of her exit, which made no mention of the soon-to-be-settled case, Well Fargo’s CEO John Stumpf said Tolstedt had been one of the bank’s most important leaders and “a standard-bearer of our culture” and “a champion for our customers.” In a statement following the settlement, Wells Fargo said, “Wells Fargo reached these agreements consistent with our commitment to customers and in the interest of putting this matter behind us. Wells Fargo is committed to putting our customers' interests first 100% of the time, and we regret and take responsibility for any instances where customers may have received a product that they did not request.” Shortly after the financial crisis, big banks in the nation, including Wells Fargo, promised that their top bankers would not be able to keep large paydays if it was found that those rewards were gained through harmful conduct. It was supposed to be the stick to the carrot of Wall Street bonuses. But the latest example of fraud at Wells Fargo shows that the big banks are unwilling to wield those sticks, especially when it comes to their top executives source It's quite obvious leaving decisions like this up to the companies that are found in violation of a federal regulation or fraud does not work to deter the fraudulent activity from occurring so to my question(s): Can the feds not charge anyone from this company with a crime that has "prison time" or "felony" consequences? Do bankers ever go to prison in America for fraud of this amount (fraud is fraud)? If the shareholders are paying for most of this settlement, then how can this not be fraud to the shareholders or the correlated stock (e.g. some disclosure when you buy the stock that you may have foot the bills for fraudulence with their employees)? Maybe there is a simple answer to this that could clarify which I could've found on my own with a little research, but I'm interesting more in what attorney's, or other legal professional's, or the legal enthusiast's more than doing my own research on the topic.
Prosecutors have discretion to not bring charges. Wayte v. United States 470 U.S. 598 (1985), Bordenkircher v. Hayes 434 U.S. 357 (1978) The Department of Justice says: The reasoned exercise of prosecutorial discretion is essential to the fair, effective, and even-handed administration of the federal criminal laws. Decisions about whether to initiate charges, what charges and enhancements to pursue, when to accept a negotiated plea, and how to advocate at sentencing, are among the most fundamental duties of federal prosecutors. The US Attorney's Manual says: The prosecutor's broad discretion in such areas as initiating or foregoing prosecutions, selecting or recommending specific charges, and terminating prosecutions by accepting guilty pleas has been recognized on numerous occasions by the courts. See, e.g., Oyler v. Boles, 368 U.S. 448 (1962); Newman v. United States, 382 F.2d 479 (D.C. Cir. 1967); Powell v. Ratzenbach, 359 F.2d 234 (D.C. Cir. 1965), cert. denied, 384 U.S. 906 (1966). This discretion exists by virtue of his/her status as a member of the Executive Branch, which is charged under the Constitution with ensuring that the laws of the United States be "faithfully executed." As of April 28, 2016, 35 bankers had been sent to prison for fraud and other financial crimes relating to the 2008-and-onward financial crisis.
"Fraud" requires an intent to deceive. In cases like this I would fall back on the saying, "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence." Practically speaking: the email you received from them is an amendment to their Terms of Service. I.e., your contract with the company starts with their standard Terms of Service, and is modified by any agreement you reach that explicitly supersedes the ToS. Based on your description it is your credit card company that is in violation of its duty to adjudicate chargebacks. If you refuse the charge, and present the email agreement and evidence of A's "failure," then the card company has no grounds to impose the charge on you (unless the merchant in its response to the chargeback can convincingly argue that the email agreement is invalid).
There are basically two kinds of conduct that you identify. One is backing away from what you believe were oral promises made by the employer and lawyer regarding payment. Whatever the status of the promises made by the employer, the oral statements made by the lawyer would probably be viewed by a court or ethics board as settlement offers or proposals rather than actual binding agreements, and this is unlikely to be considered an ethical lapse. For purposes of ethics questions and fraud lawsuits, lies about what kind of deal you are willing to make with an adversary don't count as lies. This isn't a terribly logical rule, but is is a well established one. Given that: I was told (by employer), verbally and in text/email messages that I "would be paid when the deals closed." It is going to be very hard for the employer to take back those written statements and text and email messages are usually given the effect of signed writings in a court of law. This is going to be taken as a confession of the employer regarding the probably unwritten agreement of the parties regarding your right to be paid on these deals, so you would be well advised to stick to your guns on this issue. The percentages will be another point that is hard for the employer to fight if there is a course of dealings between the parties in which you receive a consistent percentage or there was a written agreement concerning your commission percentage. Also, even if the lawyer did make a promise and breached it, this would still only be a breach by the employer of a contract made on the employer's behalf by his lawyer. It is not an ethical lapse to breach a contract about future conduct, and a lawyer is not personally responsible for contracts he makes as a disclosed agent of your former employer. The second is making a false statement of fact about whom the lawyer has discussed the matter with. Lawyers do have an ethical duty to be truthful and failing to do so is an ethical lapse. But, this duty is generally interpreted to apply only to statements of fact which are material. If a lawyer lies to you about how old he is, or whether he's ever had an affair, in the context of a pre-litigation negotiation like this one, the ethical officials won't care. If a lawyer lies to you about something material to the transaction (e.g. claiming that the employer has money in the bank to pay a settlement when in fact it is overdrawn on all of its accounts and has no money coming in and the lawyer knows those facts), this is a serious ethical breach. It is hard to see how this information would be material, even though it casts doubt on his credibility. Ethically, he owes any duty of confidentiality to his client and not to you, so it isn't your complaint to make from a confidentiality point of view. Also, unless he discusses confidential advice that he provided to his client when no one else was present to you, he has not waived the attorney-client privilege, contrary to the answer by @IñakiViggers on that issue. Of course, proving that the lawyer said anything in an oral conversation at which no one else was present comes down to a credibility fight between your sworn statement and his if the lawyer testifies inaccurately about the discussion. A sworn statement from you is proof and would meet the "burden of production" to provide proof in support of your case at a trial, but wouldn't necessarily prevail easily at trial since the judge might not be convinced regarding who is accurate in their account of the discussion (I have avoided the word "lying" because there are a variety of reasons that people inaccurately recall discussions). What would be the sensible way to use this information to my advantage while trying to resolve these matters with having to bring suit and go to court? Is there anything that this lawyer should fear, if his unethical behavior was brought to light, either in court or to a bar association? The conduct you describe on the part of the lawyer will provide you with little or no leverage in your negotiations and is likely to not even be considered admissible evidence in court since it may be considered a form of settlement negotiations. Your strongest leverage will be the written statements from the employer. But, depending upon the amount in dispute, it may still make sense to compromise given the time and expense and uncertainty of going to court. Even in the clearest case, you probably only have a 90% chance of winning a contested case, and you wouldn't cross the street if you knew you had a 10% chance of being hit by a car as you crossed, even if you knew that the collision wouldn't be fatal. Unless your state has a wage claims act that covers you, you may have little or not prospect of an attorneys' fee award if you prevail, and representing yourself when the employer has a lawyer will always put you at a disadvantage in a court setting. If the amount in dispute is great (e.g. $50,000+), hiring a lawyer is probably worth it. If the amount in dispute is small (e.g. $5,000) you may want to file a suit in small claims court and only hire a lawyer for a couple hours of pre-hearing coaching.
Expanding on @Rick's answer, the UK government does not hold all of its money in an undifferentiated general fund (although much of it is held that way). In non-profits and government, one generally uses &quot;fund accounting&quot;, in which particular pots of money can only be used for particular purposes and the government keeps track of how much money is held in each fund. In this case, credit in a fund for cabinet operations would be transferred to a fund for privacy violation fines whose disposition would be set forth either in the Data Protection Act (2018) itself, or in some other piece of legislation (perhaps statutes on court administration) setting forth how funds collected as fines are used. This said, the intuition of the question isn't wrong. When one part of the government fines another part of the government, especially if the fine has the impact of preventing the fined part of the government from carrying on necessary governmental operations, the economic effort of the fine can be swiftly wiped out in the next annual appropriations bill, or in an interim emergency appropriations bill, if necessary. And, if the individual offenders who committed the violations aren't penalized, this may not be a very effective incentive to bring about compliance with the law. Of course, even if the economic incentive that the fine creates to comply is negligible, this doesn't mean that the symbolic and political cost of holding a government agency accountable in the same way that a private firm would be held accountable, that indicates the magnitude of the wrong done, is meaningless for the politicians running that agency.
The provisions of the credit card account agreement will be governed by Delaware law, except to the extent to North Carolina public policy overrides it. The provisions of the online services agreement will be governed by New York law, except to the extent to North Carolina public policy overrides it. The electronic communications agreement will be governed by the law of the place with the most significant connection to any disputed issues arising under it. It could also be considered to be an extension of the online services agreement rather than a separate agreement. UDAP is an acronym referring the state deceptive trade practices acts. The unfair act involves non-receipt of paperless billing statements. Even with this level of detail, I don't believe it is possible to know in advance which of the agreements is implicated and which state's laws will be held to apply (or if the differences between the laws of the candidate states is even material on the issue in question). These issues are decided on a case by case basis when there is a mishmash of facts and the outcomes are not terribly predictable. It also isn't obvious that there is a provision covering the conduct in question in any of the three potentially relevant states. The Delaware Deceptive Trade Practices Act doesn't appear to clearly apply to financial services at all. New York's application to financial services is quite narrow and subject to an exception for conduct in conformity with federal law. A failure to provide an invoice, without more, isn't necessarily a deceptive trade practice at all. All in all, there isn't a straightforward or easy answer to this question that can be reached from the information provided.
In essence, Schwab is stating that they are not a law enforcement agency and they have neither the interest nor the legal right to pursue criminals. They state that they will assist law enforcement but also tell you that, from their experience, law enforcement while they have the legal right also don't have any interest in doing so. This is completely correct. I'm not going to comment on what you should do to protect yourself from identity theft. With respect to the reverse transfer: you are on very shaky legal ground here - you transferred funds without authorization and you are not legally allowed to do this even to recover your own losses. If you had limited this to just recovering your own funds then you would be extremely unlikely to be prosecuted but by taking more than was yours you have technically committed a theft of your own. That said, it seems unlikely that law enforcement will be interested - Schwab are not making a complaint and I doubt that the original thief will - for obvious reasons. However, its possible (even likely) that this was not the thief's bank account - this is likely to be an innocent third party's account that the thief was using to obfuscate their crime. If so, the money you took (both the original amount and the extra $50) you took actually belongs to that innocent party - your money had probably spent very little time in that account.
John Edwards was charged and acquitted on similar facts. Note, though, that Cohen isn't being charged with unduly influencing the election. As far as campaign-finance laws are concerned, there's nothing wrong with influencing an election by paying hush money to a candidate's side piece. Instead, the law simply asks that you disclose the money you spend when you file your campaign finance reports, and it prohibits direct corporate contributions to a campaign, as well as individual contributions in excess of $2,700. Cohen went wrong by coordinating his work with "Individual-1" to help his campaign by providing valuable legal services and paying hush money to "Woman-1" and "Woman-2" without the campaign paying for it and without the campaign disclosing it. Had Cohen been on the campaign's payroll, and had the hush money come out of the campaign treasury, and had the campaign disclosed it all on their campaign-finance reports, I think he would not be in any legal trouble (although there is the tax evasion, too). I think it's probably safe to say that campaigns make these types of payments to people with damaging information somewhat frequently, and they don't get in trouble because the money comes from campaign funds (why would you want to go out of pocket, anyway?) and they report the expenditures as required. Because the campaign-finance laws are so loose, "disclosing" the expenditure isn't going to give anything away, because you can basically just say "$100,000 to Stephanie Clifford for personal services."
You are mostly mistaken. Prior to the enactment of the STOCK Act in 2012 (as amended in 2013), insider trading by members of Congress based upon information obtained in their official duties was legal. This is no longer the case, but there is no private cause of action to enforce the STOCK Act. Instead, the principal means by which violations are enforced is via a federal criminal prosecution which is something that the Justice Department is very reluctant to direct at a member of Congress. There are at least two barriers to such prosecutions, in addition to the political issues involved with having an agency prosecute members of the body that funds it and regulates it: To bring a case here, however, federal authorities must overcome two obstacles: the Speech and Debate Clause, and proving “materiality” in novel circumstances. Indeed, the announcement that the authorities have closed their investigations into three senators may show these obstacles already have proven too steep. As a result, it is hard to bring federal criminal cases against members of Congress (or their aides) to enforce the STOCK Act, so it is much more toothless than it seems on the surface. The further fact that a security is structured as an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), however, is not itself necessarily all that much of a barrier to insider trading criminal liability for members of Congress, beyond the barriers already noted. This is because many ETFs are focused on something less than the total securities market. If a member of Congress, for example, has inside information on something that will impact the entire manufacturing industry, that member of Congress can engaged in insider trading in an ETF pertinent to that industry. Similarly, if a member of Congress gains advanced insight about an imminent war in Latin America, the member of Congress could engage in insider trading in connection with a Latin American securities ETF. There is no requirement that insider trading be restricted to, or focused upon, a single issuer of securities (i.e. it does not have to be limited to stocks or bonds in a single corporation).