Jeffrey Keith Skilling is an American businessman who in 2006 was convicted of federal felony charges relating the Enron scandal. Skilling, who was CEO of Enron during the company's collapse, was eventually sentenced to 24 years in prison, of which he served 12 after multiple appeals.
Andrew Mark Cuomo is an American politician, lawyer, and former government official who served as the 56th governor of New York from 2011 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party and son of former governor Mario Cuomo, Cuomo previously served as the attorney general of New York from 2007 to 2010.
Kevin A. Ring is a former American attorney and congressional staffer; he served Republicans in both the House and the Senate, including U.S. Representative John T. Doolittle (R-CA). He also served as a counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee's Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights Subcommittee.
John F. Harris is an American political aide and former chief of staff to the Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich. He resigned in December 2008 after being charged, along with Blagojevich, with wire fraud.
Black v. United States, 561 U.S. 465 (2010), is a white-collar criminal law case decided by the United States Supreme Court dealing with businessman Conrad Black's fraud trial. Along with two companion cases—Skilling v. United States and Weyhrauch v. United States—it dealt with the honest services provision, 18 U.S.C. § 1346.
Honest services fraud is a crime defined in 18 U.S.C. § 1346, added by the United States Congress in 1988, which states "For the purposes of this chapter, the term scheme or artifice to defraud includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services."
McNally v. United States, 483 U.S. 350 (1987), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court decided that the federal statute criminalizing mail fraud applied only to the schemes and artifices defrauding victims of money or property, as opposed to those defrauding citizens of their rights to good government. The case was superseded one year later when the United States Congress amended the law to specifically include honest services fraud in the mail and wire fraud statutes.
Bridget Anne Kelly is the former deputy chief of staff to the Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, known for her participation in the Bridgegate scandal.
Buffalo Billion is a New York state government project led by former Governor Andrew Cuomo that aims to invest $1 billion in the Buffalo, New York area economy. The project uses a combination of state grants and tax breaks to spur economic development. Governor Cuomo first announced the program in his 2012 "State of the State" address. The program is modeled on a similar program implemented in the Albany, New York area. A key project in the program is a $750 million SolarCity solar panel factory.
McDonnell v. United States, 579 U.S. 550 (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning the appeal of former Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell's conviction for honest services fraud and Hobbs Act extortion. At issue on appeal was whether the definition of "official act" within the federal bribery statutes encompassed the actions for which McDonnell had been convicted and whether the jury had been properly instructed on this definition at trial.
Mark (Meir) Nordlicht is the founder and former chief investment officer of Platinum Partners, a U.S. based hedge fund, which came to be known for its investment strategies becoming the subject of a series of controversial and legal actions. In a high-profile case, government prosecutors leaked that Nordlicht ran a “Ponzi scheme”, only to be convicted of a lesser charge and sentenced to home confinement.
James Walden is an American lawyer. After serving in the U.S Department of Justice as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York from 1993 to 2002, he entered private practice where he was involved in several prominent white-collar and antitrust cases in addition to a series of cases seeking governmental reform. He represents Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of Russia's anti-doping laboratory. At one time Walden represented former UFC Lightweight champion Conor McGregor in McGregor's pending court case for felony criminal mischief and misdemeanor assault in Brooklyn, NY. Walden has represented plaintiffs in class action lawsuits suits against the New York City Department of Education and the New York City Housing Authority. He served as Special Counsel to a task force created by the Governor of New Jersey to investigate the administration of the state's tax incentive programs.
Kelly v. United States, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the 2013 Fort Lee lane closure scandal, also known as "Bridgegate". The case centered on whether Bridget Anne Kelly, the chief of staff to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who was running for reelection at the time, and Bill Baroni, the Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, improperly used lane closures on the George Washington Bridge to create traffic jams as a means of retaliation against Mark Sokolich, the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, when he refused to support Christie's reelection campaign. While lower courts had convicted Kelly and Baroni on federal fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy charges, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the convictions in its May 2020 ruling, stating that such charges could not apply as "the scheme here did not aim to obtain money or property", and remanded their cases back to the lower courts.
Andre Damian Williams Jr. is an American lawyer who is the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York. He is the first Black U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
United States v. Elizabeth A. Holmes, et al., was a United States federal criminal fraud case against the founder of now-defunct corporation Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, and its former president and COO, Ramesh Balwani. The case alleged that Holmes and Balwani perpetrated multi-million dollar wire-fraud schemes against investors and patients. Holmes and Balwani each had their own jury trial.
Ciminelli v. United States, 598 U.S. 306 (2023), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that rejected the "right-to-control" theory as a valid basis for convictions under the federal wire fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1343. In the six months after the Ciminelli decision, two out of twelve appeals up to that point making arguments based on it succeeded.
