Attorney Publications

This article presents a case study of a CFO's accounting fraud that led him to prison. The scheme was a securities fraud aimed at investors. It involved ghost revenues, fictitious invoices and shipping documents, cost-of-good sold entries that were delayed or avoided altogether, and pulling otherwise legitimate revenue into earlier accounting periods. The article delves into interesting aspects of how and why the CFO did what he did.

IN RECENT YEARS, A NEW STANDARD appears to have emerged regarding class certification. Courts have largely dismissed the notion—originally derived from Eisen v. Carlisle & Jacquelin—that they cannot resolve issues relevant to the merits in deciding whether to certify a class. How far they may delve into the merits, however, has remained somewhat of a mystery.

The False Claims Act (“FCA”) clearly provides that once a qui tam action is filed, a relator may dismiss an action only if the court and the Attorney General give written consent. The statute does not, however, address whether the relator’s release of qui tam claims, executed before the filing of a complaint, is enforceable.

Butt out is the message from four of the five largest cigarette manufacturers who have filed suit in a Washington, D.C., federal court challenging new FDA regulations that require them to print nine graphic images on their cigarette packaging. Under the FDA rule, the images must be printed in color and displayed on the top 50 percent of the both the front and back panels of every pack. Grim news has to cover the top 20 percent of all printed cigarette advertising. In addition, the FDA says, every pack of cigarettes must contain the words "QUIT-NOW." And there is an 800 quit smoking hotline number that has to be there too.

The False Claims Act (FCA) is designed to protect the federal treasury and to deter fraud committed against the government. The FCA places power within the hands of private citizens, allowing them to become “private attorney generals,” and, with the assistance of an attorney paid on a contingent fee basis, challenge government payments on behalf of the government. The citizens who bring a case on behalf of the government (“whistleblowers”) can be employees, former employees, and/or competitors...

Despite thousands of recent print, broadcast and Internet reports about WikiLeaks, the renegade Web site's alleged whistleblowing activities and certain documents it has "published," qui tam remains the first name in whistleblower; "journalist" remains...

Eric L. Cramer was a contributor to "Assessing Market Power in the Prescription Pharmaceutical Industry," a chapter in the ABA's Pharmaceutical Industry Handbook (July 2009).

This paper argues that microfinance initiatives are an attractive aid mechanism to promote gender equality in Muslim countries because such initiatives both alleviate poverty and provide women with economic empowerment without violating Muslim customary...

Submitted for the 11th Annual NERA Finance, Law & Economics Securities Litigation Seminar, Aspen Colo. (July 7, 2008).

This is a case study regarding the theft of millions of consumers' personal information in a highly complex and dramatic criminal data breach.

Insider trading is relatively easy to commit but extremely difficult to prove. This article is a primer for fraud examiners, which explains the problem, how to determine if a trade is illegal, and what can be done to detect and prevent this popular crime.

This article discusses major sources of sentencing disparity affecting defendants of white-collar crimes in federal court despite the existence of uniform sentencing guidelines. The focus of the article is to answer one primary question: Why might a defendant convicted of white-collar crime in one court receive a materially different sentence than he or she would have received if convicted in another court? As will be shown, the answer has many components. Named Student Article of the Year by the Pepperdine Law Review - i.e., best student article among all student articles published in Pepperdine Law Review that year.