The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) announced a whistleblower award totaling more than $2 million to be paid to an individual whistleblower. The CFTC granted the whistleblower’s award application for both a CFTC action and a related action brought by another federal regulator. CFTC’s Whistleblower Program was created under Section 748 of the Dodd-Frank Wall
Kennyhertz Perry attorney Arthur Chaykin presented a class on “Legal Basics for Business” at the Kauffman Foundation & Conference Center on February 21, 2019 to about 30 business owners enrolled in the SCORE program. Arthur and the participants discussed topics such as choosing an appropriate business entity, leveraging business contracts, risk management and insurance, and intellectual
For the first time, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced 2019 Examination Priorities for registrants of the Division of Market Oversight (DMO), Division of Swap Dealer & Intermediary Oversight (DSIO), and Division of Clearing & Risk (DCR). DMO’s Compliance Branch’s 2019 Examination Priorities include: (1) cryptocurrency surveillance practices (2) surveillance for disruptive trading; (3)
Kennyhertz Perry Attorney Braden Perry was recently featured in a U.S. News & World Report article discussing the pros and cons of investing in private securities. The article noted that since private placements are not traded on exchanges, an individual placement may be available through one of these sources but not the others. “Two of the main
Kennyhertz Perry Attorney Jeff Donoho was recently featured in Kansas City Star article on the booming business of Medical Marijuana in Missouri. The article noted that as the state publishes regulations, business owners will need help interpreting them, which will drive demand for lawyers. “Obviously this is one of the most highly regulated industries that
The United States is a Federation, which means that our States have a certain degree of independent authority. Many states have legalized cannabis for medicinal or recreational use, but the U.S. Government’s continues to view marijuana as an illegal substance. This creates distinct and challenging problems for the cannabis industry. One area of concern
In its 2018 annual report, the SEC showed that during the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2018, both the volume of the SEC’s enforcement activity and the level of financial recoveries increased compared to the prior fiscal year. These numbers included increased activity in public companies and signals an increased scrutiny on the
Nearly two-thirds of America’s states, including Missouri, have legalized marijuana for certain uses, but the federal government still classifies marijuana as a “Schedule 1” drug, on a par with heroin. This presents an interesting problem for financial institutions: technically, financial transactions involving marijuana-related businesses (“MRBs”) would involve funds derived from illegal activity. Taking money from
Two recent cases in the news demonstrate the dangers of failing to consider judicious management of intellectual property rights with regard to products that include expressive content or identifiers. The wildly popular video game – Fortnite – includes animated dances that are sold to game players as “emotes.” The emotes can then be attached to
Private Industry Notification (PIN) 20190102-001 was being distributed to make private sector partners aware of the exploitation of audio visual communication devices on networks to identify vulnerabilities which could later be used to gain access and unlawfully acquire information about the organization. The alert was released as TLP: Green and the details, including useful information
In a recent decision, a Southern District of New York court found the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) failed to prove DRW Investments, LLC (“DRW”) manipulated the price of an exchange-traded interest rate swap futures contract known as the IDEX USD Three-Month Interest Rate Swap Futures Contract. The CFTC alleged that DRW placed bids during
FINRA fined Morgan Stanly $10 million after finding it failed to properly supervise an anti-money laundering (“AML”) program over five years because of three major issues: First, Morgan Stanley’s automated AML surveillance system failed to receive data from several systems. Second, it failed to devote sufficient resources to review alerts generated by its automated AML surveillance
