Buy a new version of this textbook and receive access to the Connected eBook on CasebookConnect, including: lifetime access to the online ebook with highlight, annotation, and search capabilities, plus an outline tool and other helpful resources. Connected eBooks provide what you need most to be successful in your law school classes. Corporate Criminal Investigations and Prosecutions provides readers a comprehensive understanding of the process behind the investigation, prosecution, and resolution of criminal charges against organizations. Over the past two decades, corporate criminal liability has developed into one of the fastest-growing and most dynamic areas of legal practice. The growth of corporate criminal enforcement has correlated with a broad shift in how the government investigates and resolves corporate criminal violations. As a result of these developments, the practice of investigating, prosecuting, and resolving corporate criminal cases has many significant differences from other areas of criminal or civil law. Notably, one of the most significant aspects that distinguishes corporate criminal practice is that much of it occurs outside of the formal judicial system; nearly all DOJ corporate criminal matters are resolved through negotiated settlements, and very few cases involve court proceedings or go to trial. As a result, many parts of this practice remain relatively unknown to students and practitioners. Until now. With the publication of this book, authors Leo Tsao, Daniel Kahn, and Eugene Soltes, whose resumes collectively reflect the highest levels of practice and expertise in this field, open a window into all aspects of corporate criminal investigations and prosecutions. Professors and students will benefit from: The authors bring a unique perspective and unparalleled qualifications to the subject of corporate criminal liability. Daniel Kahn is the former acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division and former Chief of the Fraud Section and FCPA Unit. Leo Tsao is the former Principal Deputy Chief of the Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section and has held supervisory positions in the Bank Integrity Unit and FCPA Unit within the DOJ's Criminal Division. Eugene Soltes is a professor at Harvard Business School, and regularly teaches and advises companies on corporate integrity, organizational cultures, and compliance systems. Comprehensive coverage: Part One addresses topics that are generally applicable to all corporate criminal cases, such as the legal principles underlying corporate criminal liability; the individual liability of corporate officers for corporate crimes; and the constitutional rights of criminal corporate defendants--to name a few. Part Two addresses specific categories of federal crimes commonly used to charge corporate defendants, such as conspiracy, the FCPA, the Bank Secrecy Act, antitrust laws, and RICO. Part Two also provides insights into criminal activity and law enforcement within the technology sector as it pertains to virtual currency (e.g., Bitcoin). Extensive online resources include discussion questions, and relevant case material for key chapters

American courts routinely hand down harsh sentences to individual convicts, but a very different standard of justice applies to corporations. Too Big to Jail takes readers into a complex, compromised world of backroom deals, for an unprecedented look at what happens when criminal charges are brought against a major company in the United States. Federal prosecutors benefit from expansive statutes that allow an entire firm to be held liable for a crime by a single employee. But when prosecutors target the Goliaths of the corporate world, they find themselves at a huge disadvantage. The government that bailed out corporations considered too economically important to fail also negotiates settlements permitting giant firms to avoid the consequences of criminal convictions. Presenting detailed data from more than a decade of federal cases, Brandon Garrett reveals a pattern of negotiation and settlement in which prosecutors demand admissions of wrongdoing, impose penalties, and require structural reforms. However, those reforms are usually vaguely defined. Many companies pay no criminal fine, and even the biggest blockbuster payments are often greatly reduced. While companies must cooperate in the investigations, high-level employees tend to get off scot-free. The practical reality is that when prosecutors face Hydra-headed corporate defendants prepared to spend hundreds of millions on lawyers, such agreements may be the only way to get any result at all. Too Big to Jail describes concrete ways to improve corporate law enforcement by insisting on more stringent prosecution agreements, ongoing judicial review, and greater transparency.

A study and analysis of lack of enforcement against criminal actions in corporate America and what can be done to fix it. In the early 2000s, federal enforcement efforts sent white collar criminals at Enron and WorldCom to prison. But since the 2008 financial collapse, this famously hasn’t happened. Corporations have been permitted to enter into deferred prosecution agreements and avoid criminal convictions, in part due to a mistaken assumption that leniency would encourage cooperation and because enforcement agencies don’t have the funding or staff to pursue lengthy prosecutions, says distinguished Columbia Law Professor John C. Coffee. “We are moving from a system of justice for organizational crime that mixed carrots and sticks to one that is all carrots and no sticks,” he says. He offers a series of bold proposals for ensuring that corporate malfeasance can once again be punished. For example, he describes incentives that could be offered to both corporate executives to turn in their corporations and to corporations to turn in their executives, allowing prosecutors to play them off against each other. Whistleblowers should be offered cash bounties to come forward because, Coffee writes, “it is easier and cheaper to buy information than seek to discover it in adversarial proceedings.” All federal enforcement agencies should be able to hire outside counsel on a contingency fee basis, which would cost the public nothing and provide access to discovery and litigation expertise the agencies don't have. Through these and other equally controversial ideas, Coffee intends to rebalance the scales of justice. “Professor Coffee’s compelling new approach to holding fraudsters to account is indispensable reading for any lawmaker serious about deterring corporate crime.” —Robert Jackson, professor of Law, New York University, and former commissioner, Securities and Exchange Commission “A great book that more than any other recent volume deftly explains why effective prosecution of corporate senior executives largely collapsed in the post-2007–2009 stock market crash period and why this creates a crisis of underenforcement. No one is Professor Coffee’s equal in tying together causes for the crisis.” —Joel Seligman, author, historian, former law school dean, and president emeritus, University of Rochester

The power of the modern prosecutor arises from several features of the criminal justice landscape: widespread use of law and order political rhetoric and heightened fear of crime among voters; legislatures' embrace of extreme sentencing ranges to respond to such concerns; and the uncertain or limited accountability of prosecutors to the electorate, the bar, or other political and professional constituencies. The convergence of these trends has transformed prosecution into an indispensable field of study. This volume brings together the work of leading international scholars across criminology, sociology, political science, and law - along with contributions from reform-minded practitioners - to examine a variety of issues in prosecutorial behaviour and the institutional structures that frame their behavior. The Handbook connects the dots among existing theoretical and empirical research related to prosecutors. Major sections of the volume cover (1) prosecutor performance during distinct phases of a criminal case, (2) the features of the prosecutor's environment, both inside the office and external to the office, that influence the choices of individual prosecutors and office leaders, and (3) prosecutorial strategies and priorities when dealing with specialized types of crimes, victims, and defendants. Taken together, the chapters in this volume identify the founding texts, discuss leading theoretical and methodological approaches, explain the scope of unresolved issues, and preview where this field is headed. The volume provides a bottom-up view of an important new scholarly field.