Lee Koch

Suppression of evidence is one of the most important tools a criminal defense lawyer has to help you with your state or federal case.  To suppress evidence, your lawyer must file a Motion to Suppress and make a valid legal argument for why a particular piece of evidence is invalid. The judge then decides whether…

Recently, The New York Times reported on a case wherein a New Jersey man and his girlfriend got 5 years in prison for GoFundMe fraud. Mark D’Amico and Katelyn McClure teamed up with Johnny Bobbit Jr. to make up a story about a homeless man in need of help. They raised over $400,000 after the…

A price fixing scheme is a white collar crime that involves colluding with competitors to decide what prices will be. Antitrust laws require companies to establish prices and other competitive terms without consulting with competitors. You are allowed to conduct market research to see what other people are charging for similar products, but you are…

Set-aside fraud is a type of contractor fraud. It is a violation of the False Claims Act (31 USC Sections 3729 to 3733) and involves defrauding the United States government in order to get contracts.  It is called “set-aside” fraud because it involves making false claims to procure contracts and money “set aside” for Small…

There have been attempts to defraud the United States Military for about as long as there has been a military. In 1863, the federal government enacted the False Claims Act to target defense contractors attempting to defraud the military during the Civil War.  This law is also known as the Lincoln law.  Under this law…

One white collar crime that the Department of Justice is cracking down on quite hard of late is “bid rigging.” Bid rigging is the process of undermining the competitive process whenever businesses compete by submitting bids to a buyer. The Department of Justice takes an especially dim view of this practice when the government is…

If you own stocks and are engaged in buying them and selling them then there are laws which govern your involvement in the market. One of those laws is that the playing field must be even. If you have information about a company or stock that is not available to the public and you act…

In a previous post, we covered the Armed Career Criminal Act. This Act names someone a “career criminal” if they commit three prior violent felony or have three prior serious drug offense convictions. To qualify as an ACCA crime, they must be committed on “occasions different from one another.” Recently, the Supreme Court heard Wooden…