Prosecuting in a Pandemic – A Webinar

Happy Friday again, everybody. Once again, coming to you live from Casa de Sandel. Well not live because you’re watching the video, that didn’t really make sense, but we’re going to go with it. So wanted to spend today’s video to talk about an upcoming webinar that I really think would be interesting and beneficial for a lot of you out there. Next Wednesday, April 8th, at 12:30, it will be online. It’s going to be a Q and A session moderated by my boss, firm owner James Whalen. And he’s going to be having a discussion with the United States attorney for the Eastern district of Texas, Joe Brown, as well as Fabio Leonardi who is with the United States attorney’s office for the Northern district of Texas. He’s their coronavirus fraud coordinator. And what that means is the prosecutors, the federal prosecutors in this part of the world are facing a fairly common problem, really as prosecutors go because it’s happening everywhere.

But it’s unique in that it’s unprecedented and they’ve never had to deal with a situation like this before. And that’s how do you prosecute during a pandemic like this? We are getting constant phone calls from clients that are incarcerated wondering if there’s anything that can be done to get them released because of the fears of an outbreak in jail. We get calls from family members all the time on what can we do? What are the prison systems doing to try to ensure the safety of all of the inmates and those people that are incarcerated in their jails. And so, part of what this webinar’s going to focus on are questions like that. What the BOP and the DOJ is doing during this crisis. But the other part is there have been a rise and unfortunately, anytime you have a catastrophe or crisis or like this, there are those who will prey on it.

We’ve seen a rise in fraud schemes that have been coming about because of this coronavirus, whether it’s people posing as a legitimate donation center, people posing as a nonprofit that are collecting donations, or sometimes it’s even as simple as setting up a fake website, selling goods and services and products that people are in need of in this time. And then as soon as they collect the payment, the website goes away, the products never get shipped and they just move on, create a new website with a new web address and carry it on and it’s cyclical. So we’re going to be discussing with Fabio really what the Northern district of Texas is doing to investigate those claims, to prosecute those claims and what you can advise your clients on, on here’s what to look out for. Here’s what to be careful of, because I think it is information that we need to get out there.

It is happening, unfortunately. It is a side effect of this tumult that the country has been thrown into. So be on the lookout for information regarding that, it’ll be posted on the Dallas Bar Associations website. Like I said, it will be next Wednesday, April 8th at 12:30, from 12:30 or 1:30. It’ll be online a webinar obviously, or just email me. My email addresses at the end of this video and I’d be happy to send you the information on how you can sign up, how you can register and how you can attend that webinar, because we do think it’s going to be interesting.

We think that the U.S. attorney for the Eastern district, it’s always interesting to hear from him to see what his office is doing. And then the Northern district they’ve set up a special task force to deal specifically with this issue. So we think that he’ll have some good information for us as well. So I look forward to that. Please feel free to reach out and ask me any questions you might have about how that works, how to sign up and I’ll get you that information. Other than that, I hope all of you are staying safe, staying indoors, doing your part to try to get through this and get back to normal as soon as possible. If there’s anything you need from us, anything you need from me as always feel free to reach out and I’ll talk to you next week.