How do qualified plan dollars multiply the value of life insurance?

International Financial Law Prof Blog

For a small business owner, using qualified plan dollars to purchase life insurance protection is a strategy that can satisfy a variety of needs and is one that can make all the difference in ensuring a smooth transitioning of the business upon the owner’s exit.

a must watch expose on civil forfeiture "undue" process

Why clients want the new fixed indexed annuities?

International Financial Law Prof Blog

Fixed annuities have taken the market by storm this year, as carriers have responded to growing client demand for financial products that provide a guaranteed level of income. ...

Sexual Violence during War and Peace

International Financial Law Prof Blog

A well known human rights activist and academic, Dr. Jelke Boesten of Kings College (London), (faculty profile and books) just published her 3rd book Sexual Violence during War and Peace.  It's not about a financial topic, but she's a friend so please send your law librarian the link for the human rights, international law, or women law collection.  Read the sample chapter.

money laundering crack down on fashion industry

International Financial Law Prof Blog

... more than 1,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officials were in the Fashion District, where they executed dozens of search warrants and arrest warrants linked to businesses suspected to be engaged in money laundering schemes and evasions of required BSA reporting. Extensive law enforcement operations have revealed evidence that money laundering activities and Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) violations are pervasive throughout the Los Angeles Fashion District, which includes more than 2,000 businesses. The GTO, which will go into effect on October 9, ...

How to make FATCA even more complicated « GATCA

How to make FATCA even more complicated « GATCA

The September 2014 Award for making FATCA even more complicated goes to the US IRS.
This award is well deserved as with just a little effort this complication could have made been avoided.
The subject is one of country codes. A dry subject even at the best of times but the IRS have managed to make it quite interesting and also made it more difficult for practitioners. ...

FATCA Supplement For Reporting on Forms 1099

International Financial Law Prof Blog

FATCA filing requirements of certain foreign financial institutions (FFIs). If you are required to report an account that is a U.S. account under chapter 4 of the Code (chapter 4), you may be eligible to elect to report the account on Form(s) 1099 instead of on Form 8966, “FATCA Report.”
Caution: If the account is either a U.S. account held by a passive NFFE that is a U.S. owned foreign entity or an account held by an owner-documented FFI, do not file a Form 1099 with respect to such an account. Instead, you must file a Form 8966, “FATCA Report,” in accordance with its requirements and its accompanying instructions to report the account for chapter 4 purposes.

download for free –> LexisNexis® Guide to FATCA Compliance

Whistle Blowers Secret Recordings Inside the New York Fed

International Financial Law Prof Blog

Segarra had made a series of audio recordings while at the New York Fed. Worried about what she was witnessing, Segarra wanted a record in case events were disputed. So she had purchased a tiny recorder at the Spy Store and began capturing what took place at Goldman and with her bosses.

Rethinking Virtual Currency Regulation in the Bitcoin Age

International Financial Law Prof Blog

This Article investigates an increasingly important yet under-developed body of law: regulation of virtual currency. At its peak in March of 2014, the daily volume of Bitcoin transactions in U.S. Dollars exceeded $575,000,000. ...

Professor Byrnes Leads Workshop in St. Paul Minnesota | Thomas Jefferson School of Law

Professor Byrnes Leads Workshop in St. Paul Minnesota | Thomas Jefferson School of Law

Byrnes, who heads the Graduate Distance Education Programs at TJSL, became involved with distance education models after he suffered a traumatic injury in a ski accident. Since then, Byrnes has developed online, multi-media teaching methodologies that effectively ignore disability....

FATCA Updates: Substitute W-8BEN-E, non-reporting FFI GIIN Registration, and new FATCA compliant 1099s

International Financial Law Prof Blog

FATCA Releases of September 25: 

- two new Q&As, one addressing whether a nonreporting FFI under the IGA should register for a GIIN, the other addressing whether a substitute W-8, allowed for IGA countries, is FATCA compliant.

- new FATCA compliant 1099s that have a check-box added to identify an FFI filing the 1099 to satisfy its chapter 4 reporting requirement. 

download for free –> LexisNexis® Guide to FATCA Compliance

25% student loan borrowers 90 days behind, 13.7% in default

International Financial Law Prof Blog

Still, the government's default measure vastly underestimates the problem. The government considers people in default if they have made no payments in 360 days. A broader measure by the New York Federal Reserve—which accounts for all Americans with student loans—shows that roughly one in four borrowers are at least 90 days behind on a payment. 

New York Jury Decides Arab Bank Liable for Terrorist Actions of Customers

International Financial Law Prof Blog -

The Amman-based lender was found liable for doing business with more than 150 Hamas leaders and operatives in the early 2000s, helping finance about two dozen deadly suicide bombings, including attacks on crowded restaurants and buses in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, jurors decided yesterday in federal court in Brooklyn, New York. ...

The organization used the Arab Bank as a “paymaster” to pass on stipends of more than $5,000 to families of suicide bombers and other terrorists, according to the plaintiffs.

FATCA-Phishing To Steal Customer Account Data Has Begun

International Financial Law Prof Blog

The Internal Revenue Service today issued a fraud alert for international financial institutions complying with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).  Scam artists posing as the IRS have fraudulently solicited financial institutions seeking account holder identity and financial account information. International Financial Law Prof Blog

Penny Stock Frauds, Kick Backs Schemes, and FBI Stings

International Financial Law Prof Blog

...arise out of a fraudulent scheme in which insiders of publicly-traded penny stock companies paid secret kickbacks to a purported corrupt hedge fund manager, who was in fact an undercover agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“Fund Manager”), in exchange for the Fund Manager’s purchase of restricted stock of the penny stock companies on behalf of his purported hedge fund (“the Fund”), which did not actually exist. 

Professor William Byrnes Develops Online Teaching Methodologies And Distance Learning In Face Of Disabilities

William Byrnes pioneered the “online classroom” so he could continue teaching, despite a prognosis of lifetime disabilities resulting from traumatic injury. The program he developed to guarantee his future employment has now become a groundbreaking distance learning model used by higher education institutions and the U.S. military.

Byrnes suffered life threatening injuries in an African ski country accident and spent six months in the hospital undergoing grueling recovery from physical and brain trauma. Doctors could not predict his level of recovery, nor his future quality of life. In an effort to prepare himself for a productive future, Byrnes developed online, multi-media teaching methodologies that effectively ignore disability.

Byrnes says his motivation was to create a way to communicate with students whether or not he could walk or use body language, as was his practice in the traditional classroom. What he ended up with was a new way of teaching and learning.

“Presenting curriculum using universal design was the answer,” said Byrnes. “I used the basic tenets of audio, visual, and tactile sensibilities so I could teach at every different level. I realized that this approach would also allow me to meet the learning styles of every student.”

It has been more than 20 years since Byrnes developed his first online program. He is fully recovered but has never forgotten the lessons he learned when faced with the possibility of lifelong disability. Today, Byrnes’ first online curriculum is an extensive program using audio, video, text, e-mail, and sometimes that first simple universal design of pictures and colors to teach. He revises and upgrades the modalities every five years to incorporate new technology.

Students with a wide range of disabilities including birth defects, visual and hearing impairments, and memory issues caused by head injury are now able to pursue higher education using the online classroom. Byrnes interfaces regularly with disabled groups and associations to learn the newest assistive technologies and incorporate them into his teaching modalities. The feedback he receives from students indicates that the multi-media approach to teaching does indeed accommodate disabilities and removes obstacles that previously prevented them from obtaining advanced degrees.

The military is taking advantage of distance learning because it allows deployed, active duty soldiers to pursue higher learning. Byrnes relates the story of a soldier in Iraq who was wounded and spent two years in rehab, but was able to continue his studies and complete his advanced degree because he did not need to attend class in a traditional classroom. The military is also finding that the electronic curriculum is ideal for training deployed military intelligence officers the advanced skills of forensic criminology, financial crimes, money laundering and legal analysis.

Byrnes underscores the need for colleges and universities to employ multi-media technology, saying “Students who don’t suffer with disabilities also learn in different ways, some are visual learners, some are auditory learners. If we don’t teach using different modalities we are leaving students behind and that is wrong. I believe that education is part of human development and we need to deliver it to all of humankind.”

On September 18 - 20, 2014, Byrnes lead a workshop that is drafting best practices recommendations for online legal education. For more than four years, he has worked diligently to achieve this outcome through a concerted effort of many ABA institutions. The Working Group for Distance Learning in Legal Education, is a loosely structured alliance of law educators collaborating to provide increased opportunities for faculty, students, and other participants to access high quality, innovative, and interactive online legal education.

Wolf of Wall Street Back With a Pack, Seeking Vengeance

International Financial Law Prof Blog

...bankers and brokers defiantly have hardened in their quest for bigger and bigger paydays. Wolf of Wall Street? What we’re seeing is a pack of wild dogs that continue to use any means necessary to line their pockets no matter the fines, convictions and settlements that regulators throw at them.

Mafia Takes Over FirstPlus Financial, Drains it Into Bankruptcy

International Financial Law Prof Blog

According to court documents and evidence introduced at the trial of his coconspirators, Scarfo is a made member of the Lucchese organized crime family.  In April 2007, Scarfo, Salvatore Pelullo and others devised a scheme to take over FirstPlus.  Scarfo and Pelullo used threats of economic harm to intimidate and remove the prior management and board of directors and replaced those officers with individuals beholden to Scarfo and Pelullo....   

Willingness to Pay to Reduce White Collar and Corporate Crime

International Financial Law Prof Blog

Utilizing a contingent valuation survey approached that has been used to estimate the cost of street crimes, the average willingness to pay for a 10% reduction in each of these four offenses is estimated to range between $70 and $75 per household. In the case of consumer fraud and financial fraud – where estimates of prevalence are available, this translates into a willingness to pay of $2,700 per consumer fraud and $21,000 for financial fraud. In contrast, the out-of-pocket costs to victims of consumer fraud have been estimated to average about $100, and about $200 to $250 for various types of financial frauds. These figures also compare favorably to the willingness to pay for a reduced household burglary of $18,000.

How many Wall Street and Bank CEOs went to jail compared to Rappers?

International Financial Law Prof Blog

“After the savings and loans crisis, the government brought over 1,000 criminal prosecutions and got over 800 convictions” whereas there is a glaring lack of Wall Street bankers behind bars for their role in the financial collapse. ...