Assuming that Congress and the President cannot agree on either a continuing resolution to fund the operations of the United States’ government or a budget prior to midnight, the SEC will immediately suspend most of its operations.  According to the SEC’s contingency plan, of its 3,969 employees only 332 will report to work during the […]

This week, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) issued two (2) news alerts (collectively, the “News Alerts”) to announce the issuance of FinCEN’s report on Mortgage Loan Fraud Suspicious Activity Report (“SAR”) Filings In Fourth Quarter and Calendar Year 2010 (the “Mortgage Loan Fraud Report”) as well as the Commercial Real Estate Financing Fraud SAR […]

This is a reminder that April 1, 2011 is the first day the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) will begin accepting H-1B petitions filed on behalf of nonimmigrant workers for the 2012 fiscal year (“FY 2012”). Over the last several years, with the exception of 2009 and 2010, H-1B filings have greatly exceeded the […]

Last week, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, together with all of the federal functional regulators, jointly issued an Inter-Agency Advisory providing Guidance on Acceptance of Accounts from Foreign Embassies, Consulates and Missions (“Advisory”).  The Advisory discusses various actions to be taken in mitigation of BSA/AML/OFAC risks associated with the acceptance and maintenance of such accounts, and […]

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) recently issued an alert to warn consumers about two (2) fraudulent schemes that were recently reported (the “FinCEN Alert”). One scheme is conducted via telephone and consists of the caller representing himself/herself as an employee of FinCEN and asking for the victim by name, usually at the victim’s telephone […]

Partners Mike Mitrione and David Scileppi of Gunster’s Securities and Corporate Governance Practice Group, represented long-standing client 1st United Bancorp, Inc. (listed on NASDAQ under the symbol “FUBC”), the holding company for 1st United Bank, a Florida chartered commercial bank, in negotiating and closing last week a public offering of 5,000,000shares of its common stock […]

USCIS has announced that it has begun issuing Advance Parole EADs (an annotated Form I-766) when USCIS concurrently approves a foreign national’s applications for an Employment Authorization Document (“EAD”) and Advance Authorization to be Paroled into the United States upon return from travel outside the United States. A foreign national who has applied for adjustment […]

On March 2, 2011, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) announced an assessment of Civil Money Penalties totaling $40,000 against brothers Omar Abukar Sufi and Mohamed Abukar Sufi (the “Sufi Brothers”), for non-compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) money transmitter registration requirements (the “Announcement”). The Sufi Brothers, doing business as Halal Depot of Wyoming, […]

Today, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) announced that it transferred the current Bank Secrecy Act regulations (“BSA Regulations”) to a new chapter in the Code of Federal Regulations (“CFR”) (the “Announcement”).  FinCEN has restructured the BSA Regulations so that they can be readily identified as being specific to a particular regulated industry or as […]