peercem@ballardspahr.com | 646.346.8039 | view full bio

Margie is a litigator who, in her more than 30 years of practice, has handled matters across the criminal and regulatory spectrum including white collar criminal defense, regulatory matters, and complex civil litigation. Her work includes cases arising from alleged violations of the Internal Revenue Code, the FCPA, the BSA, and a broad range of fraud investigations.

She represents numerous individuals in several AML/BSA investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and has represented a financial institution in a matter implicating BSA issues. She has handled matters involving Suspicious Activity Reports and Currency Transaction Reports and structuring-related offenses and she has represented individuals accused of money laundering offenses. Margie has also handled a significant number of matters with the SEC, FINRA, and the CFTC.

On June 29, dual trial verdicts in the Southern District of New York paved the way for the government to seize 650 Fifth Avenue, a 36-story building in Manhattan valued at up to $1 billion (“the Property”). The defendants, representing New York entities that trace their roots to Iran, were convicted of violating U.S. sanctions and money laundering. With this decision, the government can lay claim to the largest terrorism-related civil forfeiture in U.S. history and, as promised, provide the sale’s proceeds to terror victims who had previously won $5 billion in judgments against Iran for terror-related activity.

Continue Reading  Lessons in Civil Forfeiture and Attachment: U.S. May Seize 650 Fifth Avenue

We were pleased to contribute an article to the May 2017 issue of Business Crimes Bulletin titled “The Growing Convergence of Cyber-Related Crime and Suspicious Activity Reporting.” Regulators and law enforcement are taking proactive steps to further leverage anti-money laundering monitoring and reporting tools in their battle with cyber attacks and cyber crimes. In-house legal

On Monday, the state of Florida moved a step closer towards amending its money laundering statute to include the nefarious use of bitcoin and other virtual currencies. The bill, H.B. 1379, has sailed through a committee vote and will now be presented to the floor. If the bill passes, it will serve, in pertinent part, to define bitcoin and “virtual currency” (“VC”) as “monetary instruments” within the meaning of the state’s money laundering statute; in the same vein, bitcoin will be defined as a “medium of exchange in electronic or digital format that is not a coin or currency of the United States or any other country.”
Continue Reading  Florida Lawmakers Seek to Bring Virtual Currency into the Fold

Banks stand to advance the fight against human trafficking and modern slavery by reporting suspicious transactions and other financial activity that raise red flags, according to a report on March 15, 2017. Published by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a renowned British think tank, the report notes that banks and other financial service providers

The Philippines has been identified by the U.S. as a “major money-laundering country” in the 2017 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (“Report”), published this month. The country now joins 87 others as one “whose financial institutions engage in currency transactions involving significant amounts of proceeds from international narcotics trafficking.” See 22 U.S.C. § 2291(e)(7).

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NY DFS Seal CircleThe New York State Department of Financial Services (“DFS”) has issued its fifth BitLicense to date, continuing a marked effort to bring legitimacy and controls to the virtual currency (“VC”) industry, whose advantages in lowering costs and creating efficiencies have been marred with concerns of nefarious use.

Founded in 2012, Coinbase, Inc. operates as a digital currency exchange and is perched at the top of well-funded startups in the VC industry. Its BitLicense signifies an important milestone in the company’s nearly two-year, multi-state licensing strategy. In the same vein, the fact that a VC market-leader has sought after and is now approved to do business in New York is an equally important occasion for the BitLicense program itself.
Continue Reading  Coinbase the Latest to Obtain New York BitLicense

In part two of our review of the 2016 developments in Anti-Money Laundering (AML), the Bank Secrecy Act, (BSA), the criminal money laundering statutes, forfeiture, and related issues, we discuss four additional key topics:

  • Federal banking regulators’ efforts to ease industry concerns about overly aggressive Anti-Money Laundering (AML)/Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) enforcement and limit the

2016 was a busy year for developments in Anti-Money Laundering (AML), the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), the criminal money laundering statutes, forfeiture, and related issues. In part one of our year-in-review, we discuss six key topics:

  • The Panama Papers and its spotlight on the United States as a potential money laundering haven