Find a reputable news article within the last 8 years pertaining to a case involving one of the following areas of law: (1) RICO, (2) the False Claims Act, or (3) the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

1. Provide the citation for the news article and a brief summary of the article. Include in your summary the subject matter of the litigation and the outcome (if decided). Give your opinion of the case.

2. Using appropriate Netiquette, reply to at least 2 classmates' posts to ask questions, discuss, and/or debate the cases and their outcomes.

Student 1: The justice department recovers over $2.2 billion from false claims act in 2020. The money was obtained from settlements from civil cases that involved fraud and false claims. The department's responsibility is to protect tax paying citizens money from being abused and used for involuntary purposes. This among many others are only allegations from the government, but there has not been any liability. I think that during the year 2020 there were numerous people committing fraud trying to get as much "free" money from the government as they can so they didn't have to work. Why work if the government is giving money out?

Student 2: The article that I chose for topic within this discussion pertains to the "RICO" was a forty person conspiracy that originated within prison confines of South Carolina Department of Corrections. Originating way back in July of 2017 with an investigation into methamphetamine trafficking and the illegal sale of firearms that slowly grew as more organizations came forward (such as ATF, the Lexington County Multi-Agency Narcotics Enforcement Team, and the Eleventh Circuit Solicitors Office) and the finding the involvement of the nationwide "Folk gang". as the culprits. This all spiraled from cross examination of burner phones acquired from inmates associated with the gang and seeing how deep connections ran with conflicts all over. The outcome of such a large uncovering was that not only was this the largest federal racketeering conspiracy in South Carolina history but also giving the harshest form of punishment pandemic and circumstance nonwithstanding.