Federal Court Dismisses FCPA Criminal Indictment of Alex Rovirosa: "He is ORDERED released, forthwith"

U.S. District Court Finds Businessman Alex Rovirosa Innocent in Historic Rebuke of DOJ’s Baseless Prosecution

The United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, the Honorable Kenneth M. Hoyt presiding, today found Alex Rovirosa innocent of the charges brought against him in United States v. Rovirosa, No. 4:25-cr-00415 (S.D. Tex.), freeing the Texas businessman to return to his wife and family.

The Court said the government intentionally did not call witnesses, and also found other unconstitutional discovery violations. Judge Hoyt stated at a hearing this morning that many of the defendant’s arguments may or may not be equally fatal, but the evidence, as presented, does not support a conviction. He ordered Mr. Rovirosa released immediately.

Importantly, federal prosecutors did not walk away or otherwise forfeit this case; the Court rejected the prosecution on the merits. Under the United States Constitution, this ruling is final and cannot be appealed. Mr. Rovirosa carries no conviction. He is an innocent man.

He Championed the Trumps’ Crypto Venture. Now He’s Attacking It.

Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun once championed the Trump family’s flagship venture into digital assets. Now he is accusing the outfit of treating him and other backers as its “personal ATM.”

Sun accused World Liberty Financial of blocking him from selling a stake he first amassed in the company in late 2024, just after President Trump was elected to a second term. At the time, the Chinese-born billionaire was facing Securities and Exchange Commission charges of fraud and market manipulation. Last month, Sun settled his case with the SEC without admitting wrongdoing.

Sun’s beef began in September, when World Liberty unlocked 20% of its digital tokens, allowing investors to trade some of their holdings on the open market for the first time. The move notched $5 billion in paper gains for the Trump family, but Sun took to the social-media platform X to argue his WLFI tokens had been “unreasonably frozen.” At the time, World Liberty didn’t directly address Sun’s allegations but said in a statement on X that it responds to “malicious or high-risk activity that could harm community members.”

The SEC Just Abandoned Digital Wallet Investors. An SEC Staffer Celebrated on LinkedIn.

Congratulations, digital wallet users: the SEC just decided you don’t need protection. No net capital requirement, no customer protection rule, no mandatory cybersecurity, no examination, no books and records, no SIPC coverage, and no FINRA arbitration when something goes wrong. And when you lose everything — to a hack, a fraud, a pig butchering scam, an approval phishing attack — there is, as the FBI itself puts it, “usually nothing the victim can do.”

The courts that spent a decade affirming that digital asset platforms must register? Still there. The securities laws? Unchanged. The SEC warned you about digital wallets in 2018. In 2026, it forgot.

In an ironic scene that will go down in history, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins stood before a cheering crypto crowd and declared: “We’re not the Securities and Everything Commission anymore.” This left me wondering: Will there ever come a day when the SEC is not announcing what they will not do? (Apologies for the double-negative)

Kirkland & Ellis set to poach top Wachtell distressed-debt lawyer

Kirkland & Ellis is set to poach the head of arch-rival Wachtell Lipton’s restructuring practice in an effort to rebuild its own distressed debt group after the departure of a star partner earlier this year.

Kirkland has offered Joshua Feltman, the chair of Wachtell’s corporate restructuring and finance department, a guaranteed pay package of $80mn over three years to tempt him away from Wachtell, according to people familiar with the matter.

Polymarket audits startups potentially helping users copy insider trading: report

Polymarket, the prediction platform startup seeking a roughly $20 billion valuation, has launched an audit of app startups that promise to help users track the activity of successful traders who could be guilty of insider trading, The Information reported Tuesday.

“Polymarket was already under pressure to curb insider trading when it launched a program late last year to support startups that sent trades to its prediction market,” the outlet reported. “Those companies quickly began handing suspected insider trading accounts to their own customers, letting them copy those trades … Now Polymarket has launched an audit of those startups.”

The startups being audited build what are called “copy-trading apps.” These apps help users track the activity of successful traders who might be privy to nonpublic information.