Christopher Hightower was convicted in 1993 for the murders of Ernest and Alice Brendel and their 8-year-old daughter Emily.
According to court documents the motive for killing Ernest was that Ernest had filed a complaint against Hightower with the National Futures Association and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
He filed multiple lawsuits against the state to try to appeal his conviction but he lost all of them.
He began serving his sentence at the Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston, but he was transferred to Illinois after he was attacked by other inmates resulting in an injury that required stitches.
When ACI’s psychologist was interviewed after announcing his retirement in 2009, Alan B. Feinstein recalled that examining Hightower was one of the most chilling experiences of his career.
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As expected, on Tuesday, January 19, 2021, Makan Delrahim, the Assistant Attorney General (AAG) for the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), stepped down and Joseph Simons, the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), announced that he would step down from the Commission entirely on January 29, 2021, clearing the way for President Biden to appoint new leadership at both Federal antitrust agencies. In addition, Chairman Simons announced the departure of a number of other senior staff from the FTC, including General Counsel Alden F. Abbott; Bureau of Competition Director Ian Conner; Bureau of Competition Deputy Directors Gail Levine and Daniel Francis; Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Andrew Smith; Bureau of Economics Director Andrew Sweeting; Office of Public Affairs Director Cathy MacFarlane; and Office of Policy Planning Director Bilal Sayyed.
Money Reimagined: Letter to President Biden
President Biden needs to reform the global financial system and avoid a 1930s-style depression. Digital currencies can help.
(Pool/Getty Images)
Updated Jan 22, 2021 at 9:46 p.m. UTC
Money Reimagined: Letter to President Biden
Welcome to this week’s Money Reimagined, coming to you two days into a new U.S. presidency.
Already, with various executive orders and a host of cabinet and agency nominee names emerging, President Joe Biden has fostered the palpable sense of a slate being cleaned.
As for what it means for crypto, the turnover in the White House gave Sheila Warren and me reason to invite Kristin Smith of the Blockchain Association and Amy Kim of the Digital Chamber of Commerce onto our weekly podcast. We discussed the outlook for regulation under the Biden administration. Check out the episode. But first, read the newsletter, which starts with an open letter to the new U.S. president.
Cryptocurrency criminal use drops as Biden nominee claims most are used for illicit financing
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A new report from Chainalysis Inc. has found that the use of cryptocurrency for illegal activities dropped significantly in 2020 even as incoming Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen (pictured) is claiming that most cryptocurrencies are used for illicit financing.
The Chainalysis 2021 Crypto Crime Report detailed that in a year bitcoin shattered previous price records, largely driven by the increased demand for institution investors, the overall use of cryptocurrency for illicit purposes dropped. In 2019, criminal activity accounted for 2.1% of all cryptocurrency transaction volume, roughly $21.4 billion in transfers, for which the number dropped to just 0.34% or $10 billion in 2020. One of the reasons the percentage dropped far more than the total transacted is said to be because of overall economic activity in cryptocurrency tripling in 2020.
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As 2020 finally comes to a close, compliance officers face the unenviable job of performing their compliance program’s annual review under Advisers Act Rule 206(4)-7). An essential element of that review is updating the firm’s compliance policies and procedures to reflect relevant changes to regulations and regulatory guidance. Here’s a cheat sheet for Chief Compliance Officers summarizing the SEC’s big-ticket items from 2020.
Despite the massive disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the SEC didn’t skip a beat, moving ahead with examinations, enforcement actions, and regulatory initiatives in 2020. The SEC’s Division of Examinations (the Division, formerly known as Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, or OCIE), shifted to remote examinations and focused on threats posed by COVID-19, such as fraud, insider trading, and inadequate disclosure. Although some deadlines and requirements were exte