Justin Lavelle

FBI vs. Apple: Three Key Privacy Questions

This week the FBI dropped its case against Apple, announcing that they had successfully hacked open the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. The case has been roiling the media and many of the biggest Silicon Valley companies for weeks as questions around privacy, personal rights and data management suddenly came to the fore.

While this particular case has been set aside for now, the debate over the balance between privacy and safety when it comes securing customer data is just starting to heat up.

IRS Phone Scam Has No Deadline

Tax deadline day is upon us with all the stress and relief it can bring. One recent stress to do with taxes has been with IRS-related scams. While some version of the scams can rely on pressuring victims about the deadline itself, most don’t. In fact, IRS phone scams are a year-round phenomenon with no particular spike in calls around the deadline day.

Victims are actually most vulnerable to IRS phone scams in the weeks and months following deadline day. To understand why, you need to know how the most prevalent IRS phone scams work.

Legal Term Tuesday: Contraband

This is the latest entry in BeenVerified’s legal term library designed to help you better understand public record information, criminal records and related terminology. The information in this article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.

You may have heard the term “contraband” from your old-fashioned high school principal or in a TV show from the 1970s, but the term has real legal implications. So what does possession of contraband really entail? And how will it show up on a public record? Read on to find out.

Legal Term Tuesday: Controlled Substance

This is the latest entry in BeenVerified’s legal term library designed to help you better understand public record information, criminal records and related terminology. The information in this article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.

A controlled substance is exactly what it sounds like: a product controlled by the government for the protection of the general population. Typically when talking controlled substances we are talking about drugs or chemicals. While there are some legitimate uses for controlled substances, such as a prescription medication, being in possession of one without required permission can lead to criminal charges.

Panama Papers: Who's In Trouble?

All this week we have been looking at the murky world of offshore finance and tax havens as a result of the major Panama Papers leak. Last time we looked at where some of the most notable tax havens are located. Today we are going to look at some of the individuals who have been implicated in the Panama Papers.

As we mentioned in our first post on this topic, simply holding money offshore is not a crime and there are many legitimate reasons to do so. It’s only when individuals or companies use tax havens to avoid taxes they are liable for, or to launder money from criminal activities that there is a problem.

Spring Clean Your Online Life

Spring is upon us and people feel the urge to organize, clean and start fresh with their physical spaces. Classic Spring cleaning activities include rearranging furniture, donating clothes to charity and rearranging and discarding files.

But as more of our lives have increasingly moved from physical spaces to digital ones, are you keeping up with the digital excess that needs to be pruned from your life, or are you simply letting it build up in a forgotten email folder?

Top Five Global Tax Havens

We kicked off this week examining the significance of the Panama Papers, the most significant leak of tax haven information to ever come to light. We noted this has impacted major world leaders, companies, banks and law firms.

But you might be wondering, “what is a tax haven, anyway?” And, “where are the top tax havens that the wealthy stash their (legitimate or otherwise) cash?”

Read on for the answers.

A tax haven can be defined as a territory or jurisdiction with a very low or non-existent tax rate. Tax havens appeal to those who face relatively higher taxes or penalties related to their wealth, or fear their home government may introduce such taxes in the future. Tax havens also tend to appeal to wealthy individuals who live in politically unstable countries.

Trump's Criminal Associates: Fact or Fiction?

It’s impossible to turn the news on today without hearing a mention of the business mogul-turned reality TV star-turned Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. Love him or loathe him, “the Donald” has quite an interesting background, partly due to the fact that he spent his career in business and entertainment and not in politics.

As a result of his business activities, including building and managing casinos in areas such as Atlantic City and building major properties in Manhattan, it isn’t a surprise that Trump encountered some unsavory characters while building his business empire. The question his enemies ask is how close were some of these characters to Trump and how much did Trump do to disavow them?

Unwanted Calls: Political Edition

This post is the first in a series of how to deal with unwanted phone calls.

You’ve probably already experienced it. Annoying robot-voiced calls telling you to vote for one candidate or perhaps trashing another. You may have even got a live person on the line asking you for just a moment of your time as they survey you on your political beliefs and voting preferences.

Receiving political phone calls at home is a fact of life for most of us around the country during election season (and don’t they seem to drag on longer with every new campaign?), but in some “battleground” states the level of calls can go from annoying to beyond obnoxious. Some residents report receiving up to six of these calls per day during the height of the campaign season.

What are the Panama Papers?

The massive leak known as “The Panama Papers” came to light over the weekend, exposing the normally secretive activities of many political leaders, law firms and corporations in stashing massive amounts of cash “offshore” in what are known as tax havens.

The Panama-based law firm, Mossacka Fonseca, which specialized in the creation of shell companies for the express purpose of providing the pools of cash with anonymity had their systems hacked. Those so far implicated, including members of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and the wife of the Prime Minister of Iceland may have some uncomfortable questions to answers over the coming days.