Ann Arbor Criminal Defense Blog

Stranded in Dubai, a 377-foot yacht is being fought over by a Russian oligarch who refuses to hand over a penny to his ex-wife. With rounds of divorce proceedings in the ex-couple’s past, this case has family law complexities stacked on top of high asset business division complexities.

With an amassed fortune of around $1.4 billion from the sale of a company, and the purchase of this $500 million boat, the opportunity for a large settlement may have prompted the ex-wife to seek another divorce case—and this time she is trying the case in the English courts.

There has been a long-standing notion that children with absentee fathers are more likely to engage in illicit behaviors--such as drug and alcohol abuse and criminal activity. And the statistics back this assumption up. However, the Journal of Adolescence released a recent study, which investigated this connection more scrupulously.

The study examined over 1,200 delinquent male youth across the country. It looked not just at whether or not each child's father was present in their life, but if they were, what that relationship was like. If a father had a hostile relationship with his son, this study participant was categorized differently than a participant who had a supportive relationship with his father.

If you drive south of Ann Arbor on US 23 for about 30 minutes, you will come to Dundee, Michigan. The Monroe County village has a population of about 4,000 who are proud of their Old Mill Museum and Sterling State Park.

The small town recently learned that one of its residents is facing fraud charges. A 39-year-old Dundee woman is accused of selling a dozen sick puppies to unsuspecting customers. She was arrested by local law enforcement and charged with felony defrauding and false pretenses, according to a news report.

If a company like Microsoft stores emails in data centers located abroad, are those emails out of the reach of U.S. prosecutors?

That was the question before the U.S. Supreme Court this week. The case involves a warrant the Drug Enforcement Administration obtained under the authority of the 1986 Stored Communications Act. The DEA was after the emails of a drug trafficking suspect. Microsoft, however, has those emails stored in a data center in Ireland. It argues that Stored Communications Act warrants can't be applied in other countries and refuses to turn over the emails.