Beanie Babies - A New Issue?

Many years ago I authored an article titled, "Do We Need a 'Beanie Baby' Fraud Statute?"  The Article considered how specific a statute needs to be to provide proper due process to a criminal defendant.  It focused on the breadth of the mail fraud statute, while also recommending that criminal statutes cannot be created for every unique circumstance - like "Beanie Baby" fraud.  It was written at the height of the time when individuals were committing crimes of fraud with "Beanie Babies."  In some cases, the company producing this product was the victim of the fraud.

Another side of "Beanie Babies" is mentioned this past week - and it relates to the CEO of  Ty Warner, who was the creator of "Beanie Babies."  A DOJ Press Release tells that H.Ty Warner was charged with tax evasion for allegedly hiding funds in a secret Swiss offshore account. The press release states, "[t]hrough his attorney, Warner authorized the government to disclose that he is cooperating with the Internal Revenue Service and will plead guilty to the charge." According to the DOJ Press Release, "Warner is the second taxpayer charged in Federal Court in Chicago in connection with an ongoing investigation of U.S. taxpayer clients of Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) and other overseas banks that hid foreign accounts from the Internal Revenue Service."

(esp)