A Chicago lawyer was found guilty Wednesday of conspiracy to commit tax fraud in connection with the sale of tax shelters.

A New York jury also convicted John Ohle III, 42, of two counts of tax evasion for failing to report about $6.5 million in income in 2001 and 2002, the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan said Thursday. A fellow lawyer, William Bradley of Hammond, La., also was convicted in the conspiracy scheme.

The guilty verdicts are a big victory for New York federal prosecutors who have investigated a web of Chicago lawyers, bankers and accountants who helped hundreds of wealthy clients skirt taxes through the sale of questionable tax shelters starting in the 1990s. Last year, seven people, including the former chief executive of BDO Seidman, a Chicago-based accounting firm, were charged with fraud and conspiracy related to the sale of allegedly fraudulent tax shelters.

One of the shelters was known as "Hedge Option Monetization of Economic Remainder" or "HOMER." The U.S. attorney's office said Ohle sold HOMER to clients of Bank One, where he was employed from November 1999 to early 2002. Ohle continued selling the shelter after leaving the bank and forming his own company, Chicago-based Dumaine Group LLC.

Prosecutors had alleged that Ohle and Bradley conspired with others to create fraudulent invoices to obtain referral fees on transactions involving HOMER. Ohle illegally collected more than $800,000, prosecutors said.

Five partners have left Neal Gerber & Eisenberg to start their own law firm counseling trade associations, charitable groups and other non-profits.

The group is led by Jed Mandel, who chaired Neal Gerber's practice group focused on associations and non-profit organizations. In a statement, Mandel suggested that the group left partly due to client concerns about rates.
"As a boutique firm with a focused concentration, we can be more nimble in anticipating and responding to client needs," Mandel said in a statement. "We can also be even more efficient, from a cost standpoint, in delivering the specific services our clients require."

The lawyers joining him at Chicago Law Partners are Susan Carlson, Timothy French, Kimberly Pendo and Lisa Stegink. Their office is at 333 W. Wacker Drive.

Britain's regulator lost its first criminal case for insider dealing on Thursday as a jury acquitted a lawyer and a finance director of wrongdoing and a second lawyer had charges against him dropped.

The Financial Services Authority had charged Andrew King, a finance director, and lawyers Michael McFall and Andrew Rimmington with eight counts of insider dealing during the 305 million pound ($450 million) takeover of biotech firm NeuTec Pharma by Swiss drugmaker Novartis.

But in a blow to the regulator, the jury dismissed the charges against McFall -- a former partner at law firm McDermott Will & Emery -- and King, the former finance chief at NeuTec.

Rimmington, a former partner at law firm Dorsey & Whitney, was discharged by the judge half-way through the trial for personal reasons. His brother had been assaulted and killed and the FSA said it was not pursuing him separately.

A federal judge says a New York school must reinstate a 13-year-old boy who was suspended for wearing rosary beads.

Judge Lawrence Kahn ordered the Schenectady (skeh-NEHK'-ta-dee) seventh-grader reinstated pending a June 11 hearing into whether the suspension violated the boy's civil rights.

Oneida (oh-NY'-duh) Middle School officials contend Raymond Hosier violated a policy banning gang-related clothing because the prayer beads sometimes are worn as gang symbols. They suspended him two weeks ago.

But the boy says he wears the purple rosary in memory of his younger brother, who died while clutching it after a bicycle accident.

The American Center for Law and Justice filed a lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court contending the suspension violated Hosier's rights to free speech and religious expression.

At a landmark review conference of the ICC in Kampala, delegates are seeking to agree a definition of state aggression and how ICC investigations into the crime, one of four grave crimes the court has jurisdiction over, could be triggered.

The issue has divided delegates and NGOs over fears that giving the court powers to prosecute state aggression -- defined broadly as using force that manifestly breaches the UN charter -- could open it up to criticism of political bias and may again prove too divisive for full agreement to be reached in Kampala.

United States ambassador-at-large for war crimes Stephen Rapp warned late Tuesday about legal uncertainties over state aggression investigations and said that that pushing forward on the issue despite a lack of "genuine consensus" could undermine the ICC.

"What impact might the proposed definition, if adopted, have on the use of force that is undertaken to end the very crimes the ICC is now charged with prosecuting?" he said.

The United States withdrew its support for the ICC under then president George W. Bush in 2002, worried that its troops could face politically motivated prosecutions over unpopular wars, but has more recently started to re-engage with the court.

A lawyer has pleaded not guilty to charges she illegally disclosed confidential information regarding a teenage girl who converted to Christianity and ran away from her Ohio home.

Attorney Angela Lloyd entered the pleas Tuesday in Franklin County juvenile court after a magistrate approved bringing two misdemeanor charges.

Lloyd is accused of placing confidential child welfare reports into the public file of 17-year-old client Rifqa Bary (RIHF'-kuh BAYR'-ee), making them accessible to the media.

Bary fled central Ohio last year to stay with an Orlando, Fla., minister. She said she'd be harmed for converting from Islam. She has returned to Ohio, where her parents deny allegations she would've been hurt.

Lloyd's attorney, Jefferson Liston, says he doesn't believe Lloyd broke the law.