The Utah AG’s Office became the first state to take on organized retail theft full-time. We’ll explain how it’s made a huge difference.
Crimes Against the Statewide Economy are enforced by the AG’s CASE Unit. CASE was launched in 2020, with retailers’ support and funding. In today’s society, they are grateful that the investment they made is paying off. The question is, what lies ahead?
In this episode of Legally Speaking, Detective Commander James Russell and Detective Steve Jensen share their experiences dealing with these crimes every day.
With very heavy hearts, we, in the Utah Attorney General’s Office, mourn the passing of Judge Raymond S. Uno, a historic and transformational leader in our legal community and a beloved member of our Utah AG family.
Judge Uno was larger than life. His smile filled a room. While he was soft-spoken, caring and humble, he had gravitas born of forceful conviction and an indomitable will. His humor and humanity will be greatly missed.
Judge Uno was a scholar and soldier, an athlete and activist, a gentleman and jurist, and a champion of civil rights and civility. He was a pioneer who opened doors for so many of us. He was our hero.
From starting the Utah Minority Bar Association to his work with JACL, he mentored and supported countless local lawyers and leaders. I was a beneficiary my entire career of his kindness and steadiness. While his influence was felt most locally, it carried across America and beyond.
As the son of Japanese immigrants, Judge Uno endured painful years of internment during WW II with his family in a relocation camp, and then put aside that extreme indignity to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces with distinction.
Before becoming the first minority judge in Utah history, he served as a Deputy Salt Lake County Attorney, Assistant Utah Attorney General and practiced in a private law firm.
Saysha and I absolutely loved the Judge and send our deepest and most heartfelt sympathies to his amazing family.
SALT LAKE CITY – On Thursday evening, Utah Solicitor General Melissa Holyoak was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as one of two nominees to fill Republican slots at the Federal Trade Commission.
Solicitor General Holyoak is a distinguished member of Attorney General Reyes’ senior staff, overseeing Utah’s constitutional and special litigation matters. She leads the office’s appellate, constitutional defense, and antitrust divisions. In addition, she has been an integral leader in many multi-state lawsuits in state and federal courts around the country. SG Holyoak previously served as president and general counsel of Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute and was one of the successful petitioners in the 2019 Supreme Court Case Frank v. Gaos.
Solicitor General Holyoak reacted to her confirmation by stating the following: “I am honored to have been confirmed to serve on the Federal Trade Commission, and I am thankful to the U.S. Senators who placed their trust in me. Congratulations to my fellow nominees Andrew Ferguson and Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. I look forward to protecting consumers and serving my country alongside my future colleagues.”
Utah Attorney General Sean D. Reyes stated, “I am thrilled for Melissa and her family. The state loses an incredible Solicitor General, but America gains a tremendous lawyer, leader and public servant. Her service will be historic for Utah and she will bring valuable experience and more balance to the FTC.”
Chief of Staff Ric Cantrell said of the confirmation “Melissa Holyoak is a force of nature. Most Utahns will never realize the battles she fought on their behalf – to protect families, guard the free market and defend individual liberty. Her influence was profound and she led her teams with candlepower and charisma that is truly remarkable. We wish her the best at the FTC.”
In the coming weeks, Deputy Solicitor General Christopher Bates will also be moving to an exceptional opportunity with a prominent Salt Lake firm, while Deputy Solicitor General Stanford Purser will serve as Acting Solicitor General.
The White House announced SG Holyoak’s nomination to serve as a Commissioner of the FTC in July 2023. She has served in the Utah AG’s Office since September 2020.
SALT LAKE CITY – Attorney General Reyes joined a bipartisan coalition of 40 attorneys general in sending a letter to Meta Platforms, Inc. (Meta) addressing the recent rise of Facebook and Instagram platform account takeovers by scammers and fraudsters. Account takeovers are when bad actors break into a user’s account and change passwords, effectively hijacking the account and blocking out the rightful owner. Attorney General Reyes and the bipartisan coalition are calling on Meta to thoroughly review its data security practices to protect its users’ accounts from being unfairly locked out or taken over by scammers.
Once scammers hijack a Facebook or Instagram user’s account and change the password, they can steal personal information, read private messages, pose as the user to scam contacts, and even post publicly as the rightful user. All these actions cause undue harm and stress to account owners and their connections. While account takeovers are not a new phenomenon, there has been a dramatic increase in these schemes over the past year. As users have struggled to receive help from Meta, they have turned to their attorneys general seeking assistance and support.
To address the account takeover crisis and provide better quality services to the millions of users who rely on Meta platforms daily, the letter from Attorney General Reyes and the bipartisan coalition outlines a series of common-sense steps Meta should implement. Increased staffing will be needed to respond to account takeover complaints, as well as a greater investment in account takeover mitigation tactics. The attorneys general also call on Meta to adopt new procedures for users to protect themselves from account takeovers including multi-step authentication measures. Additionally, Attorney General Reyes and the bipartisan coalition urge Meta to take this issue more seriously and take stronger enforcement actions against scammers.
Users who experience an account takeover from a scammer or bad actors are encouraged to raise this concern to Meta immediately. Users unable to contact Meta or have the issue resolved can refer to the Facebook page with information on how to address an account takeover situation.
In issuing today’s letter, Attorney General Reyes joined with the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
SALT LAKE CITY, UT—Attorney General Reyes has joined Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin and a coalition of 25 other state attorneys general on a letter to Meta demanding that Instagram stop monetizing child exploitation content.
“New information has emerged about Instagram’s blatant disregard for child safety, even after Meta has claimed to have implemented safeguards to stop child sex abuse material or CSAM on its sites,” said Attorney General Reyes. “We can no longer trust that Meta is listening to its own internal watchdogs or following through on its touted safety systems to protect children from predators.”
According to The Wall Street Journal in an article on February 22, Meta’s own staff raised alarms after Instagram enabled those running ‘parent-managed minor accounts’ to profit by providing ‘pin-up style photos of children’ to male subscribers who were ‘often overt about sexual interest’ in children. Worse, Meta actively promoted child-modeling subscriptions to ‘likely pedophiles.’ On the same day, The New York Times similarly reported that men in online chatrooms frequently praised ‘the advent of Instagram as a golden age for child exploitation.’
“Over the past decade, Attorney General Reyes has led the fight against human trafficking and child exploitation. His passion has ignited government leaders across the globe to understand the many different faces of these horrific crimes,” said Missy Larsen, Utah’s Statewide Coordinator for Child and Family Safety. “The fact that 26 states are fed-up with Meta’s inability to prioritize children over profits offers hope to the millions of children and families in the world who have been, or are at risk of, being victimized.”
Arkansas Attorney General Griffin sent the letter to Meta. In addition to Attorney General Reyes, the attorneys general of the following states also signed on to the letter: Arkansas, Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Utah Attorney General Sean D. Reyes is joining a coalition of 23 other state attorneys general filing an amicus brief in the Supreme Court of Texas in support of the state’s law prohibiting pediatric gender-transition procedures.
States are responsible for protecting the health and safety of their children from dangerous and experimental medical procedures. Texas’ law is presumptively constitutional as it regulates gender-transition procedures for all minors, regardless of sex.
S.B. 14, like similar laws enacted in many states, prohibits healthcare providers from performing surgery on, and administering hormones to, minors for gender transition.
Texas, through its legislature, has concluded that it would await the results of gender experimentation being conducted elsewhere before allowing its vulnerable children to be used as guinea pigs.
Alabama AG Steve Marshall and Arkansas AG Tim Griffin are the attorneys leading the brief. They are joined by AG Reyes and the following states: Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – Attorney General Sean D. Reyes joined a letter to BlackRock fund directors to express continued concerns over past and present actions involving their fiduciary duties to clients and commitments to radical environmental organizations. The letter, which was led by the State of Montana, requested answers to a series of questions in the wake of BlackRock’s recent announcement that it would substantially scale back involvement in Climate Action 100+.
The February 2024 letter follows one sent by the coalition of attorneys general in July 2023 that questioned whether BlackRock should continue to serve as an investment adviser to the mutual funds it manages, highlighted potential conflicts of interest, and raised concerns about the company’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investments. BlackRock responded to the July letter in August 2023.
“Thanks to persistent efforts from Republican attorneys general to defeat the radical and illegal ESG movement, BlackRock and other investment firms have rightly withdrawn from certain environmental organizations committed to a foundational transformation of America’s energy and financial sectors,” said General Reyes. “Our coalition, however, still has concerns with BlackRock’s past and present actions involving the financial interests of our constituents. We will remain steadfast in holding BlackRock and others like it accountable by protecting the financial freedom of our people.”
As the attorneys general point out in their recent letter, while BlackRock “announced that it was dropping its corporate membership in Climate Action 100+, [it] remains a member of other groups such as the Net Zero Asset Managers initiatives, the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment, and Ceres.” The States write that “BlackRock has made commitments to environmental activist groups that may conflict with the fiduciary duties it owes to clients, and we seek more information about how the independent directors have overseen this.”
The attorneys general seek responses to their queries by March 26, 2024.
Joining Utah and Montana on the letter are the States of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.
March is Women’s History Month when Americans celebrate women’s achievements and ongoing contributions to our society. Women have played a key role throughout Utah’s complicated and exciting history.
As such, the Utah Attorney General’s Office is proud to recognize the many talented and dedicated women who serve and have contributed to our great state. From athletes and journalists to prosecutors and political leaders, women play a vital role in making significant and lasting impacts.
This month, we invite you to recognize the inspiring stories of women who have made a difference.
Explore the Utah Women’s History Initiative to discover all the contributions of Utah women and hear from Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson about what we can learn from Utah women’s history.
Today, Utah Attorney General Sean D. Reyes filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court, along with 21 other Attorneys General, in the case of Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v U.S. Food and Drug Administration, urging the Court to uphold the people’s constitutional authority to make laws through their elected officials.
In their brief, the Attorneys General write:
Our Constitution establishes a limited federal government that leaves most power with – and accountable to – the people. Federal agencies present special risks to that design. So when agency action pushes constitutional bounds, this Court’s review of that action is searching – not deferential. The FDA’s actions here push constitutional bounds. Those actions test the separation of powers, sap federalism, and take important decisions from the people. This Court should therefore exercise searching review of those actions and reject the FDA’s plea for deference.
At issue in this case is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) actions to enact a nationwide elective abortion regime without statutory authority and without regard to the important women’s health, safety, and welfare interests that are the primary responsibility of states. Today, the Attorneys General remind the Court, “Congress has never enacted—and could not now enact—any such policy. Yet the FDA does not just claim authority to impose such a policy. It demands ‘significant deference’ to its actions imposing that policy.”
Utah is joined by Attorneys General from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming in filing this brief.
SALT LAKE CITY — Today, Utah Attorney General Sean D. Reyes took the lead in sending a letter, signed by 21 other Attorneys General, demanding Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra, and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray address a recent report issued by the HHS Office of Inspector General that found unaccompanied migrant children in the custody of the federal government are being released into unsafe situations, including into human trafficking.
In the letter, the Attorneys General expressed concern over the Biden Administration’s recent revelation that it cannot locate 85,000 migrant children for which it is responsible. The letter cites a February 2023 New York Times report that states many of these children have been forced into labor for debilitating hours under dangerous conditions, often in violation of child-labor laws and resulting in grave injury and death. Others, the letter notes, are sex trafficked.
The February 2023 New York Times investigation revealed that the federal government knowingly allowed these unaccompanied minors into the country and released them out of the federal government’s custody without conducting proper vetting and safety checks and, in fact, “regularly ignored obvious signs of labor exploitation.”
In a report issued this month, HHS’ Office of Inspector General confirms and documents many of the issues found in the New York Times investigation, admitting that more than one-third of children’s case files were flagged with safety concerns. In some instances, “address checks conducted by case managers yielded results such as vacant houses or nonresidential addresses, but no home studies were conducted before children were released to these sponsors.”
The Attorneys General note that Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, recognizing this problem more than three months ago, asked the Department of Homeland Security for its plan to address this growing crisis but has received no response. Now, the Attorney Generals demand the Administration account for these reports in writing by May 1, 2024.
“Our states have a strong interest in enforcing state and federal law within our borders,” the Attorneys General write, “We are also dedicated to fighting against human trafficking and are outraged that victims now include children that were in the federal government’s care…. Missing children must be identified, and potential sponsors must be vetted.”
Attorneys General from the following states joined General Reyes in sending the letter: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.
