Monday, March 17, 2014

Federal Clerk charged in Dewey & LeBoeuf scandal

The New York Times has this very interesting (and sad) article here:

How did a 29-year-old with an impeccable record, someone who had never even taken an accounting course, end up as an accused mastermind of what the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., called “a massive effort to cook the books” of the once-giant law firm? And how did he get there without realizing he should hire a lawyer?
According to several criminal defense lawyers I spoke to this week, Mr. Warren became caught up in an increasingly common prosecutorial tactic. Mr. Warren may have been naïve, but he thought he was being questioned as part of a civil Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. He thought he might be a witness, and thus did not need a lawyer. Only too late did it dawn on him that he might be a target of a criminal investigation. The defense lawyers said prosecutors were increasingly using so-called parallel investigations to insert criminal investigators into what their targets thought were civil proceedings.
“It’s a serious threat to civil liberties, and people should know about it,” said Thomas J. Curran, a criminal defense lawyer in New York and a former prosecutor under the former Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau. “Now, this is going on all over the country.” While this isn’t illegal or technically improper, “It’s dangerous,” Mr. Curran said. “They’re using civil proceedings to advance their criminal investigations. It’s a real threat to the cherished right to counsel.”
Judge Carnes wrote this money laundering guideline opinion, which has the following intro:

An application note to the guideline that governs the calculation of the offense level for money laundering instructs courts to consider only the money laundering offense itself and not the underlying crime that generated the money that was laundered. See United States Sentencing Guidelines § 2S1.1 cmt. n.2(C) (2013).1 In this case the district court in calculating the guidelines range mistakenly considered the defendant’s role in the drug conspiracy that generated the dirty money. As a result, the defendant received a higher adjusted offense level and guidelines range than he might have received if the application note to § 2S1.1 had been followed. That mistake and the resulting miscalculation must be laundered out of the sentence in a resentence proceeding.

Oh, and Happy St. Patrick's day:


6 comments:

Rumpole said...

Its bullshit. I have at least 4 fed white collar clients where the fbi approached my client "asking for help" and then took a statement.

MC Waste Services, Inc said...

the friendly fbi agent could not have obtained the info in any other manner- ideal rouse for this situation.

MC Waste Services, Inc said...

ruse

MC Waste Services, Inc said...

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2014/03/17/two-men-arrested-after-s-w-a-t-team-rushes-to-upscale-coral-gables-neighborhood/ LIVE IN CORAL GABLES, SHOOT AT MARKED POLICE CRUISER, GET CHARGED WITH MISDEMEANORS. LUCKY FOR THE DEFENDANTS, THEY ARE WHITE, OR NOT BLACK FOR THAT MATTER.

MC Waste Services, Inc said...

you dont need to be the most reverend minister louis farrakhan to see that there is something wrong with this charge. Had this incident occurred in a black part of town the charges would have been attempted murder on a leo or you would have had police union boss john rivera explaining why the death of the two assailants was justified.

The prosecutors/police's right/discretion to charge a crime is another way in which crime of racism is institutionalized. EQUAL TIME FOR EQUAL CRIME makes for a more honest system of justice.

Anonymous said...

The fed prosecutors have such little leverage.