Cert denied for Wesley Snipes

Via AP:

The high court refused Monday to hear an appeal from Snipes, convicted in 2008 on three misdemeanor counts of willful failure to file income tax returns.

Snipes started a three-year term in a federal minimum security prison in December. He has appeared in dozens of films, from "White Men Can't Jump" and "Demolition Man" in the early 1990s to the blockbuster Blade trilogy.

Snipes wanted his trial held in New York City, where he says he lived, but the government brought charges against him in Florida, where Snipes held a driver's license. The lower courts refused to let him have an evidentiary hearing on this issue.

Your Monday Morning moment of Zen

John Edwards indicted by former AUSA in Miami

Jeff Tsai was one of the five lawyers who signed the 19-page indictment against Edwards. Tsai is now at the public integrity section at DOJ in DC.

I like Jeff, and he was one of best dressed lawyers in the USAO, but I think the indictment is one of the weakest I have ever read. It will be interesting to see how it develops. I'm happy that Edwards is fighting it and that he didn't plead.

Barzee, Pettus still waiting for verdict

The jury in the SDNY insider trading case is apparently sending all kinds of notes, asking for definitions of terms and other itmes. Bill Barzee and "Country Dave" Pettus have to just sit and wait and it's not easy. Fridays are always the toughest day waiting for a verdict. You don't want the jury to feel rushed, but the weekends are always difficult for not guilty verdicts. Here's the latest article, which basically says the jury is deliberating.

You wanna be a federal judge? Read this. "The Path to the Federal Bench" sets out the basic process. Here's my favorite part:

Finally, a word to the wise: Before you are nominated to the federal
bench, you will be subjected to an FBI background check. Have you
ever committed a crime? Failed to pay your taxes? Been embroiled in a
scandal? Staffers from the Department of Justice will likely read
everything you have ever written and will interview members of your
community to determine if you are an appropriate candidate for the
bench. In evaluating your qualifications, subject yourself to The “New
York Times test,” i.e., if anything in your past would embarrass you or—
perhaps more importantly—the president or your home state senators
if it showed up on the front page of The New York Times, then perhaps
pursuing a federal judgeship is not for you.

Judge Zloch sentences Alan Mendelsohn to 4 years (UPDATED)

The prosecutors had asked for 2 years and Mendelsohn's lawyers asked for probation.

From the Herald:

“Most notably, the corruption in this case strikes at the heart of the Florida Legislature,’’ Zloch said. “Dr. Mendelsohn actually facilitated a corrupt democratic process in the Florida Legislature.’’
***
Zloch expressed disgust over the “pay to play" world of Tallahassee politics that Mendelsohn described at his plea hearing in December.

Mendelsohn, initially indicted in September 2009 on 32 fraud charges and later on five tax offenses, had been facing trial in January.

His plea was the ending to a high-profile influence-peddling investigation that stretched from South Florida to Tallahassee. It started when the self-made power broker bragged about his purported connections to then-Gov. Charlie Crist and his inner circle, saying he could get them to kill legislation and investigations that would hurt a Fort Lauderdale viatical insurance business called Mutual Benefits Corp.

UPDATE -- I've mentioned previously that I don't think judges should be permitted to sentence someone above the plea agreement's terms (see, e.g., here, here and here). If the parties in an adversary system agreed that the defendant in this case deserved somewhere between probation and 2 years, a judge should respect that contract or allow the parties to withdraw from it.

It doesn't appear that DOJ really fought for the terms of the agreement. From Curt Anderson's article:

"He isn't accepting responsibility when he says, 'Everybody was doing it,'" Butler said. "That's just not going to cut it."

More from Zloch:

"It is totally inappropriate for the court to give what would amount to a slap on the wrist," Zloch said. "The corruption of public officials, those who took an oath to uphold the law, leads to contempt for the law."
***

Mendelsohn himself apologized profusely, but also said he was proud of health-related state legislation he said he pushed for and noted that since his 2009 indictment "words just can't describe the devastation" suffered by his family and business.

"Who was responsible for this devastation?" Zloch asked.

"I was," Mendelsohn replied. "I am really, really, really, truly sorry."

"Your honor, on behalf of Zvi Goffer, we'll rest."

That was Bill Barzee today in the big insider trading case in the SDNY immediately after the government rested. From Reuters:

A former Galleon Group hedge fund trader did not put on a defense at his insider trading trial, and the judge said the jury will hear closing arguments in the case on Wednesday.

A defense attorney for 34-year-old Zvi Goffer, who once worked at Raj Rajaratnam's Galleon Group and two other trading firms, told the Manhattan federal court judge on Tuesday he would not present evidence or call witnesses to defend his client.

***

The trial is in its third week. It started days after a jury in the same courthouse convicted Rajaratnam of 14 counts of conspiracy and securities fraud in the biggest Wall Street insider trading trial in years.

Go Heat and Go Bill Barzee!

Welcome to Miami

The shooting on South Beach this weekend was caught on tape:

Four Rothstein associates charged

They are: Howard Kusnick (a lawyer), Stephen Caputi (IT department), William Corte (IT department), and Curtis Renie (person who posed as a plaintiff in fake cases). They are all charged by information, so it appears that they have cut deals and are cooperating.

They drew Judges Marra (Kusnick), Dimitroleas (the two IT guys), and Zloch (Renie).

From the USAO press release:

The Information against Howard Kusnick alleges that, while an attorney at RRA, Kusnick engaged in a scheme to defraud two clients of RRA by authoring a letter purporting to settle pending litigation in the clients’ favor. In fact, however, no such litigation had been instituted and no such settlement existed. Rather, the purpose of the letter was to lull the clients into believing that RRA was pursuing litigation on their behalf when, in fact, the clients’ funds had been used to pay off earlier investors and to further the investment fraud scheme.

The Information against Stephen Caputi alleges that Caputi at times acted as both a purported banker and plaintiff during meetings with potential investors. For example, the Information alleges that Caputi, posing as an official from TD Bank, provided investors with fraudulent bank statements that reflected purported balances of trust accounts at TD Bank. In this way, Caputi lulled the investors into believing that the account balances were sufficient to fund their investments. On another occasion, Caputi posed as a plaintiff during a meeting with potential investors who had requested to meet with plaintiffs. Caputi pretended to be a plaintiff who had purportedly executed a $10,000,000 settlement agreement, thus raising potential investors’ confidence in the deal.

According to the Information against Curtis Renie and William Corte, these defendants worked at RRA’s IT Department as chief of information technology and as a document management specialist, respectively. Renie and Corte created a fictitious web page copying the legitimate web page of TD Bank. At Rothstein’s direction, the defendants posted false account balances on the fictitious web page to make it appear as if the accounts were well-funded. On one occasion, the defendants modified the phony TD Bank web site to reflect that RRA held between $300 million and $1.1 billion on deposit at TD Bank. In fact, however, no such funds were in the accounts. The false account balances were shown to investors to induce them to invest into the fraudulent investment scheme.