Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro indicted for narco-terrorism

Big news while DOJ has been pretty quiet during the virus.

There was a virtual press conference with Barr, U.S. Attorney Berman from SDNY, and our very own U.S. Attorney Ariana Fajardo Orshan.  She gave a nice shout out to Michael Nadler, Michael Berger, and Peter Forand.

From the Miami Herald:

In a stunning announcement amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Justice Department plans to announce Thursday that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and other government officials have been charged with turning Venezuela into a narco-state by collaborating with a leftist Colombian guerrilla group that exported tons of cocaine to the United States.

An indictment, to be unveiled at a “virtual” news conference in Washington, D.C., accuses Maduro and other top officials in his socialist regime of conspiring with the U.S.-designated terrorist group known as the FARC so that Venezuela could be used for narcotics shipments to finance a long-running civil war against the Colombian government.

Charged along with Maduro are Diosdado Cabello, a former speaker of the National Assembly who is considered the second most powerful political figure in Venezuela, and Vladimir Padrino Lopez, the country’s minister of defense. All three Venezuelan officials face allegations of narco-terrorism, drug trafficking and weapons violations in a scheme initiated in the mid-2000s that was meant to help the Colombian rebel group while enriching themselves with cocaine-tainted bribes, according to federal authorities.

The 11th Circuit is still humming along

Appellate courts should be the least impacted through all of this mess, with judges and clerks able to work on opinions from home.  And the 11th Circuit keeps cranking them out...

Earlier this week, it agreed to hear this 4th Amendment case en banc at the urging at Judge Newsom to reconsider previous decisions on abandonment.

Yesterday, Judge Jill Pryor issued a big decision finding that a Hobbs Act robbery did not constitute a crime of violence under the Guidelines.

And today, Judge Rosenbaum issued an opinion on restitution and loss, with this fun introduction:

In Robert Louis Stevenson’s  Treasure  Island,  Jim  Hawkins memorably hunted  for  Captain Flint’s hidden treasure.  The Goonies put its own spin on treasure hunting  when  the  title  band of  friends defied One-Eyed  Willy’s  maze  of  booby  traps to find his hidden treasure  and save  their  beloved neighborhood.   But  for real-life treasure-hunting  stories,  perhaps  nothing  beats  the  quests of  the  aptly named  Mel Fisher  and his company  Treasure  Salvors,  Inc. 

Fisher  and his team  specialized  in finding and salvaging shipwrecks  of Spanish  galleons  and  other  vessels  from  the  Spanish Colonial era,  off  the  coasts  of Florida  and its Keys.   As  of  the  mid-1980s,  Fisher’s operation had  recovered  treasure worth approximately  $400 million at that time.     

Among that treasure  was Gold Bar  27,  which Fisher  donated to the  Mel Fisher Maritime  Heritage  Museum  (the  “Museum”)  in Key West,  Florida.   There,  Gold Bar 27  became  iconic,  and  three  to four  million Museum  visitors  handled it over  the years. Enter  Defendant-Appellant  Jarred  Alexander  Goldman  (sometimes truth  can be  stranger  than  fiction)  and Codefendant  Richard Steven Johnson.   In  2010, Goldman  and Johnson  stole  Gold  Bar  27  from  the  Museum.   This  appeal  requires  us to consider  the  proper  standard—we  might call it  the  gold  standard—for determining,  for  purposes of  ordering  restitution  under  the  Mandatory Victims Restitution Act,  18  U.S.C.  § 3663A (“MVRA”),  the  value  of  Gold  Bar  27.     

Today we  take  this  golden opportunity to reaffirm  that in a  case  like  this  one, where the loss  is  of  a  unique artifact  for  which  market  value  cannot  fully  compensate, courts must use  replacement  cost in  determining restitution.   While  absolute precision is not required under  the  MVRA,  the  district court must  base  its  restitution order on evidence.   And  that evidence  must show  that  the  restitution  will  make  the victim  whole—nothing  more  and nothing less.   Because  the  district court,  without the  benefit  of  our  decision  today,  did  not  ascertain  replacement value  when it determined market value  was insufficient and  then  imposed restitution,  we  vacate the  restitution  order  and  remand for  valuation  that applies  the  proper  legal  barometer to  the  gold bar  here. Goldman  also challenges  the  loss  amount used  to determine  his offense  level.   But  here,  we  part  ways with Goldman’s  analysis.   

The  district court explained that it would impose  the  same  sentence,  even if  it had the  loss figure  wrong.   For  that reason  and because  the  sentence  the  district  court imposed is  not substantively unreasonable,  we  affirm  Goldman’s sentence. 

The 11th Circuit should really re-examine this practice of affirming sentences just because the district judge says that it would enter the same sentence even if reversed.  It’s simply too easy to say that, and the truth is that judges are very unlikely to sentence above the guidelines.  If there’s a reversal on the guideline calculation, of course the defendant should get a new sentencing.

Update: Guilty verdicts in Broward federal healthcare trial

This is the one the blog covered earlier in the week here with Judge Cohn, defense attorney Joel Hirschhorn, and AUSAs Chris Clark/Lisa Miller.

 There were 23 counts and Sebastian Ahmed was found guilty of 18. The jury deliberated over the course of two days.

 One interesting story that I heard -- apparently Hirschhorn asked for a number of mistrials during the course of the trial because of the virus. And it was the defendant himself who objected on his own. Now that's insane. But there's no insanity defense left, sadly.

 Anyway, I think that was the last federal trial occurring in the country. It's anyone's guess when the next one will happen... not until late April at the earliest in this District.

Update on David Lat

We’re all rooting for David Lat, all around good guy and creator of the Above the Law blog.

He’s still on a ventilator.

And now, he’s receiving experimental medication, according to this Law.com article:

David Lat remains in critical condition, on a ventilator and sedated inside a Manhattan hospital, as doctors and his family wait to see over the next several days if the “very experimental” drug therapy he has been given to help him fight the coronavirus will work, said his husband on Monday afternoon.

“We won’t know for a few more days, whether he’s going to get better—whether this stuff [the drug therapy] is working or not,” said his husband of four and a half years, Zachary Baron Shemtob, in a phone interview.

“We’re hanging in there,” he said. “We’re just waiting and hoping.”

The initial sedation Lat was given early on Saturday, as he was put on a potentially life-saving ventilator because his oxygen levels had dropped, did not keep Lat from waking up on Saturday, “immediately opening his eyes, demanding a pen and paper and starting to write down questions, to get to the bottom of everything,” Shemtob said Monday.

“It was just David being David. It wasn’t that he was agitated, but, you know, he was curious and inquisitive,” Shemtob said. “He just wanted to be his inquisitive journalist self. It was shortly after being put on the ventilator.”

Here’s hoping for a speedy and full recovery.

One SDFLA trial carries on while the rest of the justice system has shut down (TWO UPDATES)

SECOND UPDATE — here’s the court order continuing all criminal trials that haven’t started yet until after 4/27.

FIRST UPDATE — in much more serious news, fellow blogger and friend David Lat (the creator of Above the Law) tested positive for COVID-19 and has been placed on a ventilator.  His condition is critical.  I know I speak for everyone when I say that we are thinking of him and his family and wish him the best and to pull through soon.  It’s just awful!

Original Post: As districts around the country issue orders postponing trials and as we await Chief Judge Moore’s order continuing all trials until after 4/27, there is one trial in Broward federal court that is pushing forward.

It’s one of the sober home (health care fraud) cases, U.S. v. Sebastian Ahmed.  The government is alleging $21 million in fraud.

Judge Cohn is presiding.

Chris Clark and Lisa Miller for the government.

Joel Hirschhorn for the defense.

The defendant is in custody.

The trial started back on February 20 and was only supposed to last 3 weeks.  On Monday, they will start week 6 of the trial!  The defendant testified for a few days last week. And the parties closed on Friday.

I understand that the defense has moved a number of times for mistrial based on the virus, but those motions have been denied. I’ve been told that Judge Cohn asked the jurors if they wanted to continue and they said yes.

The Sun-Sentinel covered opening statements back when the case started, before everyone realized how bad the virus was going to be:

“It’s one thing to have sloppy billing practices," Joel Hirschhorn, Ahmed’s defense attorney, said during opening statements. "It’s another for it to be fraud.”
***
The filings also allege that [the defendant’s brother, who pleaded guilty] Ali Ahmed fathered a child with a woman he met while she was seeking recovery at the treatment center and that he provided her with heroin and alcohol while she was pregnant.
“Did they turn a blind eye to unwanted and random sex?” Hirschhorn asked during opening statements.
“Yes,” the lawyer answered, before going on to argue that his client was more focused on the business and that Sebastian Ahmed "did not understand the human side” of the operation.

The Herald covered the sentencing of the brother and other co-defendants:

On Tuesday, Ali Ahmed, 38, the former operations director and co-owner of Medi MD in Davie, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay $4.2 million in restitution to the bilked private health insurers.
Prosecutors urged the judge to give Ahmed almost the maximum sentence of 20 years, saying he impregnated a woman with a heroin addiction who was living in a “Serenity” sober home and plied her with the drug. When their child was born, he tested positive for heroin and other drugs.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Clark scoffed at the idea that Ahmed sought as little as five years in prison while citing his devotion to his son as a basis for leniency, highlighting that he was “providing heroin to his girlfriend who was bearing his son.”

In the end, U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno recognized the “vulnerability” of the addicts who were lured to the brothers’ chain of sober homes and substance abuse facilities in Broward. But Moreno also said Ahmed pleaded guilty and accepted responsibility, qualifying him for a potential guideline sentence between 9 and 11 years. So, Moreno split the difference.

Ahmed, standing alongside his attorney, Bradley Horenstein, said: “I am very sorry for the damage I have done to my family. My son will grow up without a father because of me.”

All SDFLA jury trials to be continued until at least 4/27

The judges had a meeting today and agreed on this date.

Latest update from SDFLA

Chief Judge Moore issued the following order, which in effect puts the District on "telework" except for a skeleton crew.

We should be releasing all non-violent offenders on personal surety bonds immediately

It's amazing to me that this hasn't happened yet.  Some magistrate judges are asking for lawyers to revisit bond issues.  Below is one in the Northern District of California.  Come on judges (and prosecutors), let's be proactive and leaders on this issue.