- Appeals Court Tosses Convictions of Two Parents in Varsity Blues Case The Wall Street Journal
- A federal appeals court tossed Varsity Blues convictions of two parents in nationwide college admissions scandal The Boston Globe
- Two convictions overturned by Appeals Court in college admissions scandal CBS Boston
- Appeals Court Overturns Fraud and Conspiracy Convictions in Varsity Blues Scandal The New York Times
- Appeals court overturns convictions of two parents in ‘Varsity Blues’ admissions scandal The Washington Post
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Tag Archives: convictions
Todd and Julie Chrisley sentenced for fraud and tax crimes convictions
CNN
—
Reality TV Stars Julie and Todd Chrisley were sentenced to prison in federal court Monday.
The “Chrisley Knows Best” couple were found guilty in June of conspiracy to defraud banks out of more than $30 million in fraudulent loans, CNN previously reported. In addition, they were found guilty of several tax crimes, including attempting to defraud the Internal Revenue Service.
‘Chrisley Knows Best’ stars charged with tax evasion (2019)
Judge Eleanor L. Ross sentenced Todd Chrisley to 12 years in prison with three years of supervised release. His wife Julie Chrisley was sentenced to seven years in prison and three years of supervised release. Their accountant Peter Tarantino was sentenced to three years in prison and three years of supervised released, Ryan Buchanan, US Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, said during a press conference after the sentencing hearing.
According to the Department of Justice, evidence in the case showed that the Chrisleys were able to obtain the loans by submitting false bank statements, audit reports and financial statements. The money was used to buy luxury cars, designer clothes, real estate and travel, a DOJ press release stated.
Then, while earning millions of dollars on their former reality show, the Chrisleys, along with their accountant, conspired to defraud the IRS and evade collection of delinquent taxes.
“Chrisley Knows Best” debuted in 2014 on the USA Network. New episodes, filmed prior to the trial, will debut sometime next year.
In a short statement to CNN in June, one of Todd Chrisley’s attorneys, Bruce Morris, said they were, “disappointed in the verdict” and planned to appeal.
CNN has reached out to representatives of the Chrisleys and Tarantino for comment on Monday’s sentencing.
Ahmaud Arbery’s killers are set to be sentenced today on federal hate crime convictions
Travis McMichael, his father Gregory McMichael and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan were found guilty in February of interference with rights — a federal hate crime — and attempted kidnapping in connection with the 25-year-old Black man’s 2020 killing, with the jury accepting prosecutors’ argument the defendants acted out of racial animus toward Arbery.
Travis McMichael, who fatally shot Arbery, was also found guilty of using and carrying a Remington shotgun while his father, Gregory was found guilty of using and carrying a .357 Magnum revolver.
The McMichaels and Bryan already are serving life sentences after being convicted in state court on a series of charges related to Arbery’s killing, including felony murder. The crimes, months before the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, were in some ways harbingers of the nationwide protests that erupted that summer as demonstrators decried how people of color sometimes are treated by law enforcement.
For their federal convictions, the McMichaels and Bryan could face additional life sentences and steep fines. To make their case, federal prosecutors focused on how each defendant had spoken about Black people in public and in private, using inflammatory, derogatory and racist language.
Prosecutors and Arbery’s family had said he was out for a jog — a common pastime for the former high school football player — on February 23, 2020, when the defendants chased and killed him in their neighborhood outside Brunswick, Georgia.
Defense attorneys argued the McMichaels pursued Arbery in a pickup truck through neighborhood streets to stop him for police, believing he matched the description of someone captured in footage recorded at a home under construction. Prosecutors acknowledged Arbery had entered the home in the past, but he never took anything.
The defense also argued Travis McMichael shot Arbery in self-defense as they wrestled over McMichael’s shotgun. Bryan joined the pursuit in his own truck after seeing the McMichaels follow Arbery in their pickup as he ran; Bryan recorded video of the shooting.
Two prosecutors initially instructed Glynn County police not to make arrests, and the defendants weren’t arrested for more than two months — and only after Bryan’s video of the killing surfaced, sparking the nationwide outcry.
Jeff Fortenberry, Nebraska GOP congressman, says he will resign following felony convictions
The resignation will be effective on March 31, per a letter Fortenberry attached to his email to supporters.
Fortenberry’s resignation will create a vacancy in Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District, and Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican, will call a special election.
Fortenberry, 61, was found guilty on Thursday of concealing information and making false statements to federal authorities in regard to an investigation looking into illegal campaign contributions for his 2016 reelection campaign.
“Due to the difficulties of my current circumstances, I can no longer effectively serve,” Fortenberry said in the letter to supporters.
Fortenberry was under pressure to resign following the convictions, with both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy publicly calling on him to step down.
“I think he had his day in court. I think if he wants to appeal, he can go do that as a private citizen,” McCarthy said on Friday. “But I think when someone’s convicted, it’s time to resign.”
Last fall, ahead of the indictment being announced, Fortenberry said in a video uploaded to YouTube that “about five-and-a-half years ago, a person from overseas illegally moved money to my campaign.” But the Nebraska Republican said that he “didn’t know anything about this.”
The indictment stated that an unnamed person, referred to as “Individual H” in the document, acted as a co-host of a 2016 fundraiser for Fortenberry.
According to the indictment, Fortenberry contacted that individual in the spring of 2018 to discuss hosting another event. The court document states that during a June 2018 call, the fundraiser co-host told Fortenberry that the $30,000 in donations “probably did come from” a foreign national.
Campaigns are prohibited from taking contributions from foreign nationals, according to the Federal Election Commission.
But the indictment states that “despite being told by Individual H about the illegal donations, defendant Fortenberry did not file an amended report with the FEC regarding the 2016 fundraiser” and “did not return or otherwise try to disgorge the contributions.” The indictment goes on to say that “it was not until after the FBI and USAO interviewed him in July 2019 that defendant Fortenberry disgorged the contributions.”
Fortenberry is scheduled to be sentenced on June 28. Each charge carries a statutory maximum penalty of five years in federal prison, according to the US Attorney’s office.
Fellow Nebraska Republican Don Bacon, who represents the neighboring 2nd Congressional District, told CNN on Sunday that Fortenberry “did the right thing” by resigning from office.
“It’s always regrettable when someone hurts their life and hurts their family. And so, I wish Jeff well and his family well, and he’s going to do the appeals, but I believe in the justice system, and the justice system spoke,” he told CNN’s Boris Sanchez.
This story has been updated with additional background information.
CNN’s Sarah Fortinsky contributed to this report.
Ahmaud Arbery murder: 2 years later, here’s what’s next after murder and hate crime convictions for his killers
“This hate crime trial actually showed the world what was going on in the minds of the murderers who killed Ahmaud, their state of mind, what type of people they really were,” Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery’s mother, told CNN’s Don Lemon on Tuesday.
The White men — Travis McMichael and his father Gregory McMichael, along with neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan — pursued Arbery, who was Black, in the Satilla Shores neighborhood outside Brunswick before Travis McMichael shot him during a struggle over McMichael’s shotgun on February 23, 2020.
In their federal hate crimes trial, the three were convicted on a hate crime charge of interference of rights in addition to attempted kidnapping. The McMichaels also were convicted of gun charges.
Prosecutors in the federal trial homed in on testimony detailing how all three defendants spoke privately and publicly about Black people using inflammatory and derogatory language, including racial slurs. During closing rebuttal arguments this week, prosecutors emphasized in their argument that Arbery was killed because he was Black.
“The three defendants did not see 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery as a fellow human being,” Assistant US Attorney Tara Lyons said, calling into question a perceived lack of remorse from the defendants after the shooting.
Federal prosecutors and Arbery’s family have said he was out on a jog when the defendants got into trucks, chased and killed him. The defense argued that the pursuit began when the elder McMichael saw Arbery running from the direction of an under-construction home, and that he believed he matched the description of someone who had been recorded there previously. A neighbor testified Arbery ran from the property just as he called police to report him there, though McMichael didn’t know about the call.
Prosecutors conceded Arbery was in the under-construction home that day and several other times — but was in the neighborhood to jog, and never broke into the home as it wasn’t locked, never took anything, and never did anything that would allow the men to pursue or stop him. They also said that White people had visited the site apparently without being chased.
Defense attorneys argued the McMichaels pursued Arbery in a pickup truck through neighborhood streets to stop him for police, and that Travis McMichael shot Arbery in self-defense as they wrestled over McMichael’s shotgun.
Prosecutors argued the defendants falsely told police after the shooting that Arbery had been caught breaking into houses, part of a pattern showing the defendants knew what they had done wrong and were trying to get away with it.
The men were convicted in November in state court on murder charges, with the McMichaels getting life in prison without parole. Bryan, who trailed the McMichaels during their chase of Arbery and recorded video of the shooting, was given a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
For the federal convictions, the three men now also could get up to life in prison and steep fines. Sentencing will be scheduled after presentencing reports are filed, Judge Lisa Godbey Wood said in court.
Family critical of earlier plea deal
Following the guilty verdicts Tuesday, Cooper-Jones thanked the Department of Justice for its work but chastised prosecutors for a proposed plea deal in January.
Cooper-Jones spoke to DOJ prosecutors and “begged them” to not take the plea deal in the case, she said.
“What we got today, we wouldn’t have gotten today if it was not for the fight that the family put up,” Cooper-Jones said. “What the (Department of Justice) did today, they were made to do today.”
Travis McMichael had agreed to plead guilty to a single hate crime charge — interference with rights — in exchange for prosecutors recommending he serve 30 years in federal prison. After completing the federal sentence, he would’ve been returned to Georgia to finish his sentence of life in prison without parole.
But Wood said she was not comfortable with the sentencing guidelines and rejected the deal. Gregory McMichael withdrew his plea agreement after Travis McMichael’s deal failed, and the three defendants entered pleas of not guilty before trial.
The Justice Department said at the time that the court’s decision would be respected, according to Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, but added in a statement that prosecutors “entered the plea agreement only after the victims’ attorneys informed me that the family was not opposed to it.”
In addition to the federal and state sentences faced by the McMichaels and Bryan, attorney Ben Crump, on behalf of the Arbery family, said they plan to bring a civil suit once the criminal proceedings are over.
CNN’s Mike Hayes, Pamela Kirkland, Eliott C. McLaughlin, Angela Barajas, Melissa Alonso and Gregory Lemos contributed to this report.
All U.S. Trial Convictions in Crisis-Era Libor Rigging Have Now Been Overturned
WASHINGTON—A federal appeals court reversed the convictions of two former
Deutsche Bank AG
traders found guilty of rigging a global lending benchmark, overturning one of the U.S. government’s highest-profile court victories linked to the 2008 financial crisis.
The decision Thursday dealt a blow to the legacy of an investigation that Washington poured resources into after the financial crisis, when prosecutors were criticized for not pursuing enough cases against individual traders and executives. The cases focused on how traders and brokers world-wide influenced the daily London interbank offered rate, known as Libor, which helped set the value of lucrative derivatives they traded and made banks appear healthier.
Thursday’s reversal shows how difficult it has been for prosecutors to use broadly written antifraud laws to punish traders operating in sophisticated markets where standards of conduct weren’t always clear. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found evidence used to convict Matthew Connolly and Gavin Black wasn’t enough to stand up fraud and conspiracy charges. A jury in New York had convicted the two men in 2018.
The Manhattan-based appeals court in 2017 also tossed Libor-related verdicts against two traders who had worked at Rabobank Group.
The court action Thursday means every Libor trial conviction in the U.S. has now been overturned. Six other traders from Rabobank and Deutsche Bank pleaded guilty in the U.S. to Libor-related misconduct from 2014 to 2016. Many convictions in the U.K. stand, including that of Tom Hayes, a former star trader at
UBS Group AG
, who was found guilty of rigging Libor and served more than five years in prison before being released last year.
Libor, a gauge of the rates at which banks could borrow from other banks, was published for many years by the British Bankers’ Association. The BBA’s version of Libor was vulnerable to manipulation because traders could influence the rates submitted by their banks.
Financial markets have since started a shift away from Libor in favor of a new reference rate that is calculated based on actual trades. U.S. banks weren’t allowed to issue new debt tied to Libor beginning in January.
A series of Wall Street Journal articles in 2008 raised questions about whether global banks were manipulating the interest-rate-setting process by lowballing Libor to avoid looking desperate for cash during the financial crisis.
The three judges wrote that prosecutors hadn’t proved that Messrs. Connolly and Black made false statements—a requirement for proving fraud—when they gave input related to what Deutsche Bank should submit to the BBA.
The government’s case, according to the judges, depended on the flawed idea that there was one true Libor rate that Deutsche Bank should have offered, when in fact the number was a hypothetical measure influenced by many factors.
Prosecutors didn’t present evidence suggesting that Deutsche Bank couldn’t actually have borrowed at the rates it submitted, the judges wrote. While nudging Libor one way or another to make money might be wrong, the submissions weren’t false if the bank could have gotten cash at those rates, according to the panel.
The BBA’s own instructions for submitting Libor around the time of the financial crisis didn’t prohibit taking a bank’s derivatives bets into consideration. In effect, the judges wrote, prosecutors tried to criminalize conduct that was just unseemly.
“In some ways, these reversals underscore what a screwed-up benchmark Libor was to begin with, when you are not being asked to submit actual offers or bids, but just hypotheticals,” said Aitan Goelman, a former director of enforcement for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a civil regulator that fined many banks for Libor violations. “It almost begged to be manipulated.”
Mr. Black, a U.K. citizen who had worked for the bank in London, was sentenced in November 2019 to three years of probation including nine months of home confinement, which he was allowed to serve in his home country. Mr. Connolly, who worked for Deutsche Bank in New York, was sentenced to two years of probation including six months of home confinement.
“We have long maintained that Gavin Black committed no crime, and we are deeply appreciative that the Court of Appeals carefully reviewed the record and reached the same conclusion,” said Seth Levine, a lawyer for Mr. Black at Levine Lee LLP. “This is a case that never should have been brought, and the court has now vindicated Mr. Black’s position.”
“We are elated that Matt Connolly has been fully exonerated in this contrived case that never should have been brought,” said Kenneth Breen, a lawyer at Paul Hastings LLP for Mr. Connolly.
Deutsche Bank in 2015 agreed to pay $2.5 billion in fines to resolve Libor charges in the U.S. and the U.K., and a London unit of the bank pleaded guilty in the U.S. to one count of wire fraud.
Spokesmen for Deutsche Bank and the Justice Department declined to comment.
Write to Dave Michaels at dave.michaels@wsj.com
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Illinois judge Robert Adrian slammed for reversing teen Drew Clinton’s rape conviction
An Illinois judge is facing heat for reversing an 18-year-old man’s sexual assault conviction at the teen’s sentencing last week — saying the 148 days he spent in jail since his arrest was enough, reports said.
Adams County Judge Robert Adrian issued the stunning reversal last Monday after finding Drew Clinton guilty of one count of criminal sexual assault at an October bench trial, the Herald-Whig reported.
“Mr. Clinton has served almost five months in the county jail, 148 days,” Adrian said, according to a court transcript obtained by the newspaper.
“For what happened in this case, that is plenty of punishment. That would be a just sentence.”
Clinton was convicted of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl at a graduation party last May.
He had faced a mandatory minimum sentence of four years. Adrian’s decision came after Clinton’s attorneys filed two post-trial motions and the judge ruled prosecutors failed to prove their case, the newspaper reported.
Following Adrian’s ruling, the distraught victim went public with her story — recounting the sexual assault to reporters and detailing her emotional reaction when she learned Adrian was set free.
“I woke up at my friend’s place with a pillow over my face so I couldn’t be heard and Drew Clinton inside of me,” said Cameron Vaughan, WGEM reported.
“I asked him to stop multiple times and he wouldn’t. I finally got off the couch and pushed him off of me and he jumped up and just started playing video games as if nothing had happened,” she said.
Vaughan said she “immediately” left the courtroom and cried in the bathroom after learning Clinton’s conviction was tossed.
The Quincy Area Network Against Domestic Abuse on Tuesday blasted the judge’s decision.
“The verdict and Adrian’s comments send a chilling message to other rape victims that their behavior, not the rapists’, will be judged,” the group said in a statement to WGEM.
“Shame the victims, free the rapists. This judgment reinforces the fact that standards for women have always been impossibly high while they are impossibly low for men.”
Vaughan’s father described his daughter’s devastation in an interview with the Herald-Whig.
“It’s worse now than it was [before], because not only does she not have her justice, but now she feels like she spoke up for nothing, and you know that hurts,” the father told the newspaper.
“Now she wishes she wouldn’t have even said anything.”
Ghislaine Maxwell’s brother says she won’t rat out for lighter sentence
Ghislaine Maxwell is a convicted sex offender and disgraced British socialite —- but she’s no rat, her brother tells The Sunday Times of London.
“Prosecution confirmed no plea bargain offers were made or received” before the trial, Ian Maxwell said. “I expect that position to be maintained.”
Maxwell, in other words, will not trade names for the prospect of a lighter sentence.
Her refusal to cooperate with prosecutors could come as a relief to alleged co-conspirators, including four women employed by Maxwell and partner in crime Jeffery Epstein, and to others linked to the tawdry couple, such as Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Donald Trump, the report states.
Maxwell, 60, was “understandably subdued” by her conviction but “strong in spirit,” the brother said.
She faces up to 65 years in jail after being convicted this week of trafficking underaged girls as young as 14. Maxwell was described by prosecutors as a “sophisticated predator” who committed “one of the worst crimes imaginable.”
Epstein, 66, died in prison in 2019, a victim of suicide authorities say, while awaiting trial for child sex charges.
Ghislaine “is not now, nor has ever been, a suicide risk,” her brother said. “She knows there are many people, including her family of course, who love and support her and who believe in her innocence.”
Maxwell’s legal ordeal is far from over.
“She will be appealing her conviction. She is a fighter and a survivor,” Ian Maxwell sister.
The convicted madam also faces perjury charges following evidence she gave in the 2016 civil lawsuit filed by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who has claimed she was trafficked to Prince Andrew by Epstein and Maxwell.
Maxwell spent more than 500 days in a Brooklyn detention center, much of it in solitary confinement, and could remain there another six months awaiting a sentencing hearing, the report states.
Derek Chauvin to appeal against George Floyd convictions | George Floyd
The former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has filed an intent to appeal with the Minnesota state appellate court over his murder conviction for the death of George Floyd.
A jury found Chauvin, who is white, guilty in April of unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the death of Floyd, a black man. The verdict was seen widely as a landmark rebuke of the disproportionate use of force by the police against black Americans.
The video of Chauvin kneeling on the neck of the handcuffed Floyd for more than eight minutes during the arrest caused outrage around the world and the largest protest movement seen in the US in decades.
Chauvin was jailed in June for 22-and-a-half years.
In documents filed on Thursday and seen by Reuters, Chauvin raised 14 issues about his prosecution, including the court’s denial of a request for a change of venue, that he believed supported his request for an appeal.
The Minnesota district court could not immediately be reached for comment.
Chauvin said that in his opinion the judge abused his discretion when he denied requests to sequester the jury throughout the trial, denied him a new trial due to what he described as juror misconduct and did not allow him to strike what he said was clearly biased jurors from serving on the jury.
Chauvin also listed issues with the trial itself, including the addition of the third-degree murder charge and the court’s failure to make an official record of numerous sidebars throughout the trial.
Separately, Chauvin filed a motion to put the appeals process on hold until Minnesota’s supreme court reviews an earlier decision to deny him a public defender to represent him in his appeal.
In an affidavit, Chauvin said he had no attorney in the appeals process.
He said he had no income besides nominal prison wages, adding that his case was paid for by the Minneapolis Peace and Police Officers Association but it stopped paying for his legal representation after his conviction and sentencing.
Convicted pedophile teacher chokes to death on prison breakfast
Enlarge Image
John McKno, 74, from Alby, Norfolk, abused five boys in Suffolk, Devon and Worcestershire in the 1970s and 1980s and was jailed years later in 2016.
Suffolk Police
A British boarding school teacher, who was serving a 14-year prison sentence for sexually assaulting five students, choked to death on his breakfast, a report said Wednesday.
John McKno, 74, died in Norwich Prison on Sept. 29 from “cardiac failure” after choking, according to the BBC.
McKno was behind bars after copping to gross indecency, indecent assault and serious sexual assaults, the report said.
He abused five teenage boys at Suffolk, Devon and Worcestershire boarding schools in the 1970s and 1980s, according to the article. One of the victims was reportedly under 14 years old.
A victim recounted how he slept in fear with “one eye open,” following McKno’s attacks, the BBC said.