This transcript has been auto-generated using Adobe Premier Pro.
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Gregg Sofer
Ever wonder what is going on behind the scenes as the government investigates criminal cases? Are you interested in the strategies the government employs when bringing prosecutions? I'm your host, Gregg Sofer, and along with my colleagues and Husch Blackwell's White Collar Internal Investigations and Compliance team, we will bring to bear over 200 years of experience inside the government to provide you and your business thought provoking and topical legal analysis as we discuss some of the country's most interesting criminal cases and issues related to compliance and internal investigations.
00;00;37;25 - 00;00;51;02
Gregg Sofer
Welcome to the latest edition of The Justice Insiders. I'm your host, Gregg Sofer. And I'm lucky enough today to be joined by my colleague from our Washington, D.C. office that hosted Blackwell Cormac Connor. Cormac, thank you so much for joining us today.
00;00;51;10 - 00;00;53;11
Cormac Connor
Certainly, Gregg, happy to do it today.
00;00;53;11 - 00;01;15;05
Gregg Sofer
Cormac and I are going to dive into a very interesting case. One of the DOJ prosecutions related to the so-called Varsity Blues scandal, Operation Varsity Blues, was a wide ranging investigations that most folks in our audience might remember due to the intense press coverage. It involved a scheme to get kids into select colleges and entailed fraud, bribery and conspiracy.
00;01;15;26 - 00;01;28;05
Gregg Sofer
The case we're looking at today is one that unraveled for the government and the First Circuit, which reversed the conviction of two of the parents involved. For Matt, can you walk us through a little bit about the facts of the case and what the First Circuit did here?
00;01;28;28 - 00;02;00;06
Cormac Connor
Sure. So Varsity Blues, as you said, Gregg, is getting a lot of press. It is an investigation that was first unsealed back in March 2019. And the reason in part that it got a lot of press is because there were, frankly, several famous people, actresses and well-known wealthy individuals in communities across the country who had been involved and and so that itself generated a lot of buzz.
00;02;00;06 - 00;02;30;01
Cormac Connor
But then I think it also got into this concept that so many parents across the country are familiar with, like how to get your kid into school. And what, you know, are people playing on a level playing field. The general nature of the investigation, of course, involved getting these various parents, kids admitted into into prestigious colleges. As the investigation was was made public, there were over 50 people that that ended up getting implicated.
00;02;30;15 - 00;03;13;11
Cormac Connor
The central figure was a guy named Rick Singer. And what Rick Singer was doing was telling parents of college applicants that that he could help get them into what he called a side door of a lot of schools where he had connections. And the way the distinction and what he meant on this side door was the way he described it to the parents was the front door was applying the old fashioned way and just submitting your application and and getting judged or weighed on the merits of the backdoor, as you would describe it, was for the extremely wealthy folks who would make donations and, for example, build or pay for the building of the library
00;03;13;11 - 00;03;57;20
Cormac Connor
or school building. They described that as sort of the customary backdoor. The side door that he was setting up was relationships that apparently Singer had developed with administrators and coaches at various different colleges across the country, where the coaches, the administrators could help get a kid admitted by presenting them as an athlete. And in the cases that we'll be talking about, the parents of these kids had applicants that were probably not qualified, would not have gotten in on their own, but in one case, the parent had a daughter who had played J.V. basketball.
00;03;57;20 - 00;04;21;03
Cormac Connor
And. And so Rick Singer's play there was to present that kid as a basketball recruit, even though she had not played basketball for the previous year and only ever played in J.V.. And, you know, by a by all appearances, would never have gotten a second look from any of the coaches at this particular school, which I believe was USC, Southern California, and.
00;04;21;03 - 00;04;25;19
Gregg Sofer
USC was a team to be the where most of the activity was playing.
00;04;25;19 - 00;04;30;27
Cormac Connor
A lot of yeah. You see a lot of USC applications involved in this in this investigation.
00;04;31;00 - 00;04;53;03
Gregg Sofer
Let's stop here for just 1/2. So, I mean, the conduct that you're describing and that is encompassed in this case is pretty offensive. I think it's hard to look at it and say this is this is good. And I recall it also. They also arguing that some of these kids had learning disabilities or I mean, it was pretty offensive kind of thing.
00;04;53;04 - 00;05;17;13
Gregg Sofer
It was cheating. It's it's it's certainly not good at behavior. The question is, firstly, why is it a crime? Right. I mean, there's lots of things that go on out there in the world, in business, in private life that are not good. But the federal government, before it brings a federal case, has to determine whether this was a crime or not.
00;05;17;13 - 00;05;21;10
Gregg Sofer
So what did the government charge here?
00;05;21;10 - 00;06;04;21
Cormac Connor
So what the government ended up charging were basically fraud and bribery allegations in crimes here and in Spain. Part of that was a conspiracy to do both, the conspiracy to commit fraud and a conspiracy to commit to pay bribes to get these kids in the as we look ahead at this this First Circuit decision, the First Circuit really poked holes in the government's theory across the board by basically saying the government kind of overstepped in in a way, overreach by pushing too hard on the boundaries of what these crimes really conceivably could be.
00;06;05;06 - 00;06;30;22
Cormac Connor
And so the when we talk about the fraud, the the allegations, and I believe the government's theory was that the parents had committed fraud. And these are and to be clear, the parents we're talking about in these two particular cases, the last name Abdelaziz and Wilson, both of whom were parents that were indicted, had worked with Rick Singer to get their respective kids into college.
00;06;31;24 - 00;07;09;09
Cormac Connor
The fraud that the government alleged was basically creating these applications that were bogus, you know, supplying statistics for kids in their respective sports that they didn't have proof of providing, you know, photographs of of game situations that sometimes the kids weren't even in things like that. So just basically these are phony applications. And and there's the fraud. And then because there is transmitted it via mail and wire, that that becomes the hook for those those fraud counts.
00;07;09;09 - 00;07;39;29
Cormac Connor
The bribery, which was itself interesting, is how the government's theory came apart there. The bribery was alleging that the payments that these parents made to Rick Singer's foundation, which he did from you know, Singer described his organization as a foundation that would then forward the parents payments. Often, you know, $500,000, half a million dollars or more would then distribute those funds to the university.
00;07;39;29 - 00;08;09;13
Cormac Connor
So one of the parents defenses I'm speaking both both cases here was that they thought the money they were paying was going to the university. And so the question of the bribe came down to, is it really a bribe if the supposed victim or the university being the victim actually got the money and the First Circuit disagreed? They're saying that, you know, there's no there's no support for this for that kind of a case.
00;08;09;26 - 00;08;21;11
Cormac Connor
If it's not the bribe going to the administrator of the bribe going straight to Rick Singer, the bribe was actually going to the university, who was arguably the victim in all of this. So.
00;08;22;01 - 00;08;50;04
Gregg Sofer
Well, and there's also this concept and the courts have been slowly chipping away at this, or at least more clearly defining honest services fraud. And maybe in another episode we'll cover the fraud here and honest services fraud, which the courts have overwhelmingly been pushing a concept that there has to be a property interest here. And they focus this court considered that question and looked at the property interest of slots at a university.
00;08;50;27 - 00;09;10;17
Gregg Sofer
And the case is important for that reason as well. But we don't have the time to handle that part of the case today. We're going to really try to focus in, I think, on the conspiracy aspect of the case, then the conspiracy aspect of the case. You've written an article which we can link to, and by the way, we'll also link to your bio in the show notes.
00;09;10;17 - 00;09;19;23
Gregg Sofer
Cormac But let's discuss. Let's sort of drill down on the conspiracy aspect of the case. What did the court do there?
00;09;20;13 - 00;09;53;08
Cormac Connor
So the conspiracy charged in the indictment was that Abdulaziz and Wilson, the two parents involved, conspired broadly with everybody that was implicated, and that includes Singer. It includes the school administrators and coaches, but it also included all of the other parents that had been implicated in this investigation. I believe the total of ended up being 15, 18 different parents and families, that it had falsified these applications to get their kids into schools.
00;09;54;04 - 00;10;23;05
Cormac Connor
That general broad conspiracy that was alleged in the indictment ended up being the government's undoing in a lot in many ways in this case, because the court looked at that and said that Abdulaziz and Wilson couldn't be held to account for this broad, sweeping conspiracy because they weren't conspiring with each other. For example, they may have been conspiring with Singer, but they weren't conspiring with each other.
00;10;23;05 - 00;10;43;11
Cormac Connor
In fact, the court said they were more likely competing with each other to try and get their kids into school. And so the court looked at what is foreseeable and what is the understanding of the agreement and the if we want to talk more about the basics of conspiracy, that really a conspiracy boils down to what is the agreement, what are people agreeing to do?
00;10;43;28 - 00;11;00;08
Cormac Connor
And the court looked at that and said they couldn't find evidence to show that either of these two men who were charged had conspired in such a way that their agreement included a conspiracy that it looped in all of these other parents.
00;11;00;19 - 00;11;27;00
Gregg Sofer
So let's try to break this down for our audience, because conspiracy is a crime and a tool that's used by the federal government in my many years of federal service, I chartered it many, many times. It's goes under the category of what are called inchoate crimes that are not completed crimes or incomplete crimes. And attempt would be another example that you attempt to rob a bank you can aspire to.
00;11;27;00 - 00;11;52;19
Gregg Sofer
Rob a bank is the same thing and you see it all the time and it's often charged in addition to the substantive counts, they bank robbery because the government is able to bring in evidence of your coconspirators and your coconspirators can come in and testify against you, as happened in this case. And it broadens often the ability of the of the government to bring in evidence.
00;11;52;19 - 00;12;21;08
Gregg Sofer
And here the first circuit, not only did they say that this was not a conspiracy that involved all the other parents, but most importantly, they said because the government couched it that way, it brought in evidence that prejudiced these two particular defendants, evidence that would not otherwise have been admitted against them, which included, by the way, the testimony of one or more of these other parents, and therefore they were prejudiced.
00;12;21;08 - 00;12;46;22
Gregg Sofer
And that's why the convictions were overturned. And in large measure. But I just want to break this down a little bit in terms of what is conspiracy. So conspiracy is an agreement and it's an agreement to commit an object crime that is one of the other crimes in the big, thick book that federal prosecutors utilize. And most conspiracies require also an overt act.
00;12;47;09 - 00;13;18;27
Gregg Sofer
So it's not just three people sitting in a room. We're sending emails to each other or talking on the phones, but they also have to do something in furtherance of the conspiracy, which otherwise you're basically punishing people for what they're thinking and what they're talking about. But but in a conspiracy case, like an attempt case, the defendants are always free to argue that they really weren't going to do any of this, that they were never going to commit the crime, they weren't serious, or that they withdrew from an agreement.
00;13;19;13 - 00;13;43;28
Gregg Sofer
And so the bottom line is it really is an amazingly powerful tool for the government. It allows the government to charge very serious offenses even when someone hasn't completed their crime and it allows in all of this other evidence and people just don't understand. I think many times when they're charged with conspiracy, that the government was able to pull the trigger on this thing.
00;13;43;28 - 00;14;17;23
Gregg Sofer
And depending on how broad they define the conspiracy, the government takes a big chance if they're wrong about the definition of the conspiracy. And the judge allows in all of this other evidence, you can end up with the kind of result that you had here. Those are the basics of a conspiracy case. So, Cormac, in this particular case, why you started to touch upon this, but why did these two defendants not conspire with the other parents?
00;14;18;14 - 00;14;46;07
Cormac Connor
Well, I think what the court and when I say the core on talking about the First Circuit, the appeals court because to be clear, the defendants presented these same arguments to the trial court and tried to get the case dismissed at the trial court level, and the trial court ruled against them. So there's you know, there's your lesson in in criminal litigation is to, you know, basically, don't give up, keep pushing your case because you may get another day, another chance at the appeals level.
00;14;46;07 - 00;15;12;28
Cormac Connor
But as the appellate court looked at what happened at trial, it determined that these parents, Abdelaziz and Wilson, really couldn't have been conspiring with each other. And that's that's the important piece here, because the government charged conspiracy was that they were conspiring with each other. And so that allowed all kinds of evidence and testimony from other parents to come in.
00;15;13;15 - 00;15;43;15
Cormac Connor
And in fact, the government presented testimony from these other parents. And then and then in their closing arguments to the jury, said, the reason, you know, that Abdelaziz and Wilson are guilty is because these other parents said that they knew what they were doing was wrong and what they were doing was a crime. And so you should implicate Abdelaziz and and Wilson, because they're all part of that same conspiracy.
00;15;43;15 - 00;16;13;26
Cormac Connor
And you should you should assume and infer that because these other parents knew what they were doing was wrong, that therefore Abdelaziz and Wilson also knew what they were doing was wrong. The court held that that allowing that testimony from these other parents as part of this broader charged conspiracy ended up being prejudicial to Wilson and Abdelaziz because, as the court found, they're really indifferent to each other.
00;16;13;26 - 00;16;42;00
Cormac Connor
They don't care if, you know, for example, if I'm Mr. Abdelaziz, I don't care if Wilson's kid gets in the school or not, and Wilson doesn't care for those easy kids he gets in the school or not. They just want their own kid to get it. And so what the appellate appeals court held was that trying to suggest that these two parents were conspiring somehow with each other for a common goal was going too far.
00;16;42;26 - 00;17;05;27
Cormac Connor
Now, the court didn't suggest, to be clear that they had not conspired at all. In fact, the court held that there was probably sufficient evidence to prove that they had conspired with Singer and with the other school administrators that related to their kid. But it was too much to suggest that they were a part of this broader conspiracy.
00;17;05;27 - 00;17;30;06
Cormac Connor
And that's where the court got into the analogy to a rimless wheel, where if you think of the spokes on a bicycle wheel and you put Rick Singer and his network of college administrators that were implicated in the middle as the hub of that wheel, then you treat each of the parents as spokes on the wheel. It is an improper charged conspiracy.
00;17;30;06 - 00;17;56;18
Cormac Connor
If you don't then have a rim around those spokes to sort of link up all of these various individual separate conspiracies. And that's where Gregg was talking about before. The concept of the the what we traditionally think of in the drug context, where you can have a low level, you know, certain person sitting on a street corner that's that's alerting the bosses that the police are nearby.
00;17;56;18 - 00;18;26;20
Cormac Connor
For example, that person gets roped into a conspiracy charge and can be implicated in lots of other crimes that that person had nothing to do with because then by knowingly joining a criminal conspiracy to distribute narcotics, you you just have to understand and reasonably foresee that lots of other crimes, such as distribution and purchase of drugs, perhaps even violence, may happen and therefore you can be on the hook for all that is a major distinction.
00;18;26;20 - 00;18;47;22
Cormac Connor
Therefore, to get jumped from that template to what we're dealing with here, where it's pretty clear from the facts that Abdelaziz and Singer were pretty royal, pretty clearly staying in their respective lanes and not doing anything that would benefit the other with respect to each other's kids. They were just focused on their own.
00;18;48;10 - 00;19;09;13
Gregg Sofer
That's an interesting point. And it leads me to consider two questions. First, why did the government opt for the broader conspiracy argument here with all the risks that such a strategy might entail? When the more narrow conspiracy charge seems like a winning play with less risk, could it have to do with the parent's decision to fight rather than to plead out?
00;19;10;04 - 00;19;18;23
Gregg Sofer
And then relatedly, what do you think led the trial court to bite on this evidence and serve up convictions that were, of course, ultimately reversed by the appellate court?
00;19;19;09 - 00;19;47;23
Cormac Connor
Yeah, well, it's interesting. I guess the first to your first question, the the evidence that was presented, really, it was interesting. And, you know, the, you know, armchair quarterbacking, this is always easier, but trying to discern what the strategies were by the prosecutors because they they put on testimony from their agents that had done the investigation. They brought in testimony from other parents that had pled guilty and agreed to cooperate and to testify.
00;19;48;11 - 00;20;10;08
Cormac Connor
They did not put on testimony from Rick Singer. And I'm sure there were reasons for that. But I thought that was really interesting that they had chosen not to put on testimony from the guy, right, the center of this whole thing and instead relied on testimony from all these other parents to implicate the two men that were charged.
00;20;10;08 - 00;20;31;28
Cormac Connor
The how did the district court screw it up? You know, I think it's it's again, it's where we are looking at this. And the benefit of hindsight, with the First Circuit's analysis, I could see that, you know, the trial court looking at this comes down a different way. You know, I think I think the First Circuit got it right.
00;20;31;28 - 00;20;54;10
Cormac Connor
But, you know, ultimately, I could see that a judge looking at this would think in these sort of like in the in how how do you define the scope of the agreement, the scope of the conspiracy looked at it as being a closer call and aired on the side of proceeding with trial and dismissed or denying the motion that challenged the conspiracy counts.
00;20;55;25 - 00;21;29;08
Cormac Connor
But beyond that, you know, I can only say that I'm sure the district court had its reasons. But I think, you know, ultimately when you look at the way the First Circuit broke this out in its 105 page opinion that, you know, and then, of course, they compared it to an old Supreme Court case. Kodiak goes from the forties, which really does line up factually, I think better than a lot of the other conspiracy templates that the Government was looking at in that Kiriakou.
00;21;29;08 - 00;21;58;04
Cormac Connor
Those case, the charge, the allegations were that people were trying to cheat the National Housing Act and buy in and get loans for houses that they didn't otherwise qualify for and had submitted fraudulent applications, but they had all gone through the same broker. And what the Supreme Court found there was similar to what the First Circuit did here, is that each of these loan applicants were out for themselves.
00;21;58;04 - 00;22;02;25
Cormac Connor
They didn't care how the other loan applicants fared. They were trying to get their own loans approved.
00;22;03;20 - 00;22;25;02
Gregg Sofer
You know, it's probably worth explaining a little what we mean by hub and spoke conspiracy here. It helps to explain the government's prosecution strategy. In this particular case, people sometimes don't understand that a conspiracy law, you don't actually even have to know your coconspirators or interact with them to be found guilty of conspiracy. And juries are instructed exactly that way.
00;22;25;22 - 00;23;00;25
Gregg Sofer
So in light of that and the fact that conspiracies an inchoate crime and incomplete crime, the charge is an extremely powerful tool and it's regularly used by the federal government. But the strategy requires that the conspirators interests are connected or correlated in some way. There are outlines to what is permissible. And the court found here, as you mentioned, that the parents interests were not connected enough or not aligned enough, that they were in fact indifferent to one another's activities, or even more so, they were outright competing with one another.
00;23;01;16 - 00;23;25;23
Gregg Sofer
But here again, I think the critical issue is if the government gets this wrong, even with this expansive view and the legal justification for charging an expansive conspiracy that the jury comes away, having heard evidence that they would not otherwise be able to hear. And that really is the gravamen of the reasons that the court overturned the conviction on the conspiracy grounds.
00;23;25;23 - 00;23;48;29
Gregg Sofer
Cormac you said something earlier which I think is important. You said, well, a lot of people have already pleaded guilty in this case, pleaded guilty to the very conspiracy that was inappropriately charged here, according to the court, and they've already been sentenced. And what happens to them? They they are so ill, as we say, aren't they?
00;23;49;08 - 00;24;13;13
Cormac Connor
Yeah, they in a nutshell, that's what it comes down to. The, you know, the plea deals and plea agreements just sort of by design are intended to shut it all down, right? You do. You're buying certainty both for the defense and for the prosecution. And so, I mean, I've never been part of the plea deal that didn't involve a waiver of right to appeal.
00;24;13;28 - 00;24;41;01
Cormac Connor
And so, you know, that you can certainly ask for that. But, you know, I'm sure you never would have and I never would have when I was a prosecutor, never agreed to it. You know, the whole point again is, is to bring the case to a close. And so all of these other parents in particular who had pled guilty and entered deals with the government may be looking at this development and having buyer's remorse, but it's too late.
00;24;41;04 - 00;25;05;24
Cormac Connor
They signed up for deals that they're almost certainly involved, a waiver of any right to appeal. And so they may wish they had stuck with it and fought the government, you know, to the end. But ultimately, their plea deals will stay because, you know, I can't imagine a circumstance where they'd be that they would have carved out an ability to appeal it after the fact.
00;25;06;13 - 00;25;29;13
Gregg Sofer
I think you're right, and it's certainly true in the federal government that almost every plea deal includes a waiver of appeal, as you point out, to shut this down, to make it a final adjudication. And the individuals who go to trial, you said, well, sometimes, you know, don't give up. There's another side to this, though. And this case really highlights this.
00;25;29;13 - 00;25;50;17
Gregg Sofer
I mean, it's funny, there's a lot of criticism of the deals that were cut to these people. I read a lot of articles that said all these rich entitled folks ended up getting all these sweet deals. They hardly did any jail. They hardly and some of them got other kinds of conference, other kinds of deals where they had accommodation and didn't have to plead guilty to the most serious charges.
00;25;51;03 - 00;26;14;17
Gregg Sofer
Hardly anyone did any real serious time. You know, they the cost of going to trial in addition to the financial and emotional costs, means often that your sentence is more significant. And this is commonly referred to as the trial penalty. I don't really look at it that way. I think that people are given tremendous breaks in the system so that the case will be resolved.
00;26;14;17 - 00;26;41;18
Gregg Sofer
You could see why the government in a case like this actually did quite well by resolving so many of the of the cases by a plea. And so the defendants here actually got more significant sentences, I think, based on what we've read, they it looked like they were looking they both got more than a year in prison. And not only that, but they went through the pain and expense of a trial.
00;26;41;18 - 00;26;59;16
Gregg Sofer
But as you pointed out, Cormac, the game's not over in a federal case, federal criminal case until after appeal. And it looks like these guys made the right choice. But again, this is a difficult in retrospect, that's easy to say, but it's a difficult decision. There's no question about it, isn't it?
00;26;59;16 - 00;27;28;13
Cormac Connor
I totally agree. I mean, the plea remembering my my prosecutor hat and that rule. I agree with you. Yeah. I was always by supervisors, etc., as I was working my way up the ranks at the Justice Department in the U.S. Attorney's Office, you know, the the organizing theory on plea deals was it gets worse with time, right? Like you get your most generous deal earliest in the case.
00;27;28;13 - 00;28;02;00
Cormac Connor
But if you make the government do the work to build the case, to go to trial, to get ready, then you shouldn't get a generous deal after having done all that extra work. That was certainly the rationale. The government side. But the trial penalty concept that you talk about is is a real one. Now that, you know, I've been on the defense side for so long, you know, that is it is the other side of that coin to say, well, if you think you've got a meritorious defense and you think you've got a real shot at beating this and you've or, for example, you really think you didn't do it.
00;28;02;27 - 00;28;47;19
Cormac Connor
And you and you test your your your your theories and your defenses at trial, should you then also get hammered? Because you did so in just beginning, and then you went to trial and lost even though you had meritorious defenses. So, you know, I think that's a it's a very real philosophical debate, perhaps political debate on how do we you know, how do we structure our criminal justice system to to where you want people to feel like if they have meritorious defenses or actual innocence defenses, that they're not going to get punished for taking the taking those defenses all the way to trial and not taking a plea deal.
00;28;47;19 - 00;29;16;12
Cormac Connor
I mean, that's a yield. You know, I'm sure both have plenty of experience representing defendants who are looking at pretty heavy possible penalties and a plea deal comes across that lets them avoid the worst of that. It becomes a pretty rough dilemma as you think about, okay, I may not win. And if I if I do lose, then I could get, you know, whatever this plea deal is times ten, times 100.
00;29;16;12 - 00;29;39;05
Cormac Connor
You knows. So you're you're really rolling the dice. And that becomes a factor in decision to to take a plea deal or not that ends up becoming, frankly, separate from a question of guilt. So those are all, you know, important issues. And I think the as you talked about, what can prosecutors do when they bring a conspiracy charge?
00;29;39;17 - 00;30;02;04
Cormac Connor
You know, you can imagine those plea negotiations would have involved the investigating attorney's investigating agents, pointing out to each of these parents that, oh, by the way, we're going to be charging you with this overarching conspiracy. And, oh, by the way, we're going to have every other parent testify. And they're all going to be saying that what they thought was wrong and therefore what you did was wrong.
00;30;02;14 - 00;30;26;26
Cormac Connor
So are you going to be the one that holds out right and is putting that weight on on each of these defendants is a heavy load to bear. And obviously, when you look at the numbers, you had 15 defendants get charged. 15 are the parents that got charged, 12 of them pled guilty. One got a presidential pardon and the only two that took it to trial were Abdulaziz and Wilson.
00;30;26;26 - 00;31;02;22
Gregg Sofer
And, you know, when it when it's a company, for instance, that's being investigated and has to negotiate with the government and this is true of individuals also, you also have to think about the sort of public relations and the impact on your customers and your business partners were you to fight the allegations? So when a company goes through these same kinds of agonizing decision making inflection points, they're thinking not just because you can't put a company in prison, but you're thinking about the PR and the impact on your business.
00;31;02;22 - 00;31;13;16
Gregg Sofer
And so when the government comes to you and says we could charge the corporation in one of these kinds of overarching cases, there's there's even a whole other set of factors to be considered.
00;31;13;19 - 00;32;02;17
Cormac Connor
Absolutely no. You're thinking shareholders and employees and because. Right. All of that comes into play. And it was a very difficult decision, you know, as we've talked about this. And, you know, how might this this translate to other areas? You know, frankly, think about the same kind of basic template of facts and how might a government charge a conspiracy, I might add, goes immediately to investigations involving federal contractors, for example, where, you know, I've been part of several investigations where, you know, the government has alleged that, you know, a group of companies are improperly affiliated with each other because they have a certain owner in common or a certain officer in common, or they were
00;32;02;17 - 00;32;38;04
Cormac Connor
connected back to the same prime contractor who may have had relationships with a dozen or more smaller businesses. And maybe those other businesses don't know about each other. Right. And yet, are they all going to be looped into the same conspiracy if there's no proof that each of these individual businesses knew about the larger scheme? I mean, I certainly see that being, you know, this concept and what these first searches identified as being as as being translatable to certain circumstances like that.
00;32;38;16 - 00;33;05;24
Gregg Sofer
I agree. But again, I think generally speaking, the law puts the federal prosecutors in a very strong position on these things. And it's a it's an incredibly powerful tool. The First Circuit has clipped these particular federal prosecutors wings. There's no question about it, how far that goes, whether it applies in other circuits and how it applies to these other complex scenarios.
00;33;05;24 - 00;33;17;24
Gregg Sofer
Only time will tell. But thank you so much, Cormac, for joining us today. The fascinating discussion again. Maybe we'll have you back and talk about the fraud aspect and the honest services concept that we discussed earlier.
00;33;18;01 - 00;33;20;08
Cormac Connor
Happy to do it. Gregg, I really appreciate you having me on.
00;33;21;01 - 00;33;41;24
Gregg Sofer
Thanks for joining us on The Justice Insiders. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Please go to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts to subscribe, rate and review the Justice Insiders. I'm your host, Gregg Sofer. And until next time, be well.