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from the don't-sleep-during-your-court-appearance dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
A call-center scammer has lost his appeal to overturn a $9m fine – after a court pointed out the crook had specifically waived the right to appeal when he pleaded guilty.
Viraj Patel was part of a large India-based criminal enterprise that conned tens of thousands of Americans out of hundreds of millions of dollars: the swindlers would cold-call citizens and pose as US government officials demanding payment for unpaid taxes.
The unlucky victims were threatened with fines, arrests, or deportation if they didn't cough up: one 85-year-old woman ended up paying the fraudsters $12,300 after she was threatened with a stretch behind bars for phony tax violations. More than 60 suspect con men were charged [PDF] with conspiracy to commit identity theft, false impersonation of an officer of the United States, wire fraud, and money laundering.
In 2018, Patel, then a 33-year-old loser living in California, reached a deal with prosecutors: in exchange for pleading guilty and avoiding a lengthy trial, he would spend up to 165 months, or about 14 years, in the clink followed by three years of supervised release, plus receive a court order kicking him out of America when his punishment is over – and, to top it all off, an $8.97m fine.
He admitted his crimes, specifically, one count of money laundering – since he is based the US, his job in the caper was to launder roughly $4m to $9m of victims' cash – and was sentenced.
But, it turns out that he wasn't listening very carefully to either his lawyers or the federal district judge who sentenced him in Texas, because Patel was seemingly convinced he was only going to have to pay $250,000. When he realized the real fine was actually $9m, he tried to undo his guilty plea, and appealed to the Fifth Circuit claiming a miscarriage of justice.
"He contends that his guilty plea was unknowing and involuntary because the district court did not advise him of its authority to order restitution," the appeals court notes in its judgment [PDF] earlier this week.
And, amazingly, Patel is right – in part at least. At his rearraignment, the Houston court "did not advise Patel of its authority to order restitution," the appeal judges ruled. Patel had picked up that the district court was only allowed to fine him a maximum of $250,000 – and seemed happy to take the hit.
As a man who clearly placed money above everything else, after learning that he'd only face a $250,000 fine when he had conned people out of millions, the crook stopped paying attention. And so he didn't notice when both his own lawyers and the court subsequently informed him that the real amount he would be on the hook for – thanks to the court's ability to force repayment of money stolen from others – was going to be much higher.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Friday September 20 2019, @08:40PM (10 children)
Exactly what he deserved, but plea deals/plea bargaining is one of the worst facets of the US criminal justice system.
Plea deals/bargaining allow prosecutors to be much less discriminating in who they indict, as cases rarely go to trial. What's even worse is that prosecutors generally pile on quasi-related (or completely unrelated) charges in attempts to intimidate defendants into accepting plea deals.
All criminal cases should go to trial. Even if that's just the defendant pleading guilty.
People talk about "criminal justice reform," but the scourge of plea bargaining is *never* on the table. More's the pity.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday September 20 2019, @10:45PM (4 children)
I kinda agree with you....
But
You get charged with something you didn't do. You're looking at bankruptcy if it goes to trial, plus probably 10x jail time if found guilty. If you go to trial and are found not guilty you don't get those legal fees back. If you agree to a plea deal you just go to prison for a while and lose all sorts of rights. But your family didn't have to declare bankruptcy to pay the legal fees, so at least they aren't living under a bridge.
A Navy Seal got acquitted of what IMHO were bullshit charges a month or two back. Now he's suing his lawyers saying he doesn't owe them over $1 million in legal fees.
Can you come up with $1 million? I can't. Not even with GoFundMe, Patreon, or begging on a street corner. Yet that's what it took to keep this guy out of jail.
The older I get the more I think legal insurance, just like health insurance, should be a right every citizen receives.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Friday September 20 2019, @11:40PM (2 children)
A bunch of years back, I got sued for $1 million. I had no liability insurance (i do now!) and had to file for bankruptcy.
How did my life change after that? Not much at all. Since I had no debt (note that under bankruptcy laws, your primary residence is *exempt*, as are 401Ks, etc. from liquidation, so as long as you keep paying your mortgage, you don't lose your house), no one else other than the plaintiff in the lawsuit made any claims against me.
Regardless, are you actually making the argument that prosecutors *should* be allowed to use plea bargains and trumped up charges to force guilty pleas from innocent people, because it allows some folks to save some money?
For the sake of criminal defendants wherever you are, I hope you're not a lawyer.
Which is why most people have personal liability insurance. Whether it's through their home or car insurance. That will cover most civil issues. As for criminal cases, state and local governments abuse access to public defenders with insane income restrictions. Don't like it? Vote in some folks who will change it.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday September 21 2019, @12:17AM (1 child)
How can you possibly think this, given what I said? I think plea deals are unconscionable, and, if you are found not guilty, the government should pay not only all your legal fees, but shit like interest and whatever it took you to raise that money.
Maybe even enough percentage so if they have an iffy case they'll think twice about using their 2000 lb gorilla to sit on your 200 lb ass
And whomever said "insurance"? My property insurance doesn't cover legal fees unless someone gets hurt on my property. I get charged on some BS charge I had nothing to do with that didn't injure someone on my property? Yeah, good luck with that.
Full disclosure. From the been there done that dept that saw a relative go to prison because he couldn't afford a decent lawyer, and I'm 99.9% sure he was innocent.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Saturday September 21 2019, @12:56AM
You defended someone taking a plea deal as an alternative to fighting? That led me down the road to thinking you support such things.
Thanks for setting me straight. I agree. In fact, I think we should go farther than that. I suggested recently (I can't be arsed to go and look through my posting history to find it right now. Sorry about that) that prosecutors and cops should be punished (lost promotion opportunities, unpaid leave, even termination) for getting it wrong and prosecuting the wrong people.
I'll extend what I said about public defenders in my last comment as well. Public defenders should not only be available to everyone, they should have access to the *same resources* as prosecutors (at the state's expense) in preparing a defense.
Based on the above, I think it's clear how I feel about that.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday September 22 2019, @03:12AM
Some of the scams worked because hapless victims were trying to plea bargain their way out of imaginary prison sentences. When law enforcement and prosecutors pull this kind of stuff, then scammers can exploit it as well. A society which expects unlawful accusations to prevail and innocent people to bargain for their freedom will get these kinds of secondary hijinks as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 21 2019, @01:38AM (1 child)
They do. When entering a guilty plea, the judge will ask the defendant to confirm the minimal factual basis of the crime required to commit the crimes. Plead no contest and the prosecutor will present the facts and the defendant won't rebut them, so the judge will find against the defendant. Either way, that's your trial. Or are you insisting that people get dragged in to form a jury to spend 30 seconds at a time to hear the defendant recite the factual basis, get together to vote, and then find against them?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Saturday September 21 2019, @04:00AM
The issues with plea bargains are many and varied. If someone chooses to plead guilty, that's one thing. There's a hearing and that's that. However, criminal defendants (remember that whole innocent until proven guilty bit? Hah!) are usually smacked around pretty hard long before any trial may come up. As such, they are often forced by prosecutors to plead guilty to crimes they did not commit, just to avoid having their lives ruined even if they are acquitted at trial.
Forcing a guilty plea through overcharging, destroying lives with cash bail, threats of draconian sentences often have innocent people pleading guilty. This is unconscionable and wrong. Not just because the innocent and guilty alike are abused by the system *before* their case is adjudicated, but because innocent people are being tarred with convictions and the guilty (sometimes for really serious crimes) receive sentences that don't comport with their offense.
Disallowing plea bargains would force prosecutors to try only the cases they believe they can win. There are other issues with that too, but we'll leave that alone for now.
I'm going to assume that you misunderstood (rather than trolling or being deliberately obtuse) me. When someone pleads guilty, there is no trial. Just a hearing and no jury is required. The issue comes when prosecutors use their immense discretion and power to force guilty pleas. That's what should be disallowed, IMHO.
Again, assuming you're not being disingenuous and are just ignorant of the issue, here's a few places to get you started understanding the issues:
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/devils-bargain-how-plea-agreements-never-contemplated-framers-undermine-justice [cato.org]
https://www.acslaw.org/expertforum/the-rise-of-plea-bargains-and-fall-of-the-right-to-trial/ [acslaw.org]
https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-procedure/plea-bargains-in-depth.html [findlaw.com]
https://www.nacdl.org/Document/TrialPenalty [nacdl.org]
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-problem-with-pleas/ [pbs.org]
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/innocence-is-irrelevant/534171/ [theatlantic.com]
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/why-guilty-defendants-sometimes-plead-to-crimes-they-never-committed.html [slate.com]
There's a bit from here [nacdl.org] that sums a number of the issues nicely:
Given that you seem to not understand how our "justice" system doesn't work, I hope you have enough money to hire good lawyers if/when you intersect with it.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by hwertz on Saturday September 21 2019, @07:07AM (2 children)
On the contrary, in this case, via plea deal, he got off easy.
You know, since he was (as all these scammers do) falsifying his caller ID -- that allows for up to $10,000 PER CALL; violating the Do Not Call list is allows MINIMUM of $1,000 per call (and when it's done intentionally, which this definitely was, it allows for double or treble damages.) Given the way these scammers pump out calls, he would have been on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars, at least, if he'd decided to not plea out.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Saturday September 21 2019, @07:45AM
I have to disagree. Firstly, 14 years in prison is a *long* time. Secondly, I'm sure US$9,000,000 is more than this guy has, so he's broke. Adding a couple more zeroes won't make him any more broke. Thirdly, as soon as he gets out of prison, he's getting deported.
From TFS:
So. Once you take *all* of someone's money, demanding more won't make much difference. Given that he laundered something like $4-$9M *for other people*, he most certainly didn't keep all that money. So a $9million fine wipes him out several times over.
Let him rot in a an 8x8 box for 14 years and then he can sleep on the streets of Kolkatta. Good riddance to bad garbage.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 21 2019, @01:29PM
Make him pay with iTunes cards.