Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara pushed for stiffer punishment for insider-trading Wednesday during a hearing of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Bharara said that “the nature and scope of insider-trading activity has evolved,” yet sentencing guidelines have remained the same. He added: “The guidelines as they stand may be letting some defendants in some cases off with lighter sentences than they deserve.” He did not say how he believed the guidelines should be updated.
Bharara urged the commission to implement a higher sentencing range for criminals involved in complex insider-trading enterprises. He also said there should be tougher penalties for people who don’t make a profit from insider trading only because of external events that influence the market, like the popular revolt in Egypt. Punishing a crime based only on the amount of profit “creates the potential for a defendant to commit multiple and brazen acts of insider trading” without facing punishment, Bharara said.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, a member of the commission, said she was “disappointed” Bharara didn’t offer more specific details to indicate DOJ’s “willingness to do the hard work” of updating the sentencing guidelines, the newspaper reported. Howell is a a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Bharara has been pursuing a web of insider trading cases linked to hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam and so-called “expert networks” that consult with investment funds.
“Any changes to the sentencing rules are likely years away and wouldn’t affect the current cases,” according to the Journal.
One deputy U.S. Marshal was killed and another two were injured Wednesday morning while trying to serve a warrant on a drug suspect in Elkins, W.V., The Charleston Gazette reported.
Derek Hotsinpiller, age 24, had been with the Marshals for more than a year, the newspaper reported.
Marshals and state troopers had gone to the home of Charles Edward Smith Wednesday to serve a warrant on him for failing to appear in court on cocaine and firearms charges. The officers broke into the house after their attempts to get someone to open the door went unanswered. At that time, Smith opened fire.
The identities and conditions of the other two injured officers is unknown.
In a prepared statement, Attorney General Eric Holder said: “Today’s shootings in Elkins, West Virginia, demonstrate yet again the danger that our nation’s law enforcement officers confront on a daily basis. This morning, while attempting to serve a felony arrest warrant, three Deputy United States Marshals were met with gunfire from a dangerous fugitive who was eventually killed. In fulfilling their critical duties, these courageous Deputies put their lives on the line and put the safety of others above their own.”
He added, “Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of Deputy U.S. Marshal Derek Hotsinpiller, who made the ultimate sacrifice today, and with the two Deputies who were injured in the line of duty. Their valiant actions and their service to our nation will not be forgotten, and the Justice Department’s ongoing efforts to ensure the safety of all those who serve in law enforcement will continue to be a top priority.”
Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have created an FBI-led task force to investigate shootings linked to a Mexican drug gang that left one U.S. immigration agent dead and another injured in Mexico on Tuesday.
Jaime Zapata
Holder and Napolitano made the announcement Wednesday after meeting to discuss the attack on Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Jaime Zapata, who was killed, and a law enforcement official who was briefly hospitalized after being shot in the leg.
“This was an intentional ambush against two United States federal agents,” he said in a statement. “This tragic event is a game changer. The United States will not tolerate acts of violence against its citizens or law enforcement and I believe we must respond forcefully.”
Officials have not released the name of the ICE agent who was injured in the attack. But the Associated Press has identified him as Victor Avila.
“The murder of Special Agent Jaime Zapata and the shooting of another ICE agent provide a sad reminder of the dangers American law enforcement officers face every day,” Holder said in a statement. “Working with our Mexican counterparts, we have already launched an aggressive investigation, and this joint task force will ensure that every available resource is used to bring the perpetrators of this terrible crime to justice.”
The shooting happened in north-central Mexico as the agents traveled from Mexico City to Monterrey on a major highway in their blue Suburban vehicle, the AP said. The assailants are unknown, according to the Justice Department.
Napolitano said the shooting was the highest-profile attack on U.S. law enforcement officials in Mexico since Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena was tortured and killed in 1985, according to the AP.
Andrew Ramonas contributed reporting.
Criminal Division chief Lanny Breuer joined the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, Andre Birotte Jr., to announce charges on Wednesday against almost 100 individuals, many with ties to an Armenian street gang.
The defendants, including more than 80 associated with the gang Armenian Power, face charges that range from extortion and racketeering to kidnapping and fraud. Many of the defendants are from the Los Angeles area, but some hail from Denver and Miami. Authorities have arrested dozens of the individuals so far.
Lanny Breuer (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).
“The crimes alleged in these indictments were calculated, wide-ranging, and sophisticated,” Breuer said in remarks prepared for a news conference in Los Angeles.
The group’s influence has grown over the past two decades, and it counts as its allies gangs stretching from Mexico to the former Soviet bloc, Breuer said.
Armenian Power, also known as AP, formed in the late 1980s as Armenian immigrants flocked to the Los Angeles area amid the last years of the Soviet Union.
The California indictments announced Wednesday list almost 400 alleged criminal acts, including extortion schemes, credit card skimming and check fraud. The alleged schemes brought Armenian Power millions of dollars and targeted thousands, according to DOJ officials.
In one of the Armenian Power’s alleged crimes, the gang members kidnapped a businessman and demanded a $500,000 ransom, joking that he could die of a heart attack, Breuer said.
“The Southern California indictments that target the Armenian Power organized crime enterprise provide a window into a group that appears willing to do anything and everything illegal to make a profit,” Birotte said in a statement. “These types of criminal organizations – through the use of extortions, kidnappings and other violent acts – have a demonstrated willingness to prey upon members of their own community.”
The law enforcement takedown, dubbed Operation Power Outage, involved the FBI among other federal and local law enforcement agencies.
On the Los Angeles set of cases are Assistant U.S. Attorneys E. Martin Estrada, Sarah Levitt, Stephen G. Wolfe and Joseph McNally, and Trial Attorney Cristina Moreno of the Criminal Division’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section.
In Miami, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph Huynh and Cynthia Stone, Trial Attorney Margaret Honrath of the Organized Crime section and Trial Attorney Constantine Lizas of the Criminal Division’s Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section are handling the prosecutions.
Organized Crime Trial Attorneys Robert S. Tully and Joe Wheatley are handling the Denver case.
Attorney General Eric Holder plans to attend the investiture for Indianapolis U.S. Attorney Joseph Hogsett on Friday, a spokeswoman in the U.S. Attorney’s office told Main Justice.
Joe Hogsett (Bingham McHale LLP)
Hogsett was sworn in as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana last October, and U.S. Attorneys often have ceremonial investitures later on, with local, state and federal leaders present.
This will be the 18th U.S. Attorney investiture Holder will have attended.
David Hoffman (D), a former Assistant U.S. Attorney to Northern District of Illinois U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, has joined Sidley Austin LLP as a partner in the firm’s litigation group in Chicago.
Last year, Hoffman ran for and lost the Democratic nomination to succeed Sen. Roland Burris (D) in President Obama’s former Senate seat. The seat eventually was won by Sen. Mark Kirk (R).
David Hoffman (Hoffman for Senate)
Hoffman was most recently the inspector general for the City of Chicago. He was an Assistant U.S. Attorney from 1998 to 2005, and Fitzgerald appointed him deputy chief of the office’s narcotics and gangs section. Hoffman also was leader of the office’s Project Safe Neighborhoods anti-gun violence program. In early 2010, Gov. Pat Quinn (D) appointed Hoffman to the Illinois Reform Commission, which was tasked with recommending public reforms after the Blagojevich embarrassment.
Hoffman clerked for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Dennis G. Jacobs, both appointed by Republican presidents. Hoffman graduated from Yale University and the University of Chicago Law School, where he was articles editor of the law review.
A New York City man who flew to Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks to join al-Qaeda so he could kill Americans has been freed from further punishment after serving four and a half years in prison and cooperating extensively in the prosecution of other terrorists.
Mohammed Junaid Babar was quietly sentenced in December in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to the time he spent in custody before being released on bail about two years ago, a spokeswoman for Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has confirmed.
Babar’s sentence was reported on Monday by NBC News, which credited The Guardian of Britain with first disclosing the fact that Babar had been set free. The time-served sentence was pronounced in open court on Dec. 10, but the authorities seem to have made no effort to publicize the event in advance.
“I will kill every American that I see in Afghanistan, and while I’m in Pakistan if I see them in Pakistan, I will kill every American soldier I see in Pakistan,” Babar said in Pakistan in 2002 after flying there from his home in Jamaica, Queens. He was arrested by the FBI after returning to Queens seven years ago.
Soon afterward, he pleaded guilty to several terrorism-conspiracy charges that could have subjected him to 30 years in prison and began to cooperate with the FBI. He gave investigators information about terrorists plots in the United States, Canada and Britain, according to the transcript of the sentencing proceeding.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon McGuire told Judge Victor Marrera that Babar’s efforts were “more than substantial — they were, in fact, exceptional.”
Defense lawyer Daniel Ollen said his client had changed his life and become “a law-abiding, productive citizen.”
Babar told the judge he had “no one to blame but himself” for his trouble he got into when he was in his mid-20s. Now, he said, he is married and a father and has a new outlook on live. As for the terrorist acts he applauded years ago, he said he regretted “even thinking about acting upon any of those things.”
Assistant Attorney General Tony West of the Civil Division came before a Senate appropriations panel on Tuesday to make his case for a bigger budget to fight health care fraud in the coming years, saying current funding levels would limit DOJ’s ability to fight the crime in the future.
In its fiscal year 2012 funding proposal, the DOJ requests $283.4 million to fight health care fraud, amounting to a 22 percent increase from the funding Congress approved through a continuing resolution for fiscal 2011. The budget request comes only a few weeks after the DOJ announced the recovery of $4 billion from individuals who tried to defraud Medicare and Medicaid. The recovery was the biggest annual sum ever collected from Medicare and Medicaid fraudsters.
Tony West (Andrew Ramonas/Main Justice)
The DOJ says it would use the extra funds in its fiscal 2012 request to bolster the efforts of the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team, a top Obama administration initiative that brings together the Justice Department, Health and Human Services, and other government agencies.
Increased funding for HEAT would bring Medicare Fraud Strike Force Enforcement Action Teams to 13 more locations, according to the DOJ. The teams of federal, state and local authorities currently are deployed in seven locations to fight Medicare fraud. The DOJ also says it would use its extra money to strengthen its enforcement of the False Claims Act.
West said many of the case health care fraud cases handled by the DOJ involved “well-funded adversaries.” The Assistant Attorney General said the DOJ needed to invest in health care fraud enforcement in order to effectively handle these defendants.
“To the extent that we have a CR and we’re unable to expand our efforts, I think that has an impact,” West said. “To the extent that we have a CR and we can’t expand to 20 cities for our strike force efforts, which have been amazingly successful, and we have to stay in seven cities, that has an impact as well.”
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the chairman of the Senate appropriations panel, and Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the subcommittee, agreed that more must be done to stop health care fraud.
“One thing everyone agrees on is that anti-fraud efforts have not begun to keep pace with the scope of the problem,” Harkin said.
Steven H. Cook, president of the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys, is one of four candidates seeking a seat on the Blount County, Tenn., Circuit Court, The Daily Times of Blount County, Tenn., reported.
Steven H. Cook (National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys)
Cook, an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Tennessee since 1986, hopes to replace Judge W. Dale Young, who retired in January. The other applicants are Blount County assistant district attorney General Tammy Harrington, and Blount County attorneys Lynn C. Peterson and Robert N. Goddard.
The newspaper reported that in the personal statement section of his application, Cook said, “After nearly 25 years as a trial lawyer handling a full range of cases, from the simplest to the most complex, and practicing before some of the finest jurists in our community, I seek to use my experience to serve and strengthen my community.”
Area residents will be able to view the applications during a March 8 public meeting at the Blount County Justice Center in Maryville, Tenn., and comment on them. After the hearing a judicial nominating commission will interview the candidates, three of whose will be forwarded to Gov. Bill Haslam (R), who will select one of them.
