United States v. Lacey, No. 11-2404-cr (2d Cir. November 7, 2012) (Winter, Straub, Lynch, CJJ) Defendants Lacey and Henry were convicted after a jury trial of various offenses resulting from their involvement in a mortgage fraud scheme. In the scheme a real estate company, MTC, would purchase “short-sale” properties from distressed homeowners, then resell them … Read more
United States v. Gonzalez, 10-2202-cr (2d Cir. July 22, 2011) (Kearse, Miner, Chin, CJJ) Former state senator Efrain Gonzalez, Jr., pled guilty to various fraud-related charges in connection with two sham charities that he set up while in office. This opinion contains an interesting discussion of the concept of “tracing” criminal proceeds. In it, the … Read more
United States v. Skys, No. 09-5204-cr (2d Cir. February 23, 2011) (Jacobs, Kearse, Straub, CJJ) In August of 2007, Eric Skys approached Citigroup and claimed that his company, Kaiser-Himmel Corp., owned 13.4 million shares of Sprint Nextel Corp. stock, with a market value of approximately $240 million. He told Citigroup that transfer of the shares … Read more