60-year sentence urged for Wilkes
Looks like ole Brent will be a bit long in the tooth before he'll be hoisting a pint at his local bar, eh what??
You can cheat people out billions of dollars running a hedge fund and do a spot of time in country club fed prison like Alderton - or go visit Conrad Black down in Florida and discuss yer portfolios.
You can obstruct justice when being investigated by a Special Prosecutor get your sentence commuted. But losing helping a rePUG lose his seat? Oh, MY !!
Is Michael Mukasey's DoJ suddenly getting zealous? Vindictive maybe?
But then, if you do the crime, expect the time.
Get out your pencils and work out how much time you get for each dollar you scam: that's 60 years X 365 days divided by the amount of money "milked" from the taxpayers = how much PER DAY ??
Lovely. Ducky. It really is.
Can we devise a Spreadsheet, class -- for use in future BANKRUPTING OUR FUTURE seminar??
Some nice round variable for our kids to use with the super inflation to come?
ADCS got at least $90 million in federal contracts from 1997 to 2004.Your Instructor for the "Life after Dick Cheney World" seminar
** For bonus points -- come up with a precise variable
workable for the year, say, 2015
when the exact extent of the corruption and
graft of the BuZh administration is fully known.
Another spot of "homeland" work by
Hearing put off for defense contractor
Wilkes was scheduled to be sentenced on Monday, but that has been put off until Feb. 19 at the request of his lawyer, Mark Geragos. In court papers, Geragos said he needed more time to analyze and challenge the report from the federal probation office, which he received Jan. 15 – later than required under court rules.
Such a lengthy sentence recommendation, even in an era of increasingly stiff penalties for white collar crimes, is significant, said Shaun Martin, a law professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. (Gee! NO kidding!! Brilliant observation - who's paying YOU??)
“I'm sure Wilkes' lawyers' jaws dropped to the floor when they read 60 years,”he said.
“It's a huge number. Bribing public officials is worse than stealing from shareholders. Both are terrible, but one is worse.”
A jury convicted Wilkes of 13 counts of bribery, conspiracy and wire fraud Nov. 5. Over the course of nearly a decade, prosecutors said he plied Cunningham with cash bribes of at least $625,000, lavish meals, trips and gifts.
In exchange, Cunningham used his influence to steer millions in federal contracts to Wilkes' company, ADCS Inc. of Poway.
Cunningham, a former Republican representative from Rancho Santa Fe, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion and is serving a prison sentence of eight years and four months.
The reasons behind the probation officials' recommendation are not known, because the reports are not publicly available. However, in a court filing last week, Geragos referred to sections of the report and his objections to them.
Federal sentencing guidelines set out the rules under which defendants are punished, and weigh a complicated set of factors including the nature and extent of the crimes committed and someone's criminal history. The guidelines are advisory, and judges have discretion on the extent to which they follow them.
Geragos quoted probation officials as acknowledging the recommendation amounted to “essentially a life sentence” for Wilkes, 53. He said the report recommended increasing his sentence based on the amount of profit that ADCS Inc. received over a nine-year period Wilkes dealt with Cunningham.
The lawyer said he would challenge that calculation. In an interview he said probation officials appeared to have totaled up all the federal work ADCS got from the government and attributed all of it to criminal behavior.
He said ADCS did many projects that had nothing to do with Cunningham and were legitimate. “Anyone who sat through the trial knows that is true,” he said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip Halpern told jurors that ADCS got at least $90 million in federal contracts from 1997 to 2004. Prosecutors will submit their own sentencing papers later, and it is unlikely they would urge Burns to levy a significantly shorter sentence than probation officials has recommended, Martin said.
Geragos also said in the court filing that probation officials said Wilkes' sentence should be increased because he was an organizer or leader of a criminal enterprise. In all, he said the analysis ended up quadrupling what would otherwise have been the base level under the guidelines for determining the sentence.
Prosecutors could not be reached for comment yesterday because of the federal holiday. In court papers they did not object to rescheduling the sentencing date.
In a related matter, the judge set a Feb. 4 hearing for a change of plea for John Michael. He is a New York mortgage broker who was indicted with Wilkes on obstruction of justice and other charges. The order did not say what Michael will be pleading guilty to, and his lawyer declined to comment.
Greg Moran: (619) 542-4586; greg.moran@uniontrib.com
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