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By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon

SDNY COURTHOUSE, July 16 – A lawyer who says he was stiffed out of a legal fee for work in 2015 testified on July 16 in the nearly empty
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York courtroom of Judge J. Paul Oetken. Samuel Guzik described how his then-client Ms. Albright told him she had cancer, then proposed a low-ball settlement of the lawsuit he had worked on for her from May 2014 through December 2015. Later she replaced him as counsel, and settled the case. In 2016, he sued in the SDNY for fees.

  Why has it taken so long to get to this bench trial, at with counting Inner City Press there were only three people in the gallery, one of whom the person at the defense table kept looking back and nodding with? What is the point of objecting to the admission of exhibits in a bench trial?

On July 15, Judge Oetken denied the motions to quash Guzik's subpoenas by non-party witnesses Darius P. Chafizadeh, Karl Geerchen and Steve Penaro but granted the latter two's motion to allow their counsel to be present at counsel's table during their testimony.  That will more than double the attendance...

Also before Judge Oetken: a Bronx man was sentenced to 17 years in prison in a largely empty courtroom on June 28. Hours later the prosecution put on a press release, below. Here's what was not included: the defendant's brother died in an Ohio prison; his uncle Mark Carson was the victim of a shooting in Greenwich Village. He calls his father nothing but a sperm donor. After the sentencing his five year old son said, loudly, "Daddy!" Inner City Press was the only media in the courtroom. Before the sentencing he said, "I know I am not a bad person." He sure did some bad things.

  From the US press release: "Leonard Mathews Ordered a Shooting in the Bronx that Injured Three Bystanders     Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that LEONARD MATHEWS was sentenced to 17 years in prison for ordering a shooting that left three people injured, and for distributing crack cocaine.  MATHEWS was convicted of assault with a dangerous weapon in aid of racketeering, as well as firearms, ammunition, and crack cocaine distribution offenses following a seven-day jury trial in October 2018.  The sentence was imposed by U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken.  According to allegations in the Indictment and evidence introduced at trial:  MATHEWS is a leader, or “big homie,” in the Gangsta Milla Bloods, or “GMB,” a subset of the United Bloods Nation gang that operates in the Bronx and engages in racketeering activity, including narcotics distribution.  On October 20, 2017, MATHEWS ordered a subordinate gang member to shoot someone with whom MATHEWS previously had a physical altercation.  The shooting resulted in the injury of three innocent bystanders on Morris Avenue between East Kingsbridge Road and East 196th Street in the Bronx.  On the night of the shooting, following a closed-door meeting with MATHEWS and other members of the gang, the same Bloods foot soldier that MATHEWS ordered to do the shooting stabbed and left for dead one of the principal witnesses to the shooting.  *              *             *  Judge Oetken sentenced MATHEWS, 27, of the Bronx, New York, to 84 months in prison on one count of aiding and abetting or willfully causing assault with a dangerous weapon in aid of racketeering, one count of aiding and abetting or willfully causing the possession of ammunition by a felon, and one count of distribution and possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine.  In addition, Judge Oetken sentenced MATHEWS to a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison for one count of aiding and abetting or willfully causing the discharge of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence, to be served consecutively to the 84-month sentence imposed on the other counts.  Mr. Berman praised the investigative efforts of the Bronx Violent Crimes Squad of the New York City Police Department.  The case is being prosecuted by the Office’s General Crimes Unit.  Assistant United States Attorneys Justin V. Rodriguez, Dominic A. Gentile, and Emil J. Bove III are in charge of the prosecution."

Later on June 28, detention was continued for OneCoin defendant Konstantin Ignatov on June 28, after he offered to pay armed guards to keep him in an apartment he would rent in Manhattan. SDNY Judge Edgardo Ramos questioned the source of the bail money that Ignatov was offering to put up, as well as issued raised about the propriety of "private prisons" of  the type now incarcerated UN briber Ng Lap Seng was allowed to live in during the pendency of his case.

  Ignatov's lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman noted that Bernie Madoff got bail, and that the government could not show any contact between Ignavov and his sister Ruja, indisputedly higher up in the OneCoin scheme. But Judge Ramos, after more than an hour of argument, was not convinced. The case is US v. Ignatov, 17-cr-630 (Ramos); more on Patreon, here.

  In other SDNY corporate crime news, the US  quietly filed a criminal antitrust case against Banca IMI trader Larry D. Meyers - who quietly pled guilty and agreed to cooperate on June 27 before Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Inner City Press can report.

  The case involves violations with the Sherman Act with respect to American Depository Receipts. It is a quiet part of a larger case. On June 27 the representative of DOJ's Antitrust Division said Meyers will get a 5K1.1 letter if he fully cooperates. She then said the sentencing could be set for October 7 at 2:30 pm.  So will all of the cooperation be by then?

  Judge Engelmayer asked Meyers to explain what he did. Meyers, going beyond the script prepared for him by his new lawyer Mr. Alvarez, said that only a few had access to the pre-release ADRs and had become a "cozy community." He said, "We became too friendly." Not anymore...

  The plea almost got delayed again because Meyers old lawyer had not yet formally withdrawn; Judge Engelmayer said a Curcio hearing might be needed then decided not. He asked Ms. Brown of DOJ if anything was needed with regard to the transcript, presumably to seal it.

  We don't think that's necessary, Ms. Brown told Judge Engelmayer. So the cooperation is entirely public now, in this cozy community. Inner City Press will continue to follow these cases and others in the SDNY...

Earlier, before issuing his ruling Judge Edgardo Ramos had asked the lawyers for the two banks that got the subpoenas, Deutsche Bank and Capital One, if they wanted to speak. They did not. This even as House counsel Strawbridge detailed Deutsche Bank's long history with money laundering (and theft during the Holocaust, which didn't come up). Capital One is a rough, too, on predatory auto lending and the Community Reinvestment Act. But the banks lay low.

  Now under Judge Ramos' 25-page ruling, the banks become required to respond to the subpoenas in seven days, on May 29. That's the time during which the House has agreed not to enforce the subpoena, and the time during which Trump's lawyers seem certain to file an appeal and ask again for a stay from the Second Circuit Count of Appeals higher up, in both senses, in 40 Foley Square.

Earlier still in the May in the SDNY, Congressman Christopher Collins (R-NY) waived his right to be present for a May 3 hearing in the criminal insider trading case against him held past 5 pm in the SDNY courtroom of Judge Broderick. On May 10, Judge Broderick started on l'affaire Collins at 2 pm, after a case against BuzzFeed (Inner City Press coverage here). Early in the proceeding, before two shackled inmates were led in leading to a brief suspension of the white shoe SEC Congressman matter, Broderick made a joke about Donald Trump and evasive legal moves. I'm not going there, said one of the participants in Collins, who was an early endorser of Trump. Broderick said, "I should have either - but it is what it is."

   Three hours later, during which Inner City Press in full disclosure went one story down in the courthouse to cover a Fatico hearing about threats in the MCC, Judge Broderick was setting the time for Collins' lawyers to make motions. He arrived on four weeks after he rules on discovery, with the SEC to provide whatever he directs to the defense one week after the ruling. I'm not saying you're going to get anything, Judge Broderick said. Collins' lead lawyer said he is a optimist. More on Patreon; watch this site. 

  Collins' team of lawyers have made a slew of suggestions to Judge Broderick on what discovery to seek from the U.S. Attorney's office, from communications with the SEC to information about real estate, Cameron Collins and Lauren Zarsky and their sales of Immunotherapeutics stock after MIS416, aimed at secondary multiple sclerosis, failed the Drug Trial and Rep Collins made his calls from the White House Congressional picnic.

   On May 3 Judge Broderick was urging wide disclosure by the government, whether characterized as 3500 material or under Brady or Giglio. The notes to be produced, he said, didn't have to been entirely contemporaneous. He had a series of questions for the U.S. Attorney which he did not get through as it approached 6 p.m. and his courtroom deputy had gone for the day.

  Collins' lead lawyer from BakerHostetler, Jonathan R. Barr, directed Broderick to a decision by SDNY Judge Jed Rakoff during the Gumpta case, and Broderick said that he would read it. He confessed he had himself looked up applicable cases on Westlaw, adding that he might have missed some cases.  This case is  USA v. Collins, et al., 18-cr-00567 (VSB). More on Patreon, here.

  Judge Broderick told Collins' lawyers to expect to come back in a week's time on Friday, May 10. One of them said he would only be returning to the United States that morning; another said that he then would be leaving for the same place his colleague had been: Argentina.

 Thus is big money, and big politics, law done in the SDNY.

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