https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-03-15/the-st...
In a nutshell, the Amazon employee in the article was accused of taking kickbacks for commercial real estate transactions, Amazon filed a lawsuit and the FBI raided the house and froze assets. And over a year later, no criminal case has been filed and none of the real estate transactions were renegotiated or broken.
I've had it bluntly explained to me by a federal prosecutor that they do it specifically so you cannot mount a legal defense due to your inability to hire a quality attorney.
The presence of frozen assets simply means federal law enforcement was engaging in an enforcement action, not anything exceptional due to the facts of the case.
so it's standard procedure for the FBI to try to prevent you from adequately defending yourself, seems about right.
Which is exactly what's happening right now in the Sussmann case (brought by Durham), he's being accused of something based on the memory of an FBI agent when a videotaped interview would have made it trivial to prove/disprove.
https://www.markjobrien.com/blog/2016/03/groundbreaking-supr...
When assets are forfeited, they're seized by the government and just tossed somewhere likely to get lost (tons of things get lost, damaged, and stolen when seized). If you even have the money left to hire a lawyer, you might be able to contest the forfeiture. But because the assets and not you are being charged, well they don't have to try very hard to let you know of the case. In almost all cases, the assets are forfeited summarily because people can't afford to get them back or they're notified too late to find an attorney and start the process of contesting the forfeiture. This process is colloquially known as theft.
And that's exactly the problem, where is the right to a fair trial if you cannot hire a quality attorney? I guess it levels the playing field somewhat in preventing people with money from defending themselves the same way poor citizens are screwed over by the judicial system and not being able to get adequate representation...
>I've had it bluntly explained to me by a federal prosecutor that they do it specifically so you cannot mount a legal defense due to your inability to hire a quality attorney.
That this authoritarian tactic is standard operating procedure makes this whole affair worse and more sordid, not better. If we had a functioning legal system the 4th Amendment would protect people from government activities like this.
Just so people know, this is a blip of time in the legal world; financial fraud takes time to document. People need to go in, recover all of the relevant ESI, categorize it, then process it. Interviews with relevant stakeholders need to be undertaken - some of them who will have tight schedules, or be abroad, etc. I've been involved in fraud cases that take half a decade to hit the courts, then another decade to get through them.
As long as there's no statute of limitations style deadlines about to lapse and there's no risk that the assets being recovered are being wasted, there's little harm in spending pre-claim time on due diligence work prior to triggering court filing timelines.
Losing access to all of your money for an indeterminate amount of time with no recourse is a fairly large harm.
It’s not your legally narrow definition of harm, or the court’s definition of an unreasonable timeframe… yet it’s undeniably harmful to an innocent family.
We’re still doing that part - innocent until proven guilty - right?
Generally speaking, in order to get intrusive injunctive relief of this level, you need to have a VERY good record.
Without the ability to freeze assets, someone can defraud you then use the proceeds of fraud itself to fund a legal defense while hiding assets. Or draw out the case and take a decade long vacation in Ibiza on your dime.
Which happens. A lot.
The court isn't going to get it right 100% of the time, but it does the vast majority of times when it comes to these cases - evidentiary standards are so high that people regularly write off MILLIONS of dollars in fraud losses because of how hard these remedies are to get.
Without a desire to understand how the system works on your end, it's impossible on my end to explain WHY these rules exist.
https://www.geekwire.com/2021/former-aws-real-estate-manager...
https://www.geekwire.com/2021/riveter-ceo-husband-dispute-fb...
Most of the money is being returned, no criminal charges are being filed against either a Nelson or Kirschner. ("The investigation hasn't led to criminal charges, according to court documents.") So it doesn't sound like there is anyone to testify against.
The civil suits between Amazon and the Nelsons and the Kirschner's continue, but the fact that Amazon is currently paying all of the leases in question (for DCs used by AWS) and there will be no criminal charges does sound like Amazon didn't get ripped off too badly, if at all, which means there will probably be a settlement with undisclosed terms and lawyers on both sides claiming to be very happy and moving on.
I find even that devil's take to be problematic, because that sounds a lot like coerced testimony. It calls into question both the morality of doing so, and the authenticity of any testimony produced.
It almost begs for comparisons to the mafia. There's not a huge gap between "testify against this person or we'll seize your home and business" and "don't testify against this person or we'll burn your home and business down". Other than that the government makes the rules, and they've decided it's okay when they do it.
Unless you or/and accuser are criminals, the gap is huge. :-/
> 1) «testify against this person, which did the crime, or state may found you guilty and seize your home and business»
This is really "testify against this person, who we say did the crime, or the state will seize your goods without charging you with a crime". Civil forfeiture doesn't require any kind of conviction against you, because they're technically charging your property.
> Unless you or/and accuser are criminals, the gap is huge. :-/
Civil forfeiture doesn't require anyone to be a criminal; innocent people have their stuff seized all the time. Also, it's incredibly easy to find something you can charge someone with to get them to cooperate. You ever not paid taxes on something you ordered on the internet? That's tax fraud, you're a criminal and have to cooperate. Ever gone more than 15 over the speed limit? That's a crime in many states, you're a criminal and have to cooperate.
Even if you know you're innocent of what they want to charge you with, your options are to either cooperate, or spend the next year or two in jail fighting your case while you spend tens or hundreds of thousands on lawyers.
Also, whether someone is a criminal or not is rather arbitrary when the state gets involved, because the state defines what a crime is, and thus who the criminals are. E.g. if I tried to compel someone to testify by threatening to steal their car, that makes me a criminal. If the state does it, it's not, because they've written the rules that way.
Sometimes you get the A team. Sometimes you get the geniuses that loaned APCs to the ATF.
So long as the incompetence of the second rate people continues to not effect the careers of the first rate people nothing will change.
Although in this case the seized funds were apparently returned. I have a feeling a lot of crucial details have been left out of this piece (EDIT: See links below to the investigation details. There are multiple parties involved and some of they were keenly aware that they were breaking laws that were "FBI-type stuff"). The devil’s advocate take on this outcome would be that the person cooperated with the FBI to provide evidence and/or testify against bigger fish in the case in exchange for being let off the hook. If this was the case, we’d probably see some headlines about an Amazon-related criminal charges in the coming months or years. Although in our case the released documents were full of “Company 1” and “Individual 2” anonymity, so someone (usually a journalist) would have to figure out the connection.
Or maybe this really was some big misunderstanding with disastrous consequences to the family. Impossible to know from an article from this perspective.
EDIT: There's a more in-depth review of the case here: https://www.geekwire.com/2021/former-aws-real-estate-manager...
From the summary, it does appear that multiple people are involved in the case and the person in this article (Nelson) doesn't look like the key player in the alleged frauds, though he would have played a significant role in facilitating the accusations. There's definitely some shady business going on, but this guy could have been more of a pawn than active player.
One of the text messages from transcripts is notable (Note "Nelson" is the accused person in the Medium article):
> “Flip me a couple buildings … and let me really line your pockets like we were discussing! ” Ramstetter wrote in a Dec. 17, 2018 message to Nelson, according to a copy of the exchange Amazon filed with the court.
The transcript in that article is also enlightening, because it's literally a conversation between two of the partners who acknowledge that what they're doing is "federal, FBI-type stuff" and express concern over it. If you ever get a message like that from someone proposing to "line your pockets" in exchange for facilitating deals with your employer, maybe don't work with that person any more.