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Attorney Dennis Kainen of Weisberg, Kainen & Mark was recently featured in a Law 360 article. Click here for the story, or read the article below!
Law360, New York (May 04, 2015, 4:43 PM ET) — A consultant convicted of playing a role in Lancer Group’s $200 million securities fraud surrendered to federal custody Monday to serve a sentence just reduced from 3 years to 5 months after the Eleventh Circuit ordered a redo.
Laurence Isaacson will be home “before Thanksgiving,” his attorney, Dennis Kainen of Weisberg & Kainen, said by phone Monday afternoon. “It only took us seven-and-a-half years.”
The Eleventh Circuit had declined last year to grant Isaacson a new trial, but did order his sentence to be re-examined, finding that a district court erred in enhancing it. In that published opinion, a three-judge panel ruled that a district court erroneously directly attributed to Isaacson $15.6 million of nearly $55 million that Morgan Stanley lost after investing with Lancer.
Judge Beverly Martin, writing for the panel, said at the time that Isaacson’s role in the scheme was only meant to inflate the valuations of shell companies in the hedge funds’ memorials and thus mislead auditors and administrators of the Lancer funds.
That $15.6 million was previously used as justification for enhancing Isaacson’s sentence and for calculating the amount of restitution he paid.
The dramatic sentence reduction was made on April 24 by U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard.
“I thought he should never have been indicted,” Kainen said Monday. “But in the overall way it all resulted, I am happy.”
“The government was wrong,” he added.
The new sentence includes two years of supervised release following the five-month imprisonment.
In the May 2014 decision, the appeals panel also denied previous motions for a new trial, which revolved around the fitness of the prosecutor to participate because his wife had been a shareholder at a law firm representing a witness against Isaacson. The appeals court said the wife had no involvement in the case and that the prosecutor had no duty to recuse himself or to disclose the potential conflict.
Isaacson was convicted in 2010 of securities fraud on charges of helping trump up business plans that supported the false valuations of shell companies in which Lancer invested. In the four-year scheme, Lancer Group was accused of inflating its value by manipulating closing prices on thinly traded securities.
In September 2011, U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan originally sentenced Isaacson to three years in prison and ordered him to pay $8 million in restitution.
The government is represented by Amit Agarwal, Christopher Hunter, Jack Patrick and Harold Schimkat of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Isaacson is represented by Dennis Kainen and Brielle Lerner Mark of Weisberg & Kainen PL and by Sheryl Joyce Lowenthal of the Law Offices of Sheryl Lowenthal.
The case is U.S. v. Lauer et al., case number 1:08-cr-20071, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
–Additional reporting by Daniel Siegal. Editing by Ben Guilfoy.
Weisberg Kainen Mark, PL
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