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White Collar

FBI informant ran enormous multinational scam while under FBI supervision

June 28, 2024 by Alexandra Natapoff

From Bloomberg News, an extensive investigation into the FBI’s risky reliance on an informant who one former FBI agent called “the Don Corleone of cybercrime.” According to the report, Gery Shalon was “charged with 33 federal counts, including hacking, securities fraud and money laundering, [and] he faced decades in a federal prison. Instead, he spent just 10 months in a New York jail.” Shalon cooperated with the FBI for over five years, working and traveling under agency supervision. But “according to police and prosecutors in Europe [] [t]hey have evidence that during his time as a US cooperator, Shalon continued to run a substantial criminal operation targeting tens of thousands of European victims.” From the story:

[T]he running of [Gery] Shalon, one of the most significant cyber cooperators in American history, now has the potential to turn into a debacle for both the FBI and New York’s Southern District, the most powerful US attorney’s office in the country.

The details of the case add fresh fuel to concerns about the way the American system of justice commodifies guilt, exchanging criminal punishment for aid with higher investigative priorities. And thousands of European victims will have questions of their own, about how a mastermind of their woes operated so freely on the US government’s watch.

Story here: “The FBI’s Star Cooperator May Have Been Running New Scams All Along.“

Filed Under: Informant Crime, International, White Collar

Podcast with Adam Conover on Factually!

January 1, 2023 by Alexandra Natapoff

Great, hour-long conversation with Adam Conover about all that is shocking and bizarre about the informant system.

Filed Under: Book events/media, Incentives & Payments, Informant Crime, Innocence, Jailhouse Informants, White Collar

Jack Abramoff: classic repeat offender informant

June 27, 2020 by Alexandra Natapoff

Remember Jack Abramoff, the corrupt lobbyist who defrauded Indian tribes of millions and used the money to bribe members of Congress and White House officials?  In 2008 he was sentenced to four years of incarceration for multiple offenses, decades less than he might have received, in exchange for his cooperation.  Now Abramoff is headed back to prison for . . .  corrupt lobbying.  Abramoff joins a long line of repeat offender informants who commit serious crimes, cooperate in exchange for leniency, and then continue committing those very same offenses.  It is one of the costs of running the criminal system as a marketplace in which guilt and information can be so easily and routinely traded: we send the message that informants can earn impunity, and that they can work off even the most serious crimes if they are useful enough to the government.  I worried about the Abramoff case back in 2009 here.  As I wrote back then, “this is the perennial dilemma with snitches: it is very hard to know whether we are actually getting more security and justice by letting them off the hook, or whether we too easily forgive serious wrongdoing in the name of cooperation.”

Filed Under: Incentives & Payments, Informant Crime, White Collar

Japan considers snitching

April 12, 2020 by Alexandra Natapoff

Japan is introducing American-style plea bargaining in which defendants can trade information about others in exchange for leniency.  Some are concerned about the risks of snitching in general, and of wrongful convictions in particular.  The law is more limited than the U.S. version, and only permits certain kinds of deals and only for certain kinds of crimes.  From the Japan Times:

“Unlike the U.S. plea bargaining system, admitting to a crime does not warrant a deal with prosecutors in Japan. The new system, introduced in a revision to the criminal procedure law, allows suspects in such crimes as bribery, embezzlement, tax fraud and drug smuggling to negotiate with prosecutors. The bargaining only applies to crimes listed in the law, with murder and assault off-limits.”

Filed Under: Incentives & Payments, Informant Law, International, White Collar

Multimillion-dollar drug bounties for informants

November 18, 2018 by Alexandra Natapoff

Bloomberg recently explored the State Department’s Narcotics Reward Program which offers bounties for information on high-ranking drug traffickers: America’s Multimillion-Dollar Bounty Program Just for Drug Lords.   As always, the program accepts the risk of rewarding and protecting serious, violent criminals in exchange for information about other potentially more serious, violent criminals.  As the article notes, “[c]ritics of the government’s rewards programs warn that huge cash bounties increase cartel violence and encourage corruption among U.S. law enforcement personnel. But the program’s success is hard to dismiss, its proponents contend.”  Other agencies, including the IRS and the SEC, offer large bounties to informants as well.

Filed Under: Drug-related, Incentives & Payments, International, White Collar

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