
The Silver or the Lead: How White Collar Crime Prosecutors Get Punished – BIG
“The main villain is a man named Philip Esformes, a Miami nursing home kingpin, who in 2019 was convicted of the largest health care fraud scheme ever charged by the government, having stolen roughly $1.3 billion from 1998 to 2016 by making bogus claims to Medicare and Medicaid and bribing doctors and state inspectors. Esformes lived large, buying Ferraris, luxury watches, and prostitutes, as well as bribing officials at the University of Pennsylvania to get his son accepted.
“There was plenty of evidence of his crimes, so you’d think going after this guy would be a slam-dunk, a career builder for ambitious prosecutors. But as you’ll see, Esformes managed to put Beth Young, the government lawyer who went after him, on trial, and nearly ruined her career…
“This dynamic is bad for several reasons. The first and most obvious one is that it puts an entire class of people above the law. As someone familiar with white collar cases told me, ‘When the defendants are wealthier the lawyers get more leeway.’ The second is that it creates a bureaucratic pull upward of mediocre risk averse lawyers, since those who are promoted are usually those with a spotless record, with spotless increasingly meaning willing to pick on poor people.
“And that legitimizes prosecutorial misconduct towards the poor. After all, prosecutors will conclude there’s no point in trying to adhere to universal rules, since judges don’t enforce them equally. The only thing that matters is whether the target is rich or poor.”
Owner of failed nursing home chain accused of $38 million tax fraud scheme pleads guilty – NBC