This just in, Jeremy Johnson beat 78 of the charges against him, being found guilty of only 8 charges that carried much lesser sentences. The 8 charges were lying to a bank, and it is my opinion that they will be overturned on appeal.
Johnson’s former business partner, Scott Leavitt, was found not guilty of all charges!
This is a devastating loss for the government, and shows that it was either majorly botched or a grave miscarriage of injustice! This should call for an investigation into the US Attorneys office for prosecutorial misconduct.
Johnson and his former business partner Leavitt faced a total of 86 charges that included conspiracy, bank fraud, wire fraud, participating in banking fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and money laundering.
U.S. District Judge David Nuffer set sentencing hearings for Johnson on June 20th, but denied the prosecutors motion to jail Johnson immediately.
Instead Johnson was ordered to wear an ankle monitor until a hearing can be held next week to discuss whether he should be jailed.
The judge in the case put major restrictions in place for jurors to speak about the case, requiring a letter to the court with approval before anyone goes out and speaks to the jurors directly. This seems to be a clear violation of the 1st amendment rights of jurors to speak freely about the case after it is completed…and the judge didn’t give a reason for his uncanny ruling.
This is a landmark case in the performance marketing industry considering that it is one of the first cases to shed light on the “shell game,” a common scheme that unscrupulous marketers + scandalous ISOs use to acquire free trial merchant processing to stay below the fraud thresholds at Visa/Mastercard. This pervasive scheme makes it next to impossible for legitimate advertisers to compete due to the fact that advertisers that use the “shell game” can trick out their landing pages to deceive customers, converting higher than their competitors. Ultimately the consumer realizes that they were deceived and initiates a chargeback or gets a refunds…quickly turning those fast conversions into fast chargebacks.
The irony in this case seemingly is that the jury found Johnson not-guilty because the ISOs were deeply involved in the “shell” scheme and had carte blanche authorization to make decisions on these accounts. Additionally the banks did not lose any money…which makes it harder to prove fraud.
Next up for Johnson is his FTC trial, which we will cover. In the event that he is found not-liable in his fight with the FTC, will he be able to retrieve his personal and business property that was already auctioned off by the government?
Court document resources
- Jury Verdict
- Motion to dismiss (or for mistrial) for prosecutorial misconduct during closing argument
- Motion to clarify gag-order
- Notice of Proposed Instruction and Order on Jurors
- Mumford Objection to Court’s Proposed Juror Contact Order
- Johnson 1394 Johnson Objection to Proposed Juror Contact Order
