Once-convicted lawyer turns tables on feds, seeks $215K for defense fees in $52M mortgage-fraud case
Convicted two years ago in a $52 million mortgage-fraud scheme, a New Orleans lawyer won a reversal of his conviction in July from a federal appeals court.
Now David Mark hopes to get reimbursement from the government of some $215,000 in attorney’s fees and costs, due to alleged wrongdoing by assistant U.S. attorneys in the Nevada case, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He is citing the Hyde Amendment, a bad-faith statute enacted in 1997.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals pointed to “inaccurate” information from the government and a “scant record” when it ruled that a federal district court judge erred in finding that Mark was subject to prosecution because he had violated an immunity agreement, an earlier Las Vegas Review-Journal article explains.
But Mark goes further, saying in a motion last week that the record in the case “shrieks of prosecutorial misconduct and fabrication, if not perjury.”
The claim was that Mark had not cooperated as promised in helping the government pursue two main defendants in the mortgage-fraud case. It centered on a July 2011 phone call that an assistant U.S. attorney claimed at trial to have had with Mark. But “in fact, there was no call in July 2011, there was no breach and Mark’s prosecution was a blatant violation of the immunity bestowed upon him,” wrote Mark’s lawyer, Michael Fawer of New Orleans, in last week’s filing.
U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden declined to discuss the motion but told the newspaper his office will oppose it. He said earlier that mistakes made in Mark’s case have been rectified.
A lack of government documentation of the claimed July 2011 phone call helped persuade the 9th Circuit to reverse Mark’s conviction.
His promise to cooperate with the government, in exchange for immunity from prosecution himself, concerned a married couple, dubbed “the Bonnie and Clyde of Nevada real estate,” mortgage broker Steven Grimm and real estate agent Eve Mazzarella. They were accused by the feds of arranging for straw buyers to apply for mortgage loans over a five-year period to purchase hundreds of homes purportedly worth a total of $107 million and skimming funds when the transactions closed. The feds say banks lost $52 million when mortgage loans went bad.
The by-then-estranged couple were convicted in 2011, after a 37-day jury trial, of conspiracy and fraud charges, Vegas Inc, reported at the time.
They were sentenced in 2012 to 25 years and 14 years, respectively, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. Grimm’s sentence is the longest ever imposed in a mortgage fraud case in Nevada, prosecutors said.
The two, who are now divorced, are appealing their convictions. In April, the 9th Circuit held that Mazzarella is entitled to discovery and an evidentiary hearing to help her try to prove damage from the government’s failure to disclose exculpatory evidence, the Metropolitan News-Enterprise reported. She is the daughter of a prominent California trial attorney.
Grimm’s appeal raises similar issues, and his case has been put on hold pending the 9th Circuit’s ruling in Mazzarella’s appeal.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Lawyer convicted in $50M Las Vegas mortgage scheme”
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “‘Bonnie and Clyde’ of Mortgage Fraud Stole $8.7M, Feds Say”
