The DOJ is appealing the six-month prison sentences imposed in August on Gerald Green and his wife Patricia.
The government wanted them to serve at least ten years in prison. Their six-month sentences are among the most lenient in recent FCPA cases.
Gerald Green is 78 and suffers from emphysema. His wife is 53. Judge Wu delayed their sentencing five times. In addition to six months in prison, the judge ordered supervised release for three years and restitution from the Greens jointly and severally of $250,000.
The Hollywood movie producers were convicted in September 2009 of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, nine counts of violating the FCPA, and seven counts of money laundering. Patricia Green was also found guilty of two counts of signing a false U.S. income tax return.
Despite their short prison terms, the Greens didn’t get off easy. At the government’s request, the judge ordered forfeiture of their property. Their bank accounts, West Hollywood home and most of what’s in it, BMW 740, their company, and their pension assets were all seized.
Judge Wu then addressed the Greens as indigents. “All fines are waived,” he ruled as to each of them, “as it is found that the defendant does not have the ability to pay.”
He asked them to settle the $250,000 restitution they jointly owe by paying $50 a month. That means they’ll be square in 5,000 months — about 416 years.
In April this year, Charles Jumet was sentenced to 87 months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to violate the FCPA by making corrupt payments to government officials in Panama and giving a false statement to the FBI about how he paid some of the bribe money.
Jumet’s co-conspirator, John Warwick, was sentenced in June to 37 months in prison. He also received two years of supervised release following his prison term and forfeited $331,000 in proceeds of the crime.
In April last year, the Virginia-based physicist who sold controlled space-launch technology to China by bribing government officials there was sentenced to 51 months in prison. Shu Quan-Sheng pleaded guilty in 2008 to one count of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and two counts of violating the Arms Export Control Act.
Frederic Bourke was sentenced to a year and a day in prison and fined $1 million for investing in a bribe-tainted deal in Azerbaijan and then lying to FBI agents about it. He was convicted in 2009 by a Manhattan jury of conspiracy to violate the FCPA. He’s appealing his conviction.
And Juan Diaz, a Miami businessman at the center of the Haiti telco bribery case, was sentenced to 57 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release. He pleaded guilty in 2009 to a one-count criminal information charging him with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and money laundering.
The Greens’ surrender date to the U.S. Marshals in LA, for transport to federal prison, is November 29, 2010.
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Download a copy of the August 13, 2010 forfeiture order against Gerald and Patricia Green here.
Download a copy of the government’s October 8, 2010 notice of appeal in US v. Green here.
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