Getting implicated in a crime comes with many challenges. There
are financial challenges, social challenges, and of course familial challenges.
Luckily, most of those who face these challenges are fortunate enough to have
family and friends to support them and to lift them up while the horizon is
bleak. These relationships are critical to the mental survival of someone going
through any one of life's challenges and especially one where his freedom is on
the line.
At the same time there are few
things more aggravating than finding out that someone who was thought to be a
friend was merely an opportunistic parasite trying to capitalize on
another's success. There are few things as demoralizing than realizing that
someone who was supposed to be part of a support system is suddenly absent.
There is nothing worse than the feeling of having been used. There is no
greater snake than a former friend or partner who is willing to
"cooperate" with prosecutors by falsely implicating a former friend
and partner in order to cleanse their own conscience from their own improper
actions. Even after the case is over, the person implicated and possibly
convicted of the crime will try and convince himself that this person or these
people are still his friends. Eventually, however, it will become clear to him
that this former friend was never anything of the kind. It may take one, two or
even three years but eventually there will be some triggering event that brings
the truth to the forefront. And that is when it is time to get even.
The first way to get even is by
not getting screwed again. Most people who were successful will find a way to
re-establish themselves. Once again, this former friend will try and use him to
get ahead. It could be something as simple as a client referral from a new
employer or for a client referral. The idea is not to fall victim to their
deceptions once again. Not only should the person implicated avoid doing
business with his former partner(s), but he should make sure no one he works
with does so either. This former partner is a bad character, is a snake, and there
is no way a former felon should allow his new life and his new associates to be
victimized by this person or persons.
And then there are the secrets.
The good news for anyone who has been used by one of these types of
"friends" is that during this so-called friendship, plenty of
information was shared that this former friend would never want revealed. Ample
texts would likely have been exchanged. More than a few secrets would have been
told. In other words, if someone is going to run for the hills when a friend
and partner is implicated, he and/or she better be sure that there is nothing
that can come out later that would embarrass them in front of former and
current clients as well as their friends. When the person implicated is
extricated from the situation either by serving a prison sentence or by getting
the charges dropped, he will likely be very eager to do whatever necessary to
remind this former friend, partner and colleague that he and/or she should have
been a little more careful when running for the hills. In other words,
payback's a bitch.
Now let’s say for example I had
partner(s) like this. One would be surprised the type of secrets someone
reveals when they are trying to pretend to be a friend. Marital indiscretions are
one thing that can often come up. Now this may not be an actual admission of
cheating, but it could very well be an episode that happened long ago that this
person may not want revealed to his or her significant other, much less their
social circle or the public at large. It may be something that happened
recently that spouses do not want their life-partners to know about. This is
the type of information that that the person who is embroiled in a criminal
probe will be all too happy to reveal when everything concludes.
Of course, there is also the
conduct of that person or persons while they were in a business with the person
who finds himself involved on the criminal probe. The irony is that the
person under indictment may have had pure intentions or may have had no idea
what he was doing was actually illegal. Alternatively, what he did
was not actually illegal even if he pleaded guilty to it in order to spare his
family the agony of a trial and the risk of a long sentence with an adverse
verdict. The "friend"/ partner, on the other hand was motivated
purely by greed. He and/or she wanted in only to take advantage of a friend's
new-found luck. As such the actions he/she took may have been deliberately
conceived to get rich at the expense of their own contacts and clients using a
web of deception. In other words, the "friend(s)" may have committed
actual crimes while the person under investigation was innocent all
along.
Of course, if anything was
actually sent over an email, one would assume that all of this would have been
handled over to the prosecutors so that this friend's misdeeds would have
come to attention to those investigating any alleged crimes. That is both true
and untrue. Firstly, a prosecutor needs to decide who to prosecute. Perception
might be that these other ancillary members are just not important enough.
Secondly, prosecutors may not fully understand the context of the emails and
since the person under investigation is not about to throw his friend(s) under
the bus, there is simply not a witness to corroborate the information contained
in the emails. Third, the prosecutors may feel that these other people are more
useful to provide information than they are being indicted and they simply
decide to use them to try and get who they view as the big fish.
Then, of course there is the
ultimate wild card, and that relates to information never seen by prosecutors.
Prosecutors have the right to subpoena all records that they feel are related
to a crime. At the same time, defendants have a fifth amendment right not to self-incriminate.
That line gets murky when it comes to email and even more murky when it comes
to text messages, Blackberry messages, i-messages and even WhatsApp messages
from a personal phone. Lawyers will generally agree that a corporate email
account has to be turned over to the prosecutors, but that's it. Imagine if you
will that text messages and Blackberry messages were never turned over to
federal prosecutors. Imagine if you will that those messages contained
statements from a former partner/friend that said something like "there is
no way Henry will find out about these fees, right?" Or, " I don't
even like this person, but he has enough money to invest". A text may say
"I don't even want him as a client, but I need to be nice to him so that
he keeps investing," or "Can we charge him double fees for being a
pain in the ass?" While these are all troubling and may even be
incriminating to the person who sent them none is worse than "I don't want
them to know that I am making money off this". Of course, many
secrets that a spouse would not his or her significant other to know about
would also likely be contained in these text messages.
As it turns out, none of these
texts, messages would have been seen by federal prosecutors since a defendant will
generally assert the fifth amendment privilege whenever possible, even if there
is information contained in those texts that is exculpatory since there may be
other text messages that, when taken out of context, will not help a defendant.
Of course, once the case is over either via acquittal or completion of a prison
term, all bets are off. The person implicated now has no incentive to keep this
information private. They can be used in a book (hint, hint), simply placed on
the internet or even emailed in their entirety to the clients this former
friend and partner deceived. I imagine that these clients or even partners
would not be too happy. Nor would the employers or even state regulatory
agencies that oversee the employment of such individual(s), especially if it
violated state regulatory laws such as finance, real estate, insurance, law,
mortgages, lobbying, agriculture, accounting, etc. It is possible that this
former friend and partner would be prohibited by state law from continuing to
work in his and/or her chose profession. It is possible that the information,
once revealed, would destroy a marriage.
There are some who would assert
that the person who was implicated in the crime feel bad for releasing this
information; for possibly ruining someone's life. Well, that argument rings hollow to
someone who has gone through the criminal justice system. He may have been
separated from his family by going to prison, had his career destroyed, had a
strain put on his family life or at the very least had to spend a fortune on
legal fees. There is not going to be any sympathy on his part for any suffering
endured by those who took advantage of and then abandoned him. No, this is
exactly what he and/or she deserves. None of the suffering that they may or may
not endure will even come close to that endured by the defendant himself.
The message for the former
felon is to remember that there will be a time for the truth to come out. Those
who turn on you will ultimately come face to face with their misdeeds. They will
know, their clients will know, their friends will know, and the entire
community will know. If they are upstanding members of their communities on
boards of schools, charities, and religious organizations they will be knocked
down. And for the former friends and partners I say this: Nothing stays secret
forever.
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