criminal defense
Event: Legal Action Center’s Arthur Liman Public Interest Awards Benefit, NYC, Tues., Nov. 7, 2023
Join us for Legal Action Center’s Arthur Liman Public Interest Awards Benefit on Tuesday, November 7, 2023 at Tribeca Rooftop. Legal Action Center
I am honored to serve on the Board of Directors of Legal Action Center – Jeff
Reserve your tickets now: https://secure.givelively.org/event/legal-action-center/50th-anniversary-arthur-liman-public-interest-awards-benefit
For over half a century, the Legal Action Center has been the only nonprofit law and policy organization in the United States whose sole mission is to fight discrimination against people with arrest or conviction records, substance use disorders, HIV, and AIDS, and to advocate for sound public policies in those areas.
We hope you’ll join us as we build upon our many accomplishments over the past five decades, and work to expand our capacity to advocate for systemic change, set important legal precedents, and provide legal services, education, and training to help people across the country.
Arthur Liman Public Interest Awards Benefit:
Tuesday, November 7, 2023
Tribeca Rooftop
10 Desbrosses Street, New York, NY
Cocktail-Style Dinner Reception | 6:00 pm ET
Awards Program | 7:00 pm ET
Business Attire
For more information about our 2023 Arthur Liman Public Interest Awards Benefit, or LAC’s important work, please contact Sang Kim, Deputy Director of Individual & Corporate Giving at skim@lac.org, (212) 243-1313 or email lacbenefit@wingo.nyc.
Jeff Grant is a white collar fixer. A Michael Clayton fixer, not a Michael Cohen fixer…”, by Larry Levine
A little tongue in cheek, but thank you Larry Levine for this endorsement.
“We resolved the case successfully without a criminal filing against our client.”: A Testimonial from Jason Rhodes, Esq.
I had the pleasure of working with Jeff on a major federal, white collar criminal investigation in New Mexico. I got to see first hand how he was compassionate and caring with our client, helping her through the unknowns and anxiety of the situation, as well as being truthful and practical with her about potential outcomes. Ultimately, we were able to resolve that case successfully without a criminal filing against our client. It was a great success and Jeff demonstrated extreme competence on the law and handling of the issues that arose for our client. I look forward to working with him again. – Jason Bowles, Esq., Albuquerque, New Mexico & Plano, Texas
“Jeff Grant is the Real Deal” – A Testimonial from Evan Osnos of The New Yorker
I am humbled and grateful to Evan Osnos, Staff Reporter for The New Yorker and author of the book, Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury. You can also read Evan’s New Yorker article, “Life After White Collar Crime”, about our White Collar Support Group here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/30/life-after-white-collar-crime.
“Jeff Grant is the real deal; he’s candid and generous with his wisdom. I can’t imagine there is a lawyer in this country more qualified to consider the complex issues facing people prosecuted for white collar crimes and their families.” – Evan Osnos, The New Yorker
Entrepreneur: 9 Things to Know when Hiring a White Collar Criminal Defense Lawyer, by Jeff Grant, Esq.
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Hiring a defense attorney is a monumental task, and most are monumentally unprepared for the effort.
_________________________By Jeff Grant, Reprinted from entrepreneur.com, Sept. 7. 2021
Hiring a white-collar defense lawyer is a monumental task — and one that most entrepreneurs and businesspeople, even those who are sophisticated legal consumers, are monumentally unprepared to do.
I should know.
I’m a lawyer and entrepreneur who became addicted to prescription opioids and served almost 14 months in federal prison for a white-collar crime.
I was disbarred, and then step-by-step, lesson-by-lesson, I worked my way through the ordeal.
On May 5, 2021, my law license was reinstated by the Supreme Court of the State of New York. Here are some takeaways I learned from over three decades of experience on both sides of the legal system:
1. You are in trauma, whether you know it or not
Your entrepreneurship, intellect and survival skills have betrayed you. You are in pain, and will do — and pay — almost anything to make the pain go away. You’ve probably been looking over your shoulder for a long time. It’s normal to be terrified; who wouldn’t be?
Practice point: no matter what you do, the pain is not going away any time soon. Beware of anyone who tells you differently.
2. Long-term plan instead of short-term relief
You know this, but you are probably in fear of what you think is the worst thing that can happen — prison. Prison is not the worst thing that can happen—the worst thing that can happen is not having a comeback story. Keep your eye on the prize. That is, a carefully and thoughtfully constructed long-term plan for health, purpose and prosperity for you and your family. It’s okay (in fact, it’s vital) to give yourself the time and space to step back and make good, thoughtful decisions. You are in the desert, and it will be a long journey to the promised land.
Practice point: This is a marathon, not a sprint. Pace yourself.
3. Your brother-in-law probably knows nothing about hiring a white collar defense lawyer…
…Neither does your dentist, haircutter or almost anyone else. Everyone around you is most likely offering “well-intended advice.” And maybe already picking at your bones. But, there is dependable professional help out there in the form of private general counsel with specific experience in the intricacies of white collar defense and all of the other legal, business, family and emotional issues you are likely to face.
Practice point: These are shark- infested waters and a great general counsel can help you navigate them.
4. There is very little chance that your case will go to trial
Over the past two decades, less than two percent of white collar prosecutions have gone to trial. This means that whether a “trial lawyer” has spent much of the last twenty years as a prosecutor or as a criminal defense attorney, they probably have no (or very little) white collar trial experience. But, we are stuck in an old paradigm where we think we need a trial attorney to swoop in and save the day. This might happen on television, but it almost never happens in real life.
Practice point: Are you suffering from Perry Mason syndrome? Get real, and fast.
5. Ever wonder why lawyers have such fancy offices?
Do you want to pay for expensive overhead (maybe you do) or for excellent lawyering? Isn’t it more important to find out if you and an attorney have a great connection, and can work together? Has your defense attorney taken the time to really understand you and your family, your back story, all of your issues, and your life goals?
Practice point: Are you sure these are the professionals you want to trust with your life?
6. Your criminal defense budget
Your criminal defense lawyer can’t do it all; you’ll need a team. Your defense attorney’s job is to marshal the best resources in order to make a persuasive presentation to the prosecutors, to the probation officer at your pre-sentence investigation, and to the judge. How much of your criminal defense budget/retainer will be allocated for experts (forensic accountants, investigators, mitigation experts, medical experts, etc.) to give a complete and accurate picture of you, your family and your side of the facts?
Practice point: Make sure you fully understand — and approve — the plan and budget up front.
7. Outside your criminal defense budget
Your issues are most likely way bigger, and more complicated, than just your criminal matter. How much of your overall budget will be allocated for other attorneys and professionals (business attorneys, tax attorneys, bankruptcy lawyers, family law, civil litigation, estate planning, accountants, etc.)? How much of your overall budget will be allocated for other obligations (restitution, fines, forfeiture, taxes, antecedent debt, alimony, child support, etc.)?
Practice point: Your defense attorney’s job is to get you the best sentence — they will probably not help you balance other important issues that need to be addressed.
8. Does your spouse/significant other need separate counsel?
In a word, yes. Or at least, probably. You’ve been shouldering this thing alone for so long, it’s hard to be a good partner again. Believe it or not, your spouse’s interests are probably not fully aligned with yours. They have their own body of rights that deserve professional attention.
Practice point: Tell the truth, don’t tell your spouse/significant other that everything will be “okay.”
9. Out of isolation and into community
You don’t have to go through this alone. Believe it or not, there is a rich community of people who have been prosecuted for white collar crimes, and their families, who want to give of themselves freely to help you.
Practice point: Don’t be afraid to reach out, join a white collar support group and benefit from the experiences of those who have been there before you.
Jeffrey D. Grant, Esq.
GrantLaw, PLLC, 43 West 43rd Street, Suite 108, New York, NY 10036-7424
(212) 859-3512, jgrant@grantlaw.com, GrantLaw.com
A purpose-driven attorney.
Jeff Grant is on a mission. After a hiatus from practicing law, he is once again in private practice and is committed to using his legal expertise and life experience to benefit others.
Jeff provides a broad range of legal services in a highly attentive, personalized manner. These include private general counsel, white collar crisis management, strategy and team building, services to family-owned and closely-held businesses, and support to special situation and pro bono clients. He practices in New York and on authorized Federal matters, and works with local co-counsel and criminal defense counsel to represent clients throughout country.
For more than 20 years, Jeff served as managing attorney of a 20+ employee law firm headquartered in New York City and then Westchester County, New York. The firm’s practice areas included representing family-owned and closely-held businesses and their owners, business and real estate transactions, trusts and estates, and litigation.
Jeff is admitted to practice law in the State of New York, and in the Federal District Courts for the Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of New York. He is a member of the American Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, the New York City Bar Association, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Jeff Grant’s full bio: https://grantlaw.com/bio
Progressive Prison Ministries website: https://prisonist.org
Linked In: https://linkedin.com/revjeffgrant
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Law 360: After ‘Varsity Blues’ Conviction, Gordon Caplan Starts Over, by Cara Bayles
Some people mentioned in this article are members of our White Collar Support Group that meets online on Zoom on Monday evenings. We will celebrate our 300th meeting on March 14, 2022, 7 pm ET, 6 pm CT, 5 pm MT, 4 pm PT.
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Reprinted from Law360.com, Feb. 25, 2022, By Cara Bayles · Listen to article
Law360 (February 25, 2022, 4:43 PM EST) — When Gordon Caplan felt the handcuffs click around his wrist one day in March 2019, he thought his life was over. And in one sense, it was.
Caplan had been the co-chair of the international law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP. He had helped build up the firm’s private equity practice. He was named 2018’s “Dealmaker of the Year” by The American Lawyer, one of the top 50 merger and acquisition lawyers by the Global M&A Network, and a private equity MVP by Law360.
But in 2019, Caplan gained a different kind of fame when he was indicted in the “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal.
“My persona was based on my career,” Caplan told Law360 in an interview. “And losing that meant losing my persona. I was very proud of what I built and what I had done and accomplished and was always trying to do a bit more. And then, in a moment, it was gone. No one’s fault but my own.”
Caplan admitted he paid William “Rick” Singer, the mastermind of the scheme, $75,000 to have a test proctor change his daughter’s ACT score. The scandal made national headlines, and its shame ran deep. Willkie cut ties with Caplan. He pled guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud, served a one-month prison sentence and saw his law license suspended for two years. His fall was so sudden and so complete, he contemplated suicide.
“As soon as I was arrested, I knew my life had changed dramatically. And to be direct, for a good portion thereafter, I didn’t think I would survive. I didn’t think I wanted to survive, to live,” Caplan said. “But once I decided to live, then it was about just moving forward through my own created, very difficult situation. That’s what I’ve been doing since, one day at a time.”
Now, nearly three years after his arrest, Caplan is trying to start over, with a new company and a law license newly reinstated by a New York appeals court.
Returning to a profitable law practice will be “not impossible, but difficult” for Caplan, according to Stephen Gillers, a New York University School of Law professor with expertise in legal ethics who has studied attorney disciplinary proceedings in New York.
The two-year suspension imposed on Caplan by a five-judge panel of the First Judicial Department was appropriate, Gillers said, because his crime concerned a personal matter and did not involve his work as an attorney, and because Caplan has paid the price for his crime in other ways.
“He has suffered a great deal as a result of what he did. He has a felony conviction. He is humiliated. He lost his perch at a major American law firm,” Gillers said. “And it’s almost certain that he will never have the same income from law practice that he had before all this happened.”
But that is no longer the point for Caplan, who described starting over as “invigorating.”
“It’s not what I hoped for. It’s not what I ever dreamed would be the case. It’s not easy,” he said. “But what I always loved about what I did was building, and now I’m building again in a different way.”
For 18 months, he has been building up a strategic advisory business called Dutchess Management. The limited liability company, started in 1998 as a holding company for his family’s investments, now has 10 employees from various phases of Caplan’s life.
Two of its employees Caplan met during his longtime involvement with the New York nonprofit PubliColor, which offers after-school arts programming to middle and high school students who are at high risk for dropping out of their underperforming schools.
Dutchess’ chief operating officer is Anna White, who worked with Caplan for years when she was the coordinator of Willkie Farr’s private equity practice.
And then there is Bill Baroni, who serves as an adviser at Dutchess.
Baroni’s résumé includes a stint at Blank Rome LLP, serving as a New Jersey state senator, and working as co-head of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Baroni also served time in federal prison for his role in the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal, known as Bridgegate, before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction. In a unanimous decision written by Justice Elena Kagan, the court found that because the lane closure that caused the gridlock was motivated by political retribution, not money or property, the fraud charges couldn’t stick.
But Baroni had already spent three and a half months in prison by the time his conviction was overturned. He met Caplan in 2019, as he was preparing to serve out his sentence in the same facility in Pennsylvania where Baroni had been incarcerated.
“We were introduced because I wanted to know what it was like,” Caplan said. “And right away, he came up and saw me and met with my family. And when I was inside, he kept in touch with my family every single day. And he’s become an incredible partner and a very good friend.”
Baroni echoed that sentiment, recalling the first time they spoke on the phone, late one Friday night, and feeling “from that first conversation that this was somebody whose contribution to criminal justice reform was going to be something he’d take seriously.”
“I will take the people who have spent time in federal prison over most of the people I worked in politics with,” Baroni said, adding that prisoners are more honest, more loyal, and have been through something “really hard.”
“What I and Gordon and others have committed to is doing something with that experience to make positive change in the system,” he said.
Baroni and Caplan have worked together on the Prison Visitation Fund, which gives money to family members to ameliorate the costs of visiting loved ones incarcerated in out-of-state federal prisons. They advocated for Kyle Kimoto, who was sentenced in 2008 to 29 years in federal prison for running a telemarketing company that had engaged in a deceptive credit card scheme. Then-President Donald Trump commuted his sentence in January 2021.
Dutchess Management has worked on prison condition and reentry projects as well, according to Caplan. He said Dutchess has advocated for getting people released from jail due to health issues at the height of the coronavirus, sought early release for people who were over-sentenced for drug or white collar crimes, helped the International Bar Association get people out of Afghanistan, and worked with the Aleph Institute, which helps people rebuild their lives after a conviction.
Dutchess also does traditional business advising work. Its LinkedIn page says it aided Hudson’s Bay Co. and Insight Venture Partners — both former clients of Caplan from his Willkie days — on a stand-alone e-commerce company for Saks Off 5th.
“The team and I get deeply involved with businesses that are evolving or going through transitions and helping them get through it — through a lot of analysis, through negotiation, through some investing, through coordination and introducing them to other opportunities,” Caplan said. “The world is going through an industrial revolution on steroids. Everything is being digitized, and COVID has only accelerated that. Traditional businesses that don’t understand that and/or haven’t been able to jump on that are left behind.”
While Caplan doesn’t yet know what his newly reinstated law license will mean for the scope of work that Dutchess does, he said he hopes to “prove worthy of it.”
“Now I can use the legal part of my brain on problems again, and I hope to put it to good use,” he said.
Caplan speaks of Dutchess’ profitable work and its pro bono efforts as both being integral to the organization.
“I’ve built a small group of extremely bright, hardworking people who are focused on helping growing and evolving businesses get difficult things done, and at the same time, doing a tremendous amount of work to help people that could use our help that are not otherwise for profit,” he said.
It’s not unusual for people with past white collar convictions to return to their former careers with a new sense of purpose, according to Jeff Grant, an attorney and minister who runs the White Collar Support Group. The group boasts 450 members and holds weekly video chat meetings in a format not unlike that of Alcoholics Anonymous, with the serenity prayer, member testimonials and resource sharing. They discuss a topic each week, which might be something concrete, like the First Step Act, a 2018 federal law geared toward reentry after prison, or something more philosophical, like gratitude.
Nor is Caplan and Baroni’s new focus on criminal justice reform unusual. Many members of the support group — which Grant says is diverse, but majority white, mostly male, and skews toward people in their 40s and 50s who were fairly successful — have emerged from their convictions and prison time with a transformative life experience and a fresh perspective.
“For Gordon or Bill or anyone from our support group who you would ask, there’s just a new definition of success,” Grant said. “I have more opportunities to have a profound place in the advancement of society. Some people don’t have to go to prison to do that. But I did.”
Grant was disbarred about 20 years ago for dipping into his clients’ escrow accounts, then served a nearly 14-month federal prison sentence for applying for a fraudulent disaster-relief loan for his law office, falsely claiming it was impacted by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. His addiction to prescription opioids was in part to blame for “a waterfall of bad decisions,” he said.
After prison, Grant went to divinity school. He started the support group a few years later, out of a concern that people with white collar convictions like his were “suffering in silence and isolation all over the country.” The support group — which has always been virtual — took off during the pandemic, as video calls became the norm, and after the group was featured in the New Yorker.
“Prison is not the worst thing that can happen to you,” Grant told Law360. “The worst thing that can happen to you is not having a comeback story.”
Grant’s law license was reinstated last year. His law firm’s website mentions both his past opioid addiction and his federal prison sentence — hardly the typical fodder of an attorney bio. But Grant is interested in working with people in crisis, who are going through what he dealt with.
“There aren’t many lawyers who will help someone prosecuted for white collar crime to navigate the system, and navigate their lives and their issues all the way through to a place years out where they have a chance of getting their life back or living a life that’s joyous,” he said. “Criminal defense lawyers, you usually don’t see them again after sentencing.”
Baroni would agree. In addition to working at Dutchess, he also teaches criminal law at Seton Hall University School of Law. He said that legal academia often focuses on investigation and prosecution — Fourth Amendment issues, trial practice — but not the “third phase” of criminal law, which he calls “jail to home.”
“It’s coming back to society, it’s getting civil rights back, it’s conditions of incarceration,” he said. “There’s an entire body of law there that even a number of criminal defense attorneys don’t necessarily appreciate or focus on.”
Caplan said in his former life as a corporate deal lawyer, he didn’t give much thought to issues of incarceration. Now, he said, he’s lived it. And while he had the resources and family support to navigate reentry, the difficulties of banking and getting insurance and starting a new career, he knows most people don’t have the same resources he enjoys.
“I think the overwhelming majority of people in prison are there for basically drug offenses and-or relatively petty fraud offenses, and the sentencing at the federal and state level in this country is extremely punitive,” he said. “And then the conditions in federal penitentiaries are not geared to success. They’re geared to failure. Recidivism is extremely high. Being a felon — that’s a life sentence. Even if you spend a month in jail, if you’re a felon, you’re a felon for life.”
Article: We were Featured on Wells Street with CNBC’s Jane Wells, Oct. 13, 2021
Fellow Travelers Mike Neubig and Jeff Grant are featured in this article, and are members of of our White Collar Support Group that meets online on Zoom on Monday evenings.
Reprinted from Wells Street, by Jane Wells, Oct. 13, 2021.
Pour yourself a cup of coffee, because this is quite a read.
Who’s more despicable: a thief who robs a 7-11 at gunpoint, or Elizabeth Holmes, the former billionaire (on paper) accused of perpetrating a massive fraud with her blood-testing company, Theranos?
It may be easier for the armed robber to be forgiven than Holmes. He wasn’t born and raised in an environment of privilege. She had everything.
There are several programs helping “blue-collar” ex-felons find jobs and start life over after prison, but there are no such programs for white-collar ex-cons. (“White collar” traditionally describes a nonviolent crime involving financial fraud.)
“You had your chance and you blew it,” says Mike Neubig, a former CEO convicted of lying to investors. He’s struggled to find steady work, and he realizes that most people couldn’t care less. He says their message is, “We don’t have sympathy,” but he asks, “How long do you want us punished?”
Even in a tight labor market, where accountants in particular are in high demand, few companies will take a risk on someone who’s broken trust in the past.
There are tens of thousands of highly skilled men and women who’ve done their time and need to go back to work. They’re testing different interview strategies. Some succeed, some don’t, and now some of these former inmates are leaning on each other. “White-collar guys are smart,” one told me.
Meet three men who explain what they did wrong, what’s next, and what you need to know if you ever end up in prison.
THE HIGH-PROFILE AUDITOR CAUGHT IN AN FBI STING
I was surprised several months ago when Scott London reached out to me on LinkedIn with a nice message about an online forum I moderated. Surprised, because the last time we saw each other was in 2013, when I was chasing Scott around a federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles after he was arrested by the FBI.
But Scott London is a nice guy.
A nice guy who broke the law.
Scott was a senior partner in the Los Angeles office of auditing giant KMPG. He gave a friend, Brian Shaw, insider information on a couple of companies, and Shaw used that information to trade shares and make about $1.6 million.
“I gave him a series of tips over 10, 12 months,” Scott admits. He says he crossed the line from legal to illegal slowly, after listening for months as Shaw explained how his business was struggling. Scott says he had no idea that Shaw would use the information to make such huge gains. “I thought he was going to trade and make $10,000, $20,000.”
Still, “The facts were that I gave him that information,” and in exchange, Scott received money and gifts worth between $50,000–$70,000.
But the suspiciously timed trades netting a whopping $1.6 million got the attention of law enforcement.
The FBI contacted Brian Shaw, and he agreed to set up his friend in a sting, meeting Scott in a parking lot and passing him an envelope filled with $5,000 (money provided by the FBI). This gave the feds the evidence they needed to bring a case.
When federal agents showed up at Scott London’s door, they pulled out the photo of him taking the cash. “I did it,” he told them on the spot, admitting everything.
Scott pled guilty to insider trading in July of 2013, and he spoke to me that day outside the courthouse.
He spent a year in federal prison.
THE FIRST NIGHT IN PRISON
When we met again recently for this newsletter, Scott told me that when he first went to prison, he was sent to the same facility housing Brian Shaw. He says prison officials were concerned about having both of these ex-friends in the same place, so Scott was immediately put in the SHU (pronounced “shoe”), the Special Housing Unit, aka solitary confinement.
Nobody told Scott why he was going to solitary or how long he’d stay. “It was the worst period of time in my life.” He had no access to a phone for a week, and he spent 23 hours a day in a small cell. “There are people screaming in there.”
He was there for 30 days.
Then he was moved to the general prison population at a federal facility in Lompoc, California, where he spent most of his days doing landscape maintenance at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
“There’s a feeling I used to have daily: ‘How could I be so stupid and do something like this?’,” he tells me. Fortunately, Scott’s family survived on savings and his wife’s income.
Shortly after his release from prison, he reached out to a friend who ran a tech company. “I said, ‘I don’t care what I do.’” The CEO took a chance on him, even though hiring a high-profile ex-felon caused some “awkward conversations” at the company.
Within a few months, Scott was promoted to Chief Operating Officer.
He realizes that his success after prison is very unusual. Scott thinks the main reason he was able to bounce back is because he never denied the charges. Not to the FBI. Not to his friends.
“I had more people advising me, ‘Deny, deny, deny, there’s no evidence.’” But Scott thinks being honest saved his career. “That builds credibility amongst the community you live in.” It’s something he talks about in ethics training for aspiring accountants.
Still, he knows he’ll never again be a top manager at a top accounting firm.
“I don’t think there’s any way that anybody who committed a white-collar crime can go back to the industry they were in,” he says.
THE EDUCATION CEO“I wouldn’t trade it. It’s created the person I am now.”
Mike Neubig used to worry that a potential employer would find out about his criminal record. Now he writes about it openly on a blog.
Mike was the youngest of five children in a poor household. “I felt invisible.” He was also the first to go to college, where a professor was impressed with his writing. “Nobody ever told me I was smart before.” That sparked an interest in education: “I wanted to give back and try to impact the type of kids that I was, that were kind of invisible.”
He ended up becoming a teacher and eventually got involved in restructuring education. He wrote a book, created his own business — Capture Educational Consulting Services — and raised $3.9 million in startup funds from investors.
Then things went south.
He lied to investors about how well the company was doing.
“I think that investors make the assumption that you are ready to handle sudden success, hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says.
His board fired him.
Then one day two years later when he was home alone, the doorbell rang.
“I peeked out and I thought I saw the sleeve of a policeman’s uniform,” Mike recalls. “I’d never had anything besides a speeding ticket in my lifetime, and my heart started pounding.”
He went to open the garage door to see if anyone was in the back. “There was a bunch of police cars out there, and they came underneath the garage door and said they had a warrant for my arrest and to put my hands behind my back, and I was just in shock.”
Soon everyone heard the news. His wife’s prayer group found out. So did the parents of the football team he helped coach. “People looked at me like I had the plague.”
Mike reached a deal to plead guilty to five felony counts of theft and unauthorized use of property. He received a suspended prison sentence, spent a total of four weeks in jail, and was ordered to pay $2.3 million in restitution. He pays what restitution he can, based on his income.
Which isn’t much.
Unlike Scott London, Mike Neubig has struggled to find a job. His story is more common. As soon as an employer does a background check, it’s all over. Google “Mike Neubig” and see what pops up.
Every time he lands an interview, he tries to figure out when to reveal his past. Sometimes he mentions it right off the top; sometimes during a second interview (but only halfway through, “so that you can finish the interview with reminding them how great you are”); sometimes he waits until after he receives a conditional offer of employment.
None of it’s worked out, even when he’s been told he’s the perfect candidate. Mike has been fired from two jobs after managers discovered his record, and he’s had three offer letters revoked. “Once they know, they don’t want anything to do with me,” he says. “How do you build trust again?”
Even entry-level custodial jobs may be off-limits. “Can you trust the white-collar ex-felon late at night alone in an office?”
THE $140,000 JOB
Here’s one particularly painful example. Mike says he landed a job in San Francisco after his indictment but before his conviction. It was a great job, paying $140,000, and somehow he passed the background check (obviously no one Googled him). He started working, and then he flew to New York for a week of training.
Two days in, his boss calls a meeting. “I start to show him my computer and all the things I’ve done, and I look up, and the lady from HR is on the screen.” The boss revealed they’d learned about his indictment and demanded he immediately hand over the computer. “The lady on the screen says, ‘Tell us a little bit about what happened,’” he says, “but they had already taken my computer.” (I reached out to the company and the boss, but I never got a reply.)
Mike is no longer running from his record. “It’s all over my LinkedIn page.” He thinks it’s important to be public about his past and to share what he’s learned. “As my therapist said, ‘You have to rebuild your whole identity at age 50.’”
He’s even started to get a little work. Newsflash: Just last week, Mike landed a contract to be a marketing director. The company knows his background and hired him anyway. “It’s really brought me self-esteem I haven’t had in a long time.”
Despite everything, he says the experience made him a better man. And his wife and daughters stuck with him.
“It was awful, but I wouldn’t trade it. It’s created the person I am now.”
THE LAWYER TURNED PREACHER “I tried to kill myself that night…”
Jeff Grant was a very successful lawyer in New York who became addicted to prescription opioids after rupturing his Achilles’ tendon. He started stealing money from clients. Then to save his business after 9/11, he applied for a Small Business Administration loan, falsely claiming his office was a block from Ground Zero. “It was a stupid, crazy thing to do.”
He received $247,000.
In July of 2002, when it became clear he’d committed fraud, he surrendered his law license. “I tried to kill myself that night with an overdose of prescription opioids.”
Friends came to the rescue and drove him to rehab. Jeff became sober. Then, nearly two years later, “I got a call from two federal agents to tell me that there was a warrant out for my arrest in connection with the misrepresentations I made on the 9/11 loan.”
He turned himself in and pled guilty. “All I wanted to do was accept responsibility and pay my debt and move forward.”
In 2006 he went to prison for over a year.
Jeff was sent to a correctional institute in Pennsylvania, where he says there were “five stockbrokers, two former doctors and one former lawyer — that was me — and about 1,500 drug dealers.” (More on lessons he learned in prison below… wow!)
When Jeff got out of prison, his life was a mess. “I didn’t have a job. My family was in disarray.” He was still in recovery, though, and went to court-managed drug and alcohol counseling several times a week. A counselor advised him to begin re-establishing his reputation by doing volunteer work. That led to some paid positions.
In 2009 he decided to go to seminary, even though he’d been raised Jewish. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary and started working in churches.
He started Progressive Prison Ministries in 2014 to specifically provide emotional and spiritual support to white-collar criminals and their families. The group holds virtual meetings every Monday night, and everyone from ex-cons to people awaiting trial call in. “We give them hope and some guidance on how to move forward,” Jeff explains. While the program is “spiritually oriented,” it is non-denominational. “We serve people of all faiths or no faith whatsoever.”
The group includes former CEOs, captains of industry, a former local sheriff and a discredited ex-district attorney. Many of them share their stories on Jeff’s podcast, White Collar Week.
“This is hard work, Jane. This is like therapy on steroids.”
Time for their advice…
HOW TO SURVIVE PRISON
— If you’re going to prison, memorize important phone numbers or have them mailed to you inside. Nobody remembers phone numbers anymore.
— Tell visitors not to handle any cash ahead of a visit, because there may be drug residue on it.
“The single most important thing to know about going to prison is to show respect and be able to receive respect,” says Jeff Grant, who adds that respect is mostly demonstrated by “keeping your mouth shut.” People who ask a lot of questions are suspected of being rats.
Prison has a lot of rules which are not intuitive at first. “It’s like being on a plane and landing in Manchuria,” he says. “You can get off the plane, but you don’t speak the language, you don’t know the customs, you don’t know the culture, you don’t have the money.”“You don’t want to know how he acquired it.”
For example, on his third day in prison, Jeff went over to a weight stack to bench press. It was very early in the morning, and nobody was working out.
“Somebody came up to me and said, ‘Are you planning on using that equipment?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’” The guy told Jeff, “When you’re done, come talk to me.” Jeff said he was so freaked out, he did one bench press before going back to talk to the guy, who suggested Jeff talk to his “cellie,” his cellmate.
When Jeff asked his “cellie” what the deal was, the cellmate told Jeff the man who spoke to him “owns” the weight equipment during that part of the day. “You don’t want to know how he acquired it,” the cellmate told him. “If you want to use that equipment during that time of day, you’ve got to pay him for it.”
Jeff asked why the guy didn’t just tell him that. “He doesn’t know you,” his cellmate said. “He doesn’t know if you’re a rat.” White-collar inmates are generally older and often white, as is Jeff, and that can make other inmates suspect them of being prison plants.
Jeff began to walk the track around the prison yard, 10 miles a day. “After about three months, a ‘shot caller’ came up,” he says, referring to the head of a gang. “He said to me, ‘I hear you can be trusted.’” Jeff knew by now not to speak. “So I just nodded my head, and he said, ‘All right, then.’”
The next day other inmates suddenly started talking to Jeff, the former lawyer, and asking for legal advice. He ended up helping many of them with divorces and bankruptcies.“You can’t trust anybody.”
Scott London paid a consultant a few hundred dollars to get advice before starting his prison sentence. “Turns out [the advice] was mostly wrong.”
Here’s what he learned on his own about prison.
“You can’t trust anybody, you can’t trust what people tell you, you have to look out for yourself.” Scott says there will be inmates who want to get you in trouble. At the same time, “Don’t treat people poorly.”
He says the first couple of weeks were a process of learning the rules, such as, “This thing is only for coffee. Don’t wash your hands in that sink.”
Then came the occasional challenges, “where somebody is exerting their influence.” Scott says you can react in one of three ways:
Cowering — “From that time on, they would kind of own you throughout your stay.”
Defiant — “You just go over the top and try and be aggressive with them.”
Something in-between — “Hold your ground and say, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean any disrespect. I’m here to do my thing, you’re here doing your thing.’”
Scott chose the last strategy. “In the end, I made some reasonable friends there that I spent most of my time with.” Finding such people helped the time go by. “If you were just trying to be a loner, and you isolate yourself, it’s going to be very, very difficult to get through.”
AND AFTER PRISON?
There are “Fair Chance Employers” who are willing to hire someone with a criminal record to reduce recidivism rates, but Mike Neubig says they focus on blue-collar ex-felons, not people like him.
In California, the 2018 Fair Chance Act bans employers from doing a criminal background check until a conditional offer has been made. The offer can only be rescinded after “considering the nature and gravity of the criminal history, the time that has passed since the conviction, and the nature of the job you are seeking.”
It doesn’t take much to convince a company to rescind an offer to someone who previously committed fraud.
So Mike says he’s found value in volunteering with the youth ministry at his church, and with Jeff Grant’s Progressive Prison Ministries. “Find a support group,” he says. “Don’t be afraid to admit what you did… otherwise the shame will just kill you. It still does at times.”“Think about the people in your life.”
Scott London says white-collar ex-cons need to leverage the skills they have and reinvent themselves in a career different from the one they had.
He also has two pieces advice for staying out of trouble in the first place. First, don’t make critical work decisions when you’re vulnerable. “You might be going through a divorce, you might have financial issues.” This could put you in the wrong frame of mind to make moral and ethical choices.
Second, “If you are about to go over the line… think about the people in your life.” Those people will suffer greatly. “My son came home from school one day, and there was a news truck sitting outside, and he had no idea what was going on.” If Scott had that image in his mind before he broke the law, he says he wouldn’t have broken the law.“We have a right to a second life.”
Jeff Grant has done what seemed impossible and won back his law license. Even some of his old clients from 20 years ago have come back.
This gives him hope.
“We’re now hopefully being regarded not so much as castoffs anymore,” he says, “but more as people who’ve gone through some difficult challenges, albeit mostly by our own hand, and who have a right to recover, have a right to a second life.”
Jane Wells would love to hear what you think. Please feel free to email jane@janewells.com.
Entrepreneur: 9 Things to Know when Hiring a White Collar Criminal Defense Lawyer, by Jeff Grant, Esq., Sept. 7, 2021
Hiring a defense attorney is a monumental task, and most are monumentally unprepared for the effort.
_________________________
By Jeff Grant, Reprinted from entrepreneur.com, Sept. 7. 2021
Hiring a white-collar defense lawyer is a monumental task — and one that most entrepreneurs and businesspeople, even those who are sophisticated legal consumers, are monumentally unprepared to do.
I should know.
I’m a lawyer and entrepreneur who became addicted to prescription opioids and served almost 14 months in federal prison for a white-collar crime.
I was disbarred, and then step-by-step, lesson-by-lesson, I worked my way through the ordeal.
On May 5, 2021, my law license was reinstated by the Supreme Court of the State of New York. Here are some takeaways I learned from over three decades of experience on both sides of the legal system:
1. You are in trauma, whether you know it or not
Your entrepreneurship, intellect and survival skills have betrayed you. You are in pain, and will do — and pay — almost anything to make the pain go away. You’ve probably been looking over your shoulder for a long time. It’s normal to be terrified; who wouldn’t be?
Practice point: no matter what you do, the pain is not going away any time soon. Beware of anyone who tells you differently.
2. Long-term plan instead of short-term relief
You know this, but you are probably in fear of what you think is the worst thing that can happen — prison. Prison is not the worst thing that can happen—the worst thing that can happen is not having a comeback story. Keep your eye on the prize. That is, a carefully and thoughtfully constructed long-term plan for health, purpose and prosperity for you and your family. It’s okay (in fact, it’s vital) to give yourself the time and space to step back and make good, thoughtful decisions. You are in the desert, and it will be a long journey to the promised land.
Practice point: This is a marathon, not a sprint. Pace yourself.
3. Your brother-in-law probably knows nothing about hiring a white collar defense lawyer…
…Neither does your dentist, haircutter or almost anyone else. Everyone around you is most likely offering “well-intended advice.” And maybe already picking at your bones. But, there is dependable professional help out there in the form of private general counsel with specific experience in the intricacies of white collar defense and all of the other legal, business, family and emotional issues you are likely to face.
Practice point: These are shark- infested waters and a great general counsel can help you navigate them.
4. There is very little chance that your case will go to trial
Over the past two decades, less than two percent of white collar prosecutions have gone to trial. This means that whether a “trial lawyer” has spent much of the last twenty years as a prosecutor or as a criminal defense attorney, they probably have no (or very little) white collar trial experience. But, we are stuck in an old paradigm where we think we need a trial attorney to swoop in and save the day. This might happen on television, but it almost never happens in real life.
Practice point: Are you suffering from Perry Mason syndrome? Get real, and fast.
5. Ever wonder why lawyers have such fancy offices?
Do you want to pay for expensive overhead (maybe you do) or for excellent lawyering? Isn’t it more important to find out if you and an attorney have a great connection, and can work together? Has your defense attorney taken the time to really understand you and your family, your back story, all of your issues, and your life goals?
Practice point: Are you sure these are the professionals you want to trust with your life?
6. Your criminal defense budget
Your criminal defense lawyer can’t do it all; you’ll need a team. Your defense attorney’s job is to marshal the best resources in order to make a persuasive presentation to the prosecutors, to the probation officer at your pre-sentence investigation, and to the judge. How much of your criminal defense budget/retainer will be allocated for experts (forensic accountants, investigators, mitigation experts, medical experts, etc.) to give a complete and accurate picture of you, your family and your side of the facts?
Practice point: Make sure you fully understand — and approve — the plan and budget up front.
7. Outside your criminal defense budget
Your issues are most likely way bigger, and more complicated, than just your criminal matter. How much of your overall budget will be allocated for other attorneys and professionals (business attorneys, tax attorneys, bankruptcy lawyers, family law, civil litigation, estate planning, accountants, etc.)? How much of your overall budget will be allocated for other obligations (restitution, fines, forfeiture, taxes, antecedent debt, alimony, child support, etc.)?
Practice point: Your defense attorney’s job is to get you the best sentence — they will probably not help you balance other important issues that need to be addressed.
8. Does your spouse/significant other need separate counsel?
In a word, yes. Or at least, probably. You’ve been shouldering this thing alone for so long, it’s hard to be a good partner again. Believe it or not, your spouse’s interests are probably not fully aligned with yours. They have their own body of rights that deserve professional attention.
Practice point: Tell the truth, don’t tell your spouse/significant other that everything will be “okay.”
9. Out of isolation and into community
You don’t have to go through this alone. Believe it or not, there is a rich community of people who have been prosecuted for white collar crimes, and their families, who want to give of themselves freely to help you.
Practice point: Don’t be afraid to reach out, join a white collar support group and benefit from the experiences of those who have been there before you.
Jeff Grant, Esq.
GrantLaw, PLLC, 43 West 43rd Street, Suite 108, New York, NY 10036-7424
(212) 859-3512, jgrant@grantlaw.com, GrantLaw.com
A purpose-driven attorney.
Jeff Grant is on a mission. After a hiatus from practicing law, he is once again in private practice and is committed to using his legal expertise and life experience to benefit others.
Jeff provides a broad range of legal services in a highly attentive, personalized manner. They include private general counsel, white collar crisis management to individuals and families, services to family-owned and closely-held businesses, plus support to special situation and pro bono clients.
For more than 20 years, Jeff served as managing attorney of a 20+ employee law firm headquartered in New York City and then Westchester County, New York. The firm’s practice areas included representing family-owned and closely-held businesses and their owners, business and real estate transactions, trusts and estates, and litigation.
Jeff Grant’s full bio: https://grantlaw.com/bio
Progressive Prison Ministries website: https://prisonist.org
Linked In: https://linkedin.com/revjeffgrant
Jeff Grant is Practicing Law Again: Announcing the Formation of GrantLaw PLLC
Jeffrey D. Grant, Esq.
Private General Counsel/White Collar Crisis Management
GrantLaw, PLLC, Jeffrey D. Grant, Esq., 43 West 43rd Street, Suite 108, New York, New York 10036-7424, (212) 859-3512, jgrant@grantlaw.com
Now again in private practice, Jeff is an attorney and counselor-at-law providing private general counsel, legal crisis management, and dispute strategy and management services to individuals and families, family-owned and closely-held businesses, the white collar justice community, and special situation and pro bono clients.
For over 20 years Jeff served as managing attorney of a 20+ employee law firm headquartered in New York City, and then Westchester County, NY. Among other practice areas, the firm engaged in representation of family-owned/closely held businesses and their owners, business and real estate transactions, trusts and estates, and litigation. Jeff also served as outside General Counsel to large family-owned real estate equities, management and brokerage organizations, in which role he retained, coordinated and oversaw the work of many specialty law firms, including white collar defense firms.