White Collar Roundup - September 2018

A Dramatic Downward Departure Deemed Too Dramatic

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Hoffman took the rare step of vacating a below-guidelines sentence as being an abuse of the district judge's discretion. In the case, Peter Hoffman and others were convicted of participating in a fraud scheme related to movie-production credits being offered by the state of Louisiana. In short, the scheme involved fraudulent claims for certain expenditures to obtain credits and "circulate transactions" designed to hoodwink auditors into believing payments had been made for film-related services. Hoffman "tried to steal $2 million from Louisiana beyond what his project earned when all was said and done." And in the end, "[o]nly the state's vigilance in discovering the circular transactions and phony expenditures kept it from being cheated out of the additional millions." After his conviction for this misconduct, the guidelines called for a sentence of