Was I Wrongly Prosecuted? An Investigation into the Honest Services Wire Fraud Case That Changed My Life

 

Was I Wrongly Prosecuted? An Investigation into the Honest Services Wire Fraud Case That Changed My Life

Introduction: The Price of Power and the Question of Process

I still remember the day my life changed. It didn’t happen with a knock at the door or a siren in the distance. It began quietly — with a letter, a phone call, and an accusation that would alter the course of my life forever. I was being accused of a federal crime. Not because the FBI had uncovered a criminal conspiracy, not because a grand jury had reviewed months of carefully gathered federal evidence, but because a private corporation — Hewlett-Packard — had conducted its own investigation and decided I was guilty.

The FBI never came. No federal agent ever interviewed me. No federal warrant was executed. And yet somehow, I found myself standing before a federal judge, accused by the United States of America of honest services wire fraud — a charge rooted not in evidence uncovered by federal authorities, but in assumptions built by a private company and a state-level task force.

This is my story.
And it is also an indictment of a system that allows the federal government to borrow corporate accusations, skip due process, and call it justice.

The Beginning of the Ordeal

In 2000, after nearly two decades in business, I was charged with a federal offense that carried the weight and stigma of fraud. The U.S. Attorney’s Office claimed that by taking a friend — an HP employee — on vacation, giving three small gifts, and lending him money for a used minivan, I had “deprived Hewlett-Packard of the honest services of its employee.” It didn’t matter that our friendship began fifteen years earlier, long before my company ever did business with HP. It didn’t matter that there was no contract manipulation, no falsified invoices, no evidence of intent to defraud. The narrative had already been written — by corporate investigators and amplified by prosecutors hungry for a win.

That’s the part most people don’t see: how quickly an allegation can become a conviction when the power of the federal government is behind it. When they want you, they don’t need truth — they need leverage. They use the threat of decades in prison, the financial devastation of a trial, and the humiliation of public accusation to make even the innocent plead guilty. And that’s exactly what I did.

I pled guilty.
Not because I was guilty of a crime, but because I was guilty of being human — of being afraid, exhausted, and unable to fight the weight of the system.

The Charge: Honest Services Wire Fraud

To understand the magnitude of what happened, you must first understand what I was charged with. Honest services wire fraud, under 18 U.S.C. §1346, is one of the vaguest and most controversial statutes in American law. It was intended to target public officials who accepted bribes or kickbacks — people who clearly used their offices for personal gain. But over time, prosecutors began applying it to corporate executives and private citizens, turning personal relationships and business favors into federal crimes.

The law reads like a single sentence — twenty-eight words that sound more like philosophy than law:

“For the purposes of this chapter, the term ‘scheme or artifice to defraud’ includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.”

Those words, vague and undefined, gave prosecutors almost unlimited power. They could charge anyone, for almost anything, by claiming that someone, somewhere, had been deprived of “honest services.” It was a legal trapdoor — invisible until you stepped on it.

In my case, the accusation was that my friendship with an HP employee somehow corrupted his loyalty to his employer. There was no bribe. No quid pro quo. No contract manipulation or fraud. Just the assumption that kindness must have been calculated — that friendship could only exist for gain. That assumption cost me my freedom, my reputation, and years of my life.

No Federal Investigation

What makes my case particularly disturbing is that no federal agency ever investigated it. The FBI — the agency responsible for investigating federal crimes — played no role. Instead, Hewlett-Packard, acting as investigator, judge, and executioner, conducted its own internal inquiry. They gathered evidence, interpreted motives, and passed their conclusions to a state-level high-tech task force in California. The task force executed a search warrant, seized my company’s records, and then handed everything to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. From there, the Department of Justice filed federal charges based entirely on HP’s version of events.

No FBI oversight.
No federal interviews.
No verification of facts.

That’s like allowing the plaintiff in a civil lawsuit to serve as prosecutor, witness, and jury all at once. It’s an affront to the idea of due process. The federal government, with all its resources and expertise, simply accepted a corporation’s word as gospel truth. They never asked the most basic question: Did we independently verify any of this?

If that doesn’t shake your confidence in the system, it should.

The Law That Wasn’t What They Said It Was

Ten years after my conviction, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that would have changed everything. In Skilling v. United States (2010), the Court narrowed §1346 dramatically. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority, declaring that the honest services statute could only be applied to bribery or kickback schemes — not to vague notions of loyalty, favoritism, or moral failings.

In other words: unless there was a clear exchange of value for influence, it wasn’t a crime.

That single decision, had it existed in 2000, would have exonerated me completely.

My actions didn’t involve bribery. There was no kickback, no hidden benefit, no promise of business in return. I treated a friend as a friend. The Supreme Court made it clear that this is not, and never was, what §1346 was meant to criminalize. Yet the U.S. Attorney’s Office used that same statute to paint me as a fraudster — a man who supposedly corrupted a corporate employee through generosity.

Power Without Accountability

Once I entered the system, it became clear that federal prosecution isn’t about truth — it’s about control. Prosecutors wield enormous power. They decide the charges, the plea offers, and, in many ways, the outcome. The vast majority of federal cases never reach trial because defendants are coerced into plea deals under the threat of overwhelming sentences. This imbalance of power has been called “the trial penalty” — the enormous gap between the sentence offered in a plea deal and the sentence threatened if you dare to go to trial.

I faced that same pressure. My attorney advised me that fighting the case would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and could end in a twenty-year prison sentence. The plea offer? A single count, one year and a day. It felt like choosing between drowning in deep water or swallowing a poison pill. Neither was justice, but one seemed survivable.

I took the deal.

But the truth never got its day in court.
No jury heard my story. No cross-examination challenged HP’s motives. No judge reviewed the legality of the search. The process was over before it ever began — efficient, polished, and devastating.

A System Built on Fear

The federal government often justifies its reach by invoking the idea of deterrence — the belief that harsh penalties prevent future crime. But what I experienced wasn’t deterrence. It was intimidation. The DOJ didn’t care whether I was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. They cared about securing a conviction, closing a case, and moving up the ladder. I was a statistic in a press release — proof that they were tough on white-collar crime.

But the truth is that honest services wire fraud had become a catch-all for conduct that wasn’t even criminal. It punished perceived disloyalty rather than proven deceit. It blurred the lines between ethics and law, and it gave prosecutors a moral hammer to hit any nail they chose. When the Supreme Court finally clarified that the statute was never meant to apply this broadly, thousands of people — including me — had already paid the price.

Why I’m Writing This Book

I’m not writing this to relitigate my past. I’m writing it to expose the cracks in a system that calls itself fair but often functions as a machine of expedience. I want readers — citizens, lawyers, judges, and lawmakers — to see how easily justice can become performance, how quickly fairness can become formality, and how dangerously thin the wall is between private power and public prosecution.

This is not just my story; it’s a warning.
Because if the federal government can prosecute a man without a federal investigation, anyone can become the next target. If corporations can act as the gatekeepers of justice, due process becomes a privilege, not a right.

Through the chapters that follow, I will take you step by step through the legal, constitutional, and moral failures of my case — not with bitterness, but with purpose. I will show you how 18 U.S.C. §1346 and §1343 were misused, how federal jurisdiction was stretched, how constitutional protections were ignored, and how the plea-bargaining process has become the government’s most powerful weapon.

I will also highlight the reforms needed — clear definitions, mandatory investigative standards, transparency in prosecutorial discretion, and oversight when corporate investigations lead to criminal charges. These are not partisan issues; they are human ones. Justice is supposed to be blind, but when it starts taking sides with power, blindness becomes complicity.

The Question That Haunts Me

Even now, decades later, one question still echoes in my mind:

Was I wrongly prosecuted?

Not was I perfect, or did I make mistakes. I already know the answer to those. The question is whether the system treated me — or anyone — with fairness, objectivity, and integrity. Whether it followed the law as it was written, or twisted it to serve convenience. Whether justice was served, or simply performed.

If my case can happen to me — a businessman with no criminal record, no intent to harm, and no federal investigation — it can happen to anyone.

That’s why this story must be told.

Chapter 1: The Legal Foundations of Honest Services Fraud

When I first heard the term honest services wire fraud, I had no idea what it meant. The phrase sounded vague, almost poetic, like something out of a moral philosophy class rather than a criminal indictment. I wasn’t accused of stealing money, forging documents, or lying under oath. I was accused of depriving Hewlett-Packard of the “intangible right to honest services.” I remember thinking: What does that even mean?

That single phrase — twenty-eight words codified under 18 U.S.C. §1346 — became the basis for my federal conviction.

A Law Without a Definition

Section 1346 is deceptively short. It reads:

“For the purposes of this chapter, the term ‘scheme or artifice to defraud’ includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.”

That’s it. No definitions. No boundaries. Just a single sentence that gave prosecutors almost unlimited discretion to interpret what “honest services” meant.

Originally, the law was meant to target public officials — politicians who took bribes or kickbacks while in office. In the 1940s and 1950s, courts used mail and wire fraud statutes to convict corrupt public servants who misused their positions for personal gain. But in 1987, the Supreme Court, in McNally v. United States, ruled that the mail and wire fraud laws were limited to protecting property rights — not the vague notion of “honest government.” That decision wiped out decades of corruption cases.

Congress didn’t like that outcome. So, in 1988, they reacted by creating §1346 to “restore” those convictions. But rather than carefully defining what counted as a violation, they left it open-ended — essentially telling prosecutors, You decide what honest services means.

That vagueness was a gift to overzealous U.S. Attorneys. It gave them the power to take civil or ethical violations and turn them into federal crimes.

When Friendship Became a Felony

In my case, prosecutors used §1346 to criminalize friendship. I had known the HP employee in question since 1985. We were business associates long before HP was ever a client. Over time, our relationship grew into a genuine friendship — our families vacationed together, we exchanged small gifts, and we helped each other out when times were tough.

But when HP’s internal auditors began investigating potential conflicts of interest, they found our friendship inconvenient. They decided that my generosity must have influenced his business decisions. Instead of seeing loyalty and long-standing trust, they saw corruption.

They handed their findings to the California High-Tech Task Force, which then turned them over to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. By the time the federal government got involved, the narrative had been set: I had supposedly deprived HP of the “honest services” of its employee by being too close to him.

It didn’t matter that HP had no written policy prohibiting personal friendships with vendors. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t influenced a single purchasing decision. All that mattered was the appearance of impropriety. The U.S. Attorney’s Office built a case on that appearance — and §1346 gave them the legal cover to do it.

The absurdity of it didn’t matter. When the government controls the interpretation of an undefined law, absurdity becomes authority.

The Supreme Court Steps In — Too Late for Me

A decade after my conviction, the Supreme Court finally recognized how dangerous §1346 had become. In Skilling v. United States (2010) — a case involving former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling — the Court ruled that the honest services statute was unconstitutionally vague unless limited to bribes and kickbacks. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority that, without such limits, the law invited arbitrary enforcement and violated the due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment.

In other words, the law was so broad that it let prosecutors invent crimes that didn’t exist.

The Court’s ruling was a landmark correction. It meant that ordinary business relationships, personal favors, and even ethical missteps could no longer be prosecuted as criminal acts unless they involved an explicit exchange — something of value given in return for influence or official action.

In my case, there was no such exchange. There was friendship, generosity, and mutual respect. If Skilling had been decided in 2000, my case would have been dismissed before it ever reached a courtroom. But by the time that ruling came down, I had already served my sentence. Justice, when delayed that long, isn’t justice at all — it’s an afterthought.

When Ambiguity Becomes a Weapon

The real danger of vague laws like §1346 is not just that they allow bad prosecutions — it’s that they destroy trust in the legal system. When the government can redefine a statute at will, citizens can no longer predict what’s legal and what isn’t. It’s the opposite of the rule of law. It’s rule by law — a system where statutes become tools of convenience rather than instruments of fairness.

In my case, the statute’s vagueness gave prosecutors enormous leverage during plea negotiations. They didn’t have to prove bribery. They didn’t have to prove intent. They just had to say, “You deprived HP of honest services.” Who could argue otherwise when no one knew what that phrase meant?

The Supreme Court later admitted that this ambiguity violated the Constitution. But in 2000, it was business as usual.

I wasn’t the only one caught in that legal gray zone. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, dozens of executives, public officials, and even small business owners were charged under §1346 for conduct that wasn’t inherently criminal. A gift, a favor, or a handshake could be spun into a conspiracy. The press loved it. Prosecutors loved it. The public never knew how flimsy these cases really were.

A Law in Search of a Crime

The honest services law didn’t protect anyone. It didn’t stop corruption. It simply gave prosecutors a moral platform from which to grandstand. In practice, it punished human relationships. It punished goodwill mistaken for greed. It punished perception rather than proof.

There’s a legal term called mens rea — the “guilty mind.” For a crime to exist, there must be intent to commit it. Under §1346, intent was irrelevant. They didn’t need to show that I meant to deceive anyone, only that my actions could be interpreted that way.

That’s not justice — that’s speculation wrapped in authority.

When I finally read the Skilling decision years later, I felt both vindicated and sickened. Vindicated because the Court confirmed what I had always believed: that I was prosecuted under a law that never should have applied. Sickened because no one would give me back the time, reputation, and peace of mind that were stolen.

Lessons from the Fallout

If my story proves anything, it’s that vagueness in law is the enemy of liberty. The Constitution demands clarity so that citizens can know the boundaries of right and wrong. Ambiguous statutes are not just bad law — they are instruments of fear. They give government the ability to punish behavior that was never criminal in the first place.

When Congress passed §1346, it intended to catch the corrupt. Instead, it caught the careless, the misunderstood, and the unlucky. People like me.

I was never charged with bribery. Never accused of falsifying documents or submitting fraudulent invoices. The only “crime” was the government’s interpretation of a friendship. A law that broad doesn’t serve justice — it serves the ambitions of those who wield it.

Closing Reflection

Looking back, I now see §1346 for what it was: a net cast so wide it could catch anyone. It took the most subjective element of human behavior — intent — and allowed prosecutors to fill in the blanks however they pleased. It let corporations manipulate the justice system by presenting internal policies as criminal law, and it gave federal prosecutors the power to destroy reputations without ever proving actual fraud.

In the next chapter, I’ll explain how they did it — how 18 U.S.C. §1343, the wire fraud statute, became the vehicle for transforming a state matter into a federal conviction. Because once the government found its jurisdictional hook, the rest of the dominoes fell fast.

The law was supposed to protect the innocent. In my case, it did the opposite.

Chapter 2: Wire Fraud and Federal Overreach

If honest services fraud was the government’s moral anchor, wire fraud was its legal hook. Without it, they would have had no way to claim federal jurisdiction. My supposed “crime” was born in California, investigated by a state task force, and built on a private company’s complaint. But by invoking 18 U.S.C. §1343 — the wire-fraud statute — prosecutors found a bridge from a state-level business dispute to a full-blown federal prosecution.

That single statute, designed decades ago to fight telemarketing scams and financial swindles, became their ticket to power.

The Anatomy of §1343

The wire-fraud law was enacted in 1952, when “wire” meant telephone or telegraph. Its purpose was straightforward: stop con artists who used interstate communication to defraud victims. The statute makes it a crime to devise or intend a scheme to defraud and to transmit, or cause to be transmitted, any communication “by means of wire, radio, or television” for the purpose of executing that scheme.

At its core, two things must exist:

1.      A scheme to defraud, and

2.      Use of interstate wires to further that scheme.

That’s it. But prosecutors realized early on that “wire” could mean anything electronic — email, fax, text, even an automated data upload. With that broad interpretation, they could stretch almost any business conflict across state lines and call it a federal crime.

In my case, they claimed that a few ordinary business emails and phone calls between California and Washington were enough to trigger federal jurisdiction. Never mind that those communications contained no false statements, no deception, no fraudulent intent. Simply using the wires was enough to give them entry into the federal courthouse.

When Technology Becomes a Trap

The irony is staggering. Congress created §1343 to protect Americans from predatory fraudsters who used wires to cheat people out of their money. In 1952, that meant things like Ponzi schemes or false investment solicitations. It was never meant to prosecute a businessman for corresponding with a friend.

Yet by the 1990s, prosecutors discovered they could pair §1343 with almost any vaguely unethical behavior. All they needed was an email. Technology that once symbolized progress became a legal snare.

The reasoning went like this:

·         The defendant sent an email.

·         That email crossed state lines.

·         Therefore, the scheme was interstate.

·         Therefore, the United States had jurisdiction.

It didn’t matter that there was no “scheme.” The act of communication itself became the crime’s foundation. That’s how my state-based situation became a federal case. The Department of Justice didn’t need the FBI to investigate; they only needed to show that electrons had crossed a border.

Stretching Jurisdiction Beyond Recognition

Jurisdiction is supposed to serve justice, not convenience. A federal case should exist only when the crime genuinely affects interstate commerce or federal interests. That’s what keeps power balanced between states and the federal government.

But in my prosecution, that balance collapsed. The U.S. Attorney’s Office claimed that emails I sent to the HP employee constituted “interstate communications in furtherance of a scheme.” Those emails were nothing more than updates about project timelines, invoices, and product discussions — the same kinds of communications millions of professionals send every day.

They never showed how those messages advanced fraud. They didn’t need to. The law, as they used it, didn’t require proof that the wire itself contained deceit — only that it was used during a supposed scheme. That gave them all the jurisdiction they wanted.

This kind of legal gymnastics is what I call federal opportunism — the ability of the government to turn the smallest thread of connection into a rope strong enough to hang someone.

The “Money or Property” Requirement

For decades, courts struggled with how far §1343 could reach. Was it limited to schemes that stole tangible assets, or could it cover “intangible rights” like loyalty or information? In Kelly v. United States (2020) — the so-called Bridgegate case — the Supreme Court finally drew a line. The Court ruled that federal fraud statutes protect money and property, not the misuse of regulatory power or political favoritism.

The justices unanimously warned prosecutors that expanding the wire-fraud law to cover every dishonest act would make them “the arbiter of all local misbehavior.”

Two years later, the Court reaffirmed this boundary in Ciminelli v. United States (2023), striking down the government’s “right-to-control” theory. Prosecutors had argued that withholding accurate information from a company deprived it of the “right to control its assets.” The Court rejected that argument outright: the statute protects traditional property interests, not abstract decision-making rights.

Those two decisions exposed just how far the government had strayed from the law’s original intent — and they vindicated everything I had felt during my case. HP never lost a dime because of me. There was no theft, no misappropriation, no false representation. If §1343 had been applied as the Supreme Court now demands, there would have been no jurisdiction at all.

The Mirage of Federal Interest

The government claimed there was a “substantial federal interest” because emails crossed state lines. But crossing lines isn’t a crime; it’s commerce. Every day, businesses exchange millions of interstate communications. If that’s enough to make something a federal case, then every workplace misunderstanding could, in theory, end in a federal indictment.

The reality is simpler: there was no federal interest. This was a corporate grievance, not a criminal conspiracy. Hewlett-Packard had internal concerns, and rather than resolve them through civil or administrative means, they elevated them into a law-enforcement crusade. The DOJ didn’t question why a private company’s internal policies suddenly became federal law; they just saw an opportunity to prosecute.

A System That Rewards Expansion

Federal prosecutors are evaluated on results — convictions, plea agreements, and sentencing outcomes. The broader their interpretation of the law, the more cases they can win. Over time, that incentive structure creates a culture of overreach. When statutes like §1343 are left open to interpretation, ambition replaces prudence.

I became one more number on a DOJ scorecard. They could say they “secured another conviction for wire fraud,” and no one would look closely enough to see what really happened. The headline was all that mattered.

This is how justice erodes: not through dramatic corruption, but through quiet misapplication. Each time the law is stretched for convenience, the Constitution stretches with it — and one day, it snaps.

Technology and the Future of Federal Reach

As technology evolves, so does the government’s reach. Today, almost every action involves a “wire.” An email, a phone call, a text message, an online payment — each is a potential jurisdictional trigger. The same rationale used in my case could be applied to nearly anyone conducting business online.

That’s why cases like Kelly and Ciminelli matter. They restore boundaries. They remind prosecutors that the federal government isn’t a catch-all authority for every alleged wrong. Without limits, even a family loan or a friendly gift could be twisted into “fraud.”

If Skilling narrowed §1346, Kelly and Ciminelli have begun to tame §1343. But their corrections came years too late for me and thousands of others. We served our time before the courts acknowledged the law’s misuse.

Reflection: When Justice Crosses Its Own Line

Looking back, the most painful part isn’t the conviction itself. It’s the realization that the system designed to protect fairness turned a blind eye to it. By abusing the wire-fraud statute, the government crossed its own line — the line between authority and arrogance.

Wire fraud was meant to catch thieves, not thinkers. It was meant to punish deception, not communication. Yet the mere existence of an email was enough to destroy my reputation and reclassify my life as a criminal enterprise.

The federal government didn’t just cross a line on the map; it crossed a line in principle. It extended its jurisdiction from the realm of justice into the realm of conjecture — and once that happens, no one’s words are safe, not even the innocent.

Chapter 3: Federal Jurisdiction Without Federal Investigation

One of the most disturbing realizations I had during my ordeal was that no one from the federal government ever investigated my case. Not one FBI agent. Not one federal investigator. Not even a single independent interview conducted by the Department of Justice.

And yet — somehow — the United States of America prosecuted me in federal court.

When I say that aloud, it still sounds unbelievable. A federal prosecution without a federal investigation? That’s like a doctor performing surgery based on another doctor’s hunch — no examination, no X-rays, no diagnosis. Just a decision made in someone else’s office.

But that’s exactly what happened. Hewlett-Packard, a private corporation, acted as the accuser, investigator, and evidence collector. They built the case. The California High-Tech Task Force, a state agency, executed a raid and seized my records. Then the U.S. Attorney’s Office stepped in, claimed jurisdiction under wire fraud, and took it from there. The FBI — the very agency tasked with investigating federal crimes — never so much as opened a file.

How Federal Jurisdiction Really Works

To understand how that could happen, you have to look at how jurisdiction is defined. Federal courts derive their authority from 18 U.S.C. §3231, which grants them original jurisdiction over “all offenses against the laws of the United States.”

That means if a U.S. Attorney can point to a federal statute — any statute — they can prosecute. There is no requirement that a federal agency like the FBI or IRS be the one to investigate the case first. The mere allegation that a federal law was violated gives them power.

So technically, the Department of Justice didn’t break any law by prosecuting me. But they violated something more fundamental: the spirit of due process.

The entire purpose of federal investigative agencies is to ensure that cases brought before federal courts meet federal standards of evidence, procedure, and impartiality. The FBI, for example, must follow strict protocols when collecting evidence — chain of custody, proper warrants, and transparency under the Freedom of Information Act. None of those safeguards applied in my case because the evidence came from a corporation and a state task force.

By skipping the federal investigative process, the U.S. Attorney’s Office sidestepped the very system designed to protect fairness and integrity.

The Difference Between Legal and Right

There’s a saying I learned the hard way: Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right.

Yes, the U.S. Attorney’s Office had the authority to file charges. But should they have? The Principles of Federal Prosecution — the DOJ’s own policy manual — instructs prosecutors to file charges only when three conditions are met:

1. The evidence is sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction.
2. The prosecution serves a substantial federal interest.
3. The case cannot be adequately handled by other jurisdictions.

None of these applied to me.

There was no independent federal evidence collection. The case involved no threat to interstate commerce, national security, or the public at large. And the matter was already being addressed at the state level. Still, the DOJ stepped in — not because they had to, but because they could.

That’s the quiet danger of unchecked authority. Power doesn’t need a reason when it’s given the freedom to create one.

How Hewlett-Packard Became the Investigator

Hewlett-Packard wasn’t acting out of civic duty. They were protecting their image. Corporations have reputations to manage, shareholders to appease, and internal politics to navigate. When the company learned of my friendship with one of their employees, they didn’t start by asking questions — they started by building a case.

They hired internal auditors and outside investigators. They interviewed the employee and his family. They combed through records and emails. Then, instead of handling the matter internally, they handed everything to the California High-Tech Task Force — a group created to fight high-tech crime, not to referee corporate relationships.

The task force executed a search warrant that went far beyond its scope, seizing everything from computers to personal files. And once they were finished, they passed the information up the chain to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which accepted it without question.

No FBI validation. No re-interviews. No forensic verification. No federal oversight of how the evidence was gathered or whether the search respected constitutional limits.

The Department of Justice simply took Hewlett-Packard’s word for it.

A Federal Case Without a Federal Foundation

To call what happened to me a “federal case” is almost comical. It was a corporate case dressed in federal clothing. There were no federal subpoenas, no grand jury investigation, no national interest — just the stamp of a U.S. Attorney’s office on a privately constructed narrative.

That’s not law enforcement. That’s outsourcing justice.

And once that process begins, it sets a terrifying precedent: corporations can act as de facto federal investigators. They can build cases in secret, hand them off to prosecutors, and skip the constitutional requirements that federal agents must follow.

If that doesn’t alarm people, it should. It means due process — the bedrock of American justice — can be replaced by the motivations of corporate convenience.

The Myth of Federal Neutrality

People like to believe that the federal government is impartial — that prosecutors are objective guardians of justice. But the truth is, the DOJ is made up of human beings, and human beings are influenced by perception, politics, and ambition.

When a major corporation like Hewlett-Packard presents a “ready-made case,” complete with binders of evidence and a narrative that looks clean on paper, prosecutors see efficiency. They see headlines. They see advancement.

But they don’t see the cracks — the unverified assumptions, the missing context, the human cost. They don’t see that justice without verification is not justice at all.

By accepting HP’s investigation at face value, the federal government became an extension of the corporation’s agenda. Whether intentional or not, they allowed private power to merge with public authority — something the framers of the Constitution would have considered tyranny.

When Oversight Becomes an Afterthought

Federal investigations exist for a reason. The FBI, DEA, IRS, and other agencies serve as filters — institutions that separate credible allegations from corporate gossip, legitimate crimes from misunderstandings. They verify evidence through independent inquiry. They uphold constitutional standards that prevent abuse.

But in my case, that filter never existed. Instead, the DOJ short-circuited its own process. And in doing so, it created the illusion of legitimacy where none existed.

When I later learned that no FBI file had ever been opened, I felt both vindicated and violated. Vindicated because it proved my instincts right: the process was flawed from the start. Violated because the people who should have known better — the very officials sworn to uphold the Constitution — had looked the other way.

Federal Power Without Federal Accountability

When the U.S. government can prosecute a case it never investigated, accountability disappears. There’s no chain of custody, no cross-check of facts, no internal review. The prosecutor becomes both gatekeeper and enforcer — a dangerous combination.

This isn’t just a personal grievance; it’s a systemic flaw. Without mandatory federal investigation before prosecution, any case built by private corporations can be adopted and weaponized by the government. It allows the state to borrow credibility it never earned.

That’s not how justice is supposed to work.

Justice requires scrutiny. It requires verification. It requires the courage to ask, Are we sure?

The U.S. Attorney’s Office never asked. They just acted.

A System That Lost Its Compass

In the years since my conviction, I’ve thought often about what justice really means. It’s not about punishing wrongdoers or rewarding the righteous. It’s about truth, and truth cannot be found in shortcuts. When federal prosecutors rely on private investigations, they forfeit the moral authority of their office.

Justice can’t be manufactured — it has to be earned, case by case, fact by fact, with integrity at every step. Without that, the law becomes a performance.

I was not prosecuted by the United States of America. I was prosecuted by Hewlett-Packard, using the seal of the United States as its weapon.

That’s not justice. That’s power impersonating it.

Chapter 4: Private Searches, State Task Forces, and the Fourth Amendment

The day they searched my office still feels like it happened yesterday. The sound of drawers opening, the hum of computers being unplugged, the heavy boots of strangers walking through the place I had built from the ground up. It didn’t feel like justice. It felt like invasion.

And that’s exactly what it was — an invasion disguised as law enforcement.

The agents who showed up that day weren’t from the FBI. They were members of the California High-Tech Task Force, acting on information handed to them by Hewlett-Packard. Their warrant, I later learned, was narrowly written to authorize the seizure of specific computer equipment allegedly related to HP’s internal concerns. But what they took went far beyond that.

By the time they left, they had seized everything they could carry — financial records, personal correspondence, unrelated business documents, even private family photos.

It wasn’t a search for truth. It was a sweep for ammunition.

The Fourth Amendment Was Written for Moments Like This

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is simple, direct, and sacred. It says:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Those words were born from tyranny — from British general warrants that allowed soldiers to search anyone, anywhere, for any reason. The Founders swore that in America, the government would never again have that kind of unchecked power.

But that day, in my office, the spirit of the Fourth Amendment was nowhere to be found.

When a Private Corporation Becomes Law Enforcement

The most shocking part of the raid wasn’t the search itself — it was who initiated it. Hewlett-Packard.

HP wasn’t a victim of crime. It was a corporation with an internal ethics issue. Instead of resolving it through company policy or civil litigation, they went to law enforcement and turned a personal relationship into a criminal allegation. But here’s the problem: private companies are not bound by the Fourth Amendment — unless they are acting as agents of the government.

And that’s exactly what happened here.

When HP passed their “findings” to the California High-Tech Task Force, they didn’t just hand over evidence. They directed the narrative. They told investigators what to look for, who to target, and what story to believe. That blurred line between private and public action is where constitutional protection disappears.

The Supreme Court addressed this issue in United States v. Jacobsen (1984), ruling that a private search becomes a government search once law enforcement exceeds the scope of what the private actor already discovered. In my case, HP had no authority to seize anything — and the task force went well beyond HP’s initial internal review. The moment they started grabbing unrelated materials, it became a new search, one that required federal oversight and strict adherence to the Fourth Amendment.

None of that happened.

The Warrant That Went Too Far

I’ve read that warrant dozens of times. Each time, it feels more absurd. It mentioned a few specific electronic storage devices — not an open invitation to ransack a business. The words “particularly describing the items to be seized” were ignored. Instead, the agents treated my office like a warehouse sale — if it wasn’t nailed down, it was fair game.

Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41, warrants must be executed reasonably, with strict limits on scope. Agents are supposed to seize only what the warrant authorizes. Anything beyond that violates the Constitution.

What happened to me wasn’t reasonable — it was reckless.

The state task force’s overreach turned what should have been a targeted inquiry into a fishing expedition. They didn’t know what they were looking for, so they took everything they could. That’s not law enforcement — that’s panic mixed with power.

The Federal Government’s Complicity

When the U.S. Attorney’s Office later accepted the state’s evidence as the foundation for my federal prosecution, they effectively ratified that unconstitutional search. They never asked whether the evidence had been lawfully obtained. They never confirmed whether the warrant’s scope had been exceeded. They simply took what the task force delivered and ran with it.

That’s a direct violation of the federal government’s duty under the exclusionary rule, established in Weeks v. United States (1914) and later reinforced in Mapp v. Ohio (1961). The rule states that evidence obtained through unconstitutional searches must be excluded from federal court.

But exclusion only works when someone challenges it — and when you’re under the crushing weight of a federal indictment, most defendants never get that chance. By coercing plea deals before such motions can be heard, prosecutors effectively silence the Constitution.

That’s what happened to me. I never got to challenge the legality of that raid. I was never given the chance to question the chain of custody or the constitutional validity of the search. The government knew that if they kept pressure high enough, I’d fold — and I did.

Corporate Investigations Without Oversight

HP’s involvement went far beyond simple cooperation. They directed law enforcement like it was a private security detail. This collaboration between corporate interests and state enforcement isn’t new, but it’s dangerous. It creates what legal scholars call a “public-private partnership of prosecution.”

The danger is obvious: corporations act out of self-interest, not justice. Their goal isn’t to protect society — it’s to protect their bottom line, their image, and their executives. When the state acts on their behalf, justice becomes privatized.

The Constitution was never meant to be subcontracted.

Once the federal government accepted HP’s investigation as fact, they legitimized a process that should have been scrutinized, not trusted. The Department of Justice effectively allowed a corporation to function as a federal investigator — free from constitutional restraint.

That’s not partnership. That’s complicity.

ow Rights Disappear in Real Time

People imagine constitutional violations as dramatic — officers kicking in doors, guns drawn, rights shouted over chaos. But in reality, rights often die quietly, under paperwork and polite smiles.

The day they searched my office, no one yelled. No one acted cruelly. They simply took everything, nodded, and left. On paper, it looked like procedure. In practice, it was theft — of my property, my privacy, and my protection under the law.

When corporations and government agencies act together without boundaries, the Fourth Amendment becomes meaningless. The right “to be secure in one’s papers and effects” isn’t just about privacy — it’s about autonomy. It’s about limiting the reach of power into the lives of ordinary citizens.

In my case, that reach extended straight from the boardroom of a Fortune 500 company to the offices of the U.S. Attorney.

Reflection: What the Founders Would Say

Sometimes, late at night, I wonder what James Madison or John Adams would think if they could see what the Fourth Amendment has become. They fought to ensure that citizens would never again live in fear of government intrusion. Yet here we are — corporations and prosecutors working hand-in-hand to raid private businesses without accountability.

They would call it exactly what it is: tyranny in a tailored suit.

The Constitution wasn’t designed to protect the powerful from embarrassment; it was written to protect the powerless from abuse. And when private corporations can weaponize the government to serve their own agenda, the American promise of “liberty and justice for all” becomes just another slogan.

The Fourth Amendment wasn’t broken the day they searched my office. It was ignored. And when justice ignores the Constitution, it ceases to be justice at all.

Chapter 5: Brady, Giglio, and the Duty to Disclose

I’ll never forget sitting across from my attorney as he quietly slid a folder across the table and said, “There may be more evidence out there, but we haven’t seen it.”
That single sentence summed up one of the darkest truths about the federal justice system: prosecutors don’t always play fair. They are supposed to. They are constitutionally required to. But when conviction becomes the goal instead of truth, fairness becomes optional.

The Promise of Brady

In 1963 the U.S. Supreme Court decided Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83. The Court ruled that the prosecution violates due process when it suppresses evidence favorable to the accused—evidence that is material to guilt or punishment. The government has an affirmative duty to turn over anything that might help the defense.

That ruling wasn’t just a technicality; it was a moral command. It said that justice is not a contest to be won but a search for truth. The prosecutor’s job is to see that justice is done, not merely to secure a conviction.

Yet in my case, Brady might as well have never existed.

What They Had and What I Didn’t

When I pled guilty, I did so under the assumption that the government had all the facts. What I didn’t know was that Hewlett-Packard had conducted months of internal interviews, created reports, and produced documentation that undermined their own allegations—but I never saw a single page of it. HP’s internal review had uncovered inconsistencies in employee statements and even acknowledged that there was no financial loss to the company.

If that information had been disclosed, it would have destroyed the foundation of the government’s case. But it wasn’t turned over. The U.S. Attorney’s Office claimed they had no obligation to produce HP’s internal records because HP was a “private party,” not part of the government.

That’s a convenient loophole—one that swallows the rule whole. When a prosecutor relies on a corporation’s investigation as the basis for federal charges, that corporation becomes an agent of the government. Courts have recognized this principle repeatedly, including in United States v. Richey (9th Cir. 1977) and Kyles v. Whitley (1995), where the Supreme Court reaffirmed that prosecutors are responsible for evidence in the hands of law-enforcement agents—or anyone acting on their behalf.

If the government builds its case on HP’s work product, then the government is responsible for everything HP found, not just what helps its narrative.

The Giglio Mandate

Seven years after Brady, the Supreme Court expanded that duty in Giglio v. United States (1972). The Giglio rule requires prosecutors to disclose any information that could impeach their witnesses—promises of leniency, inconsistent statements, bias, or financial incentives.

In my case, the “star witness” was the HP employee whose relationship with me had sparked the entire ordeal. He was terrified—of losing his job, of being prosecuted himself, of being publicly humiliated. HP’s lawyers knew that. The prosecutors knew it too. Fear is a powerful motivator.

When that man testified to HP’s internal investigators, he was under enormous pressure to cooperate. It’s highly likely he was offered protection, perhaps even assurances that he wouldn’t face charges if he played along. Under Giglio, those inducements must be disclosed. They never were.

By withholding that context, the prosecution presented his cooperation as voluntary, his memory as reliable, and his motives as pure. None of those things were true. He was a frightened employee trying to save himself. That doesn’t make him evil—it makes him human. But it also makes his testimony unreliable. And the government had a duty to say so.

The Cost of Ignorance

When a defendant doesn’t know what evidence exists, he can’t make informed decisions. The government understood that. They knew that by controlling information, they controlled outcomes.

Imagine playing poker while your opponent hides half the deck. That’s what plea bargaining under suppression feels like. Every decision—whether to fight or fold—is based on partial truth.

Had I known that HP’s own reports found no concrete financial loss, I would have gone to trial. Had I known that their key witness was pressured to cooperate, I would have demanded disclosure. But I didn’t know. None of us did. And that ignorance was by design.

The “Materiality” Game

Even when evidence suppression is exposed, prosecutors often defend themselves by saying the hidden material was not “material”—that it wouldn’t have changed the outcome. That argument insults both the intelligence and the rights of the accused. It assumes that only the prosecution can decide what matters.

The Supreme Court in Kyles v. Whitley made it clear: materiality must be judged by whether disclosure could have affected the result, not whether it would have. The burden is on the government to disclose, not on the defense to guess.

But prosecutors are rarely punished for violations. Courts treat Brady and Giglio breaches as “harmless errors.” No one loses their license. No one faces discipline. The case is over, and the defendant’s life is already shattered. The only people who pay are the ones who never had power to begin with.

When Corporations Hide Behind Prosecutors

In corporate-driven cases like mine, Brady and Giglio fail not because the rules are unclear but because the government and the corporation take turns claiming ignorance.

If HP had favorable evidence, the DOJ said it wasn’t theirs to produce.
If the DOJ had it, HP said it was confidential corporate property.

Between those excuses, the truth disappears. And so does accountability.

This public-private shell game allows both parties to suppress evidence with plausible deniability. It’s a legal version of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and it has no place in a country that claims to honor the rule of law.

The Human Toll of Hidden Truths

Suppressed evidence isn’t just a legal issue—it’s a human one. Every page that goes undisclosed is a piece of a person’s life withheld from fairness. When the system hides information, it doesn’t just manipulate verdicts—it manipulates hope.

I spent years believing that the government must have known something terrible about me, something I didn’t know, something that justified their actions. Only later did I realize the opposite was true: they had less than they claimed, not more. But once the machinery starts moving, truth becomes irrelevant. The process itself becomes the punishment.

A System Built on Trust

The Brady and Giglio doctrines depend entirely on prosecutorial honesty. There’s no external oversight, no automatic audit, no third-party verification. The system assumes that prosecutors will do the right thing because they are officers of the court.

That assumption fails whenever ambition or convenience enters the room. It failed in my case.

If prosecutors were required to submit all case materials to independent review before trial—something akin to mandatory discovery—the playing field would finally be level. But right now, we’re asked to trust people who have every incentive to win and almost no consequence if they cheat.

Justice built on trust without accountability isn’t justice; it’s faith in a broken system.

Reflection: Truth in the Dark

Sometimes, I still wonder what’s in those files—what memos, emails, or notes could have proven my innocence. I’ll never know. Those documents are buried in archives or destroyed under retention policies. The truth doesn’t disappear in one dramatic moment; it erodes quietly, one withheld page at a time.

Brady and Giglio were meant to protect us from that erosion. But they only work when prosecutors remember they’re not gods—they’re servants of the Constitution.

In my case, they forgot. And because they forgot, the truth stayed hidden, and I paid the price.

Chapter 6: The Power and Abuse of Plea Bargaining

When people think of the justice system, they imagine a courtroom: a judge’s gavel, a jury listening intently, and two sides presenting their evidence. They picture the truth being tested under the light of examination.

But that’s not how most justice works in America. In reality, ninety-seven percent of all federal cases never make it to trial. They end with two words whispered in a conference room: “I plead.”

I was one of them.

The Choice That Isn’t a Choice

When the prosecutor first offered me a plea deal, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. They made it sound like a favor—“one count, one year and a day, and you can move on with your life.”

What they didn’t say was that the alternative was financial ruin and decades in prison if I dared to fight back.

It wasn’t a choice. It was a trap disguised as mercy.

They painted a picture of an unwinnable war: a jury wouldn’t understand the complex corporate dynamics, the government’s narrative would sound cleaner, and the press would crucify me before the first witness ever spoke. My attorney, doing his best to protect me, said the words every defendant dreads: “They’ll bury you if you go to trial.”

So I did what millions of Americans have done—I took the deal.

The Anatomy of Coercion

People like to think that plea bargains save time and money. But for defendants, they are often a form of legalized coercion. The government uses its near-limitless resources to wear people down. They threaten higher charges, longer sentences, or additional indictments if you refuse to cooperate.

They call it “negotiation.” In truth, it’s extortion under fluorescent lights.

The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, created in 1984, were supposed to standardize punishment. Instead, they gave prosecutors mathematical leverage. They could stack charges to inflate your potential sentence, then offer to drop most of them if you plead guilty to one.

It’s not about guilt—it’s about pressure.

They told me that if I fought the case, I could face up to twenty years. Twenty years for what? Friendship? A vacation? A loan for a used minivan? It sounded insane, but that’s the beauty of the system—they don’t have to prove it; they only have to scare you with it.

The Trial Penalty

The system even has a name for this imbalance: the trial penalty.

If you go to trial and lose, your sentence will almost always be dramatically higher than if you had pled guilty. The message is clear: don’t you dare demand your day in court.

For many defendants, even innocent ones, the math becomes unbearable. Imagine being told you could take a year in prison or risk twenty if you lose. Most people will take the sure thing, even if it means admitting to something they didn’t do.

That’s not justice—it’s self-preservation.

In my case, the plea offer was designed to sound merciful. One count, one year and a day. “It’s just business,” my attorney said. “They want a conviction, not your life.”

But what they really wanted was control. Once I signed that agreement, the truth no longer mattered. The narrative was set in stone.

The Psychology of the Plea

Prosecutors understand human fear better than most psychologists. They know how to time their offers, when to apply pressure, and when to feign compassion.

They’ll say things like, “If you take responsibility, we can help you.”
Or, “If you force us to go to trial, we’ll have no choice but to add more charges.”

It’s emotional manipulation dressed up as professionalism. And because they hold all the cards—your freedom, your finances, your family—there’s no such thing as a fair negotiation.

They call it plea bargaining. I call it plea breaking—because it breaks people. It breaks their spirit, their dignity, their belief in the system.

By the time I signed the papers, I was exhausted, humiliated, and numb. The words “guilty” came out of my mouth, but they didn’t feel like mine. They were the words of a man cornered by fear.

The Illusion of Leniency

Prosecutors love to say they’re showing leniency when they offer a plea. But leniency would mean understanding context—seeing that my actions didn’t fit the spirit of the law. What they offered wasn’t mercy. It was a shortcut to a conviction.

In truth, plea deals don’t reflect compassion; they reflect convenience. They save prosecutors the hassle of trial, save the government the cost of litigation, and pad conviction statistics.

But for the defendant, the consequences are lifelong. Once you plead guilty, you’re branded forever. Employers don’t ask about context. Society doesn’t care about nuance. The word felon sticks longer than any sentence.

And because I pled guilty, I lost my right to appeal most issues. You can’t challenge a system that silences you before you even begin.

Justice Without a Jury

The Founders of this country enshrined the right to trial by jury in the Sixth Amendment because they understood one eternal truth: power corrupts. They knew that no government should have the unilateral power to decide a person’s fate.

But in modern America, that right exists mostly on paper. The plea-bargaining system has made jury trials almost obsolete.

The prosecutor, not the jury, now decides who is guilty. The negotiation table has replaced the courtroom. The script is written before the curtain even rises.

I never had a chance to face my accusers. No jury ever heard my side. No judge ever ruled on whether the evidence was constitutional. It all ended in that small, airless room where fear did the talking and justice stayed silent.

The Hidden Cost: The Truth Itself

When everyone pleads, the truth dies. Plea bargains erase the public record. They prevent evidence from being tested, witnesses from being cross-examined, and corruption from being exposed.

That’s why so few systemic abuses ever come to light—because they never reach trial. The process itself becomes the cover-up.

In my case, the truth about Hewlett-Packard’s role, the state task force’s overreach, and the absence of a federal investigation all stayed buried beneath that one word: guilty.

The government got its conviction. HP got its closure. And the truth got buried in the footnotes.

The Machine That Devours the Innocent

Plea bargaining has become the engine that drives the entire justice system. Without it, the courts would collapse under their own weight. But that efficiency comes at a moral cost.

We’ve traded truth for speed, fairness for finality, and transparency for convenience.

I wasn’t just pleading to avoid prison. I was pleading to escape the machine—to stop the bleeding, to protect my family, to preserve what little remained of my dignity.

But every time a defendant pleads guilty out of fear, the machine grows stronger. It learns that intimidation works, that power goes unchallenged, and that truth is negotiable.

Reflection: The Deal I Never Wanted

I live with the consequences of that plea every day. People hear “plea deal” and think compromise, but there was nothing mutual about it. The government had all the leverage, and I had none.

I pled not because I was guilty of fraud, but because I was guilty of being human—afraid, tired, and cornered.

If justice means anything, it must mean the ability to defend oneself without being coerced into surrender. Until that changes, plea bargains will remain what they’ve become: the velvet glove that hides the iron fist of federal power.

Chapter 7: Supreme Court Precedents and How They Could Have Changed Everything

After my conviction, years passed before I finally began to understand the full scope of what had happened to me. I had accepted a plea deal to end the nightmare, but when the storm settled, I started reading. I studied every statute cited in my case, every precedent, every Supreme Court decision involving the honest services and wire fraud laws. And the more I learned, the more sickened I became.

If the rulings that came later had been in place when I was prosecuted, I believe—without hesitation—that I never would have been convicted at all.

The Turning Point: Skilling v. United States (2010)

It all started with Skilling. Jeffrey Skilling, the former CEO of Enron, was convicted of honest services fraud after prosecutors accused him of manipulating company data to deceive investors. The government used the same vague statute they used against me—18 U.S.C. §1346, the so-called “intangible right of honest services.”

But in 2010, the Supreme Court finally called time on decades of prosecutorial abuse. Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg declared that the honest services law was unconstitutionally vague unless it was limited strictly to bribes and kickbacks. She warned that an open-ended interpretation would make federal prosecutors “the arbiters of moral duties” instead of enforcers of law.

That one sentence stopped me cold. In my case, there were no bribes, no kickbacks—just friendship. Everything that followed—my indictment, my plea, my sentence—had been based on a theory the Supreme Court later said was unconstitutional.

If Skilling had been decided in 2000, my case would have collapsed overnight. The U.S. Attorney would have had no legal foundation to stand on. The statute they used to accuse me would have been stripped of its power to criminalize human relationships.

The Skilling decision was vindication—ten years too late.

The Reinforcement: McDonnell v. United States (2016)

In 2016, another critical ruling followed—McDonnell v. United States. Former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell had been convicted of accepting gifts and loans from a businessman in exchange for arranging meetings and introductions. The government called it “official corruption.”

But the Supreme Court disagreed—unanimously. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that setting up meetings or hosting events was not an “official act” under the federal bribery statute. To convict someone, prosecutors must show a clear quid pro quo—a direct exchange of something valuable for an official favor.

The ruling destroyed the government’s vague interpretation of influence. It recognized that not every gesture of goodwill is corruption.

When I read that decision, I felt the weight of my own story in every paragraph. I had offered generosity to a friend—just as countless people in business do every day. There was no official act, no exchange of influence, no promise of benefit. Yet the government twisted my friendship into a felony.

McDonnell would have made that impossible.

It clarified something that had been blurred for years: ethics and law are not the same thing. You can violate a company’s policy without violating a federal statute. You can show poor judgment without committing a crime. That distinction could have saved me.

The Expansion of Clarity: Kelly v. United States (2020)

Then came Kelly v. United States—better known as the “Bridgegate” case. Two aides to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie were convicted of wire fraud for creating traffic jams to punish a political rival. The government said their actions deprived the public of its “right to control” public resources.

The Supreme Court disagreed, ruling unanimously that the federal fraud statutes protect property—not political power, regulatory authority, or intangible interests.

That decision gutted the same type of reasoning the government used in my case. Hewlett-Packard claimed they were deprived of their employee’s “honest services”—a corporate version of the “right to control.” Kelly confirmed that this interpretation was legally hollow.

Depriving someone of loyalty or accurate information is not the same as stealing property or money. Fraud, the Court reminded prosecutors, must be tied to tangible loss. There was no such loss in my case. HP didn’t lose a cent. There was no fraud, no deprivation, no crime.

The Knockout Punch: Ciminelli v. United States (2023)

In Ciminelli v. United States, the Supreme Court took one more swing at prosecutorial overreach. The government had used the same “right to control” theory to convict a businessman involved in a bid-rigging scheme in New York. The Court again ruled unanimously that depriving a company of the right to make an informed decision is not property fraud.

The language in that decision was so precise, so damning, that I had to read it twice. The Court said, “The right to control theory criminalizes deceptive conduct that does not cause tangible harm.”

That’s exactly what happened to me. The government claimed my actions “deprived Hewlett-Packard of the right to make fully informed business decisions.” In other words, they said my friendship interfered with their judgment. But Ciminelli made it clear: that’s not a crime—it’s a management issue, not a matter for federal court.

The Human Meaning of Legal Reform

Reading those decisions felt like time travel. Each ruling was a key that could have unlocked my freedom years earlier. Each one struck down a part of the system that had ensnared me. Skilling narrowed the law. McDonnell clarified intent. Kelly and Ciminelli restored the boundary between ethics and crime.

But I was sentenced under the old regime—before those walls were rebuilt, before reason returned to the law. For people like me, legal reform comes too late. We live in the shadow of corrections we’ll never benefit from.

That’s the hidden tragedy of justice delayed: even when the system admits its mistake, it never apologizes. It just changes the rules quietly and moves on.

The Pattern of Overreach

If you look closely, every one of these cases shares a theme—federal prosecutors taking vague statutes and using them to criminalize conduct that isn’t truly criminal. Each time, the Supreme Court stepped in to stop the abuse. But each time, the damage had already been done to countless lives.

Justice shouldn’t depend on the calendar. It shouldn’t take a decade of Supreme Court corrections to make the law fair. The rules should be clear from the start. The innocent shouldn’t have to wait for history to catch up.

The fact that I can name four Supreme Court cases that would have exonerated me tells you everything you need to know about how far the government overstepped.

A Legal System Without Memory

One of the cruelest realities of the justice system is that it doesn’t correct itself automatically. When the law changes, past convictions rarely do. There’s no “undo” button for injustice.

To appeal a conviction based on new legal precedent, you must prove that the change applies retroactively—a nearly impossible standard. Courts call it “finality.” I call it indifference.

The government can ruin a life under a bad interpretation of the law, then shrug when that law is overturned. You can’t sue the prosecutors. You can’t reclaim your lost years. You just carry the label forever: convicted felon.

Reflection: The Law That Found Its Conscience

The irony is that I’ve come to admire the same Court that once failed me. The justices in these later cases—liberal and conservative alike—recognized that the government had gone too far. They restored the boundaries between criminality and morality, between corruption and human imperfection. They reminded America that the rule of law must be grounded in clarity.

But as I read those decisions, I couldn’t help but think: Where was this wisdom when I needed it?

The Constitution was on my side all along. It just took twenty years for the system to remember it.

Chapter 8: Reform, Accountability, and the Road Forward

When I finally stepped out of that federal prison, the air felt heavier than I remembered. Freedom wasn’t light—it was complicated. I had served my time, but what had really been corrected? Not the law. Not the process. Not the system that put me there. The machinery of prosecution kept grinding on, untouched, unexamined, and unrepentant.

That’s when I realized something: if the system can’t correct itself, those of us who’ve lived through it have to speak up. We become the evidence that reform is needed.

The Myth of Accountability

Ask anyone who’s never been through the justice system how prosecutors are held accountable, and they’ll probably assume there’s oversight—that someone, somewhere, makes sure they follow the rules.

But there isn’t.

Federal prosecutors enjoy almost total immunity from personal liability. Even when they violate constitutional rights—hide evidence, overcharge, or abuse their power—they face no real consequences. Courts have shielded them under doctrines like absolute prosecutorial immunity, created in cases such as Imbler v. Pachtman (1976).

That means no matter how outrageous the misconduct, you can’t sue them. The Department of Justice rarely disciplines its own, and when it does, the results are buried in internal memos that never see daylight.

The system that prosecutes everyone else has built itself an escape hatch. And that’s why nothing changes.

The Corporate Shield

The same is true for corporations like Hewlett-Packard. They can investigate, accuse, and hand over evidence that ruins a life, yet they face zero liability when it’s wrong. Corporate investigations operate in a gray zone—neither truly private nor fully governmental.

If they act like the government, they should be held to the same constitutional standards. But they’re not. When I asked to see HP’s full internal findings years later, they hid behind corporate confidentiality. They weren’t accountable to me, to the courts, or to the truth.

That’s why reform must start here: any corporation that initiates or supplies evidence for a federal prosecution must be bound by the same disclosure and due process standards that apply to federal agents. If they want the power of law enforcement, they must accept its responsibilities.

Restoring the Balance of Power

The American justice system was designed to protect the citizen from the state, not to empower the state against the citizen. But somewhere along the way, that balance inverted. Prosecutors now wield near-absolute authority, while defendants—especially those without vast financial resources—stand defenseless against the government’s reach.

Reform means restoring that balance. Here’s how:

1. Mandatory Federal Oversight: No U.S. Attorney should be allowed to file charges without an independent federal investigation conducted by an agency such as the FBI or DOJ Inspector General. Private investigations should never substitute for public accountability.
2. Full Discovery Reform: All evidence, including that held by private partners or state agencies, must be automatically disclosed before plea discussions begin. The defendant deserves to know every fact that could affect their decision.
3. Plea Bargain Transparency: Every plea negotiation should be recorded and reviewed by an independent magistrate to ensure it isn’t coercive. The “trial penalty” must be reduced so defendants don’t plead guilty out of fear.
4. Prosecutorial Review Boards: Independent review panels—not the DOJ itself—should investigate complaints of misconduct. Accountability must come from outside the system, not within.
5. Retroactive Relief: When Supreme Court decisions redefine or narrow criminal statutes, past convictions based on those laws should be automatically reviewed. Justice should not depend on the calendar.

If those safeguards had existed when I was charged, I wouldn’t have lost years of my life to a law later deemed unconstitutional.

The Role of Congress

Congress created the problem when it wrote laws like §1346 and §1343 so vaguely that they could be twisted into anything. Congress must now fix it.

Legislation should clearly define what constitutes fraud, corruption, and federal jurisdiction. “Intent to defraud” must require demonstrable evidence of deception and financial harm. No more criminalizing relationships or ethics disputes.

And Congress must also rein in the Department of Justice. The DOJ should not be both the prosecutor and the judge of its own conduct. Oversight hearings, public reporting, and external audits must be routine. Sunlight is the only disinfectant strong enough for a system this powerful.

Rebuilding Trust in Justice

The greatest casualty of wrongful prosecution isn’t freedom—it’s faith. Faith in the fairness of our institutions. Faith in the promise that the Constitution protects us all equally.

When I meet people today who still believe “the system works,” I envy them. They still live in the America we’re taught about in civics class. But the truth is darker: the system works for the system. For prosecutors, it produces promotions. For corporations, it provides protection. For politicians, it delivers talking points.

But for ordinary citizens, it delivers fear.

We must rebuild trust by returning to first principles: investigation before accusation, verification before prosecution, truth before victory. Without those pillars, justice becomes nothing more than organized power.

The Moral Case for Reform

I used to think of reform as a political issue. It isn’t. It’s a moral one. The law is not a living organism—it’s a reflection of our collective conscience. When that conscience goes quiet, injustice thrives.

True reform begins when people in power admit that power itself can corrupt. It begins when citizens demand transparency not just for the accused, but for the accusers. It begins when the government remembers that its authority comes from the people, not the other way around.

We can’t legislate morality, but we can legislate fairness. We can demand rules that prevent prosecutors from using the law as a weapon. We can insist that corporations stop hiding behind their legal departments while destroying lives in secret. And we can ensure that the next person facing the machine at least gets a fair fight.

The Road Forward

I no longer expect the system to apologize. It doesn’t do that. But I do expect it to evolve.

I want to see a justice system that values truth over tally marks, that prosecutes based on verified evidence rather than pressure from corporations, that treats citizens as human beings rather than statistics. I want to live in a country where “federal jurisdiction” means integrity, not convenience.

That’s why I wrote this book—not to relive my past, but to prevent it from becoming someone else’s future. If my story can help spark reform, then the years I lost will have meaning.

Justice should never depend on who has the most power. It should depend on who has the truth. And if we can’t guarantee that anymore, then the words carved into every courthouse—Equal Justice Under Law—are nothing but decoration.

Conclusion: The Truth That Still Echoes

There’s a strange silence that comes after injustice—a quiet that follows you like a shadow. When the gavel drops and the doors close, the noise of the courtroom fades, but the echo of what happened never really leaves.

It’s been years since I walked out of prison, but I can still feel that silence. It’s not anger, though that comes and goes. It’s not fear, though that lingers too. It’s something deeper—a kind of disbelief that a country built on liberty could twist its own laws so far that justice becomes indistinguishable from power.

I didn’t set out to become a critic of the American justice system. I was a businessman. A father. A husband. A man who believed in the rule of law. But when the law turned against me—when it was used not as a shield for fairness but as a weapon of expedience—I began to see how fragile the system really is.

I once believed that federal prosecutors were infallible, that they wouldn’t charge someone unless they had rock-solid evidence. I believed corporations acted responsibly, that they told the truth even when it was uncomfortable. I believed that if you lived with integrity and honesty, justice would always be on your side.

I don’t believe that anymore.

The Cost of Blind Trust

The hardest part about being wrongly prosecuted isn’t the time you lose—it’s the trust you lose. Trust in institutions. Trust in people. Trust in fairness itself.

When a system that preaches integrity hides evidence, manipulates the law, and bends facts to fit a narrative, it doesn’t just punish individuals—it corrodes faith in justice altogether.

I remember sitting alone in my cell, wondering how a government that had never investigated me could still prosecute me. I wondered how a company like Hewlett-Packard, one of the most respected names in technology, could hand over unverified claims that would become the foundation of a federal case. I wondered how many other people—ordinary, hardworking Americans—had been crushed by the same machine, their stories untold.

The truth is, most people never get to tell their story. They’re buried under shame or silenced by plea deals. The system counts their convictions as victories, not casualties.

That’s why I had to write this. Because behind every case number, there’s a human being—and behind every misuse of power, there’s a silence that must be broken.

The Lessons the System Refuses to Learn

After everything I’ve experienced, one truth stands above all others: the system doesn’t learn from its mistakes because it never admits them.

The Department of Justice doesn’t issue apologies. Prosecutors don’t reopen cases unless public outrage forces their hand. Corporations don’t confess that they overreached. Everyone just moves on, congratulating themselves on “the integrity of the process.”

But process without conscience isn’t integrity—it’s bureaucracy.

We’ve built a system where appearances matter more than outcomes, where conviction rates are measures of success, and where “efficiency” has replaced fairness as the highest virtue. But justice isn’t supposed to be efficient. It’s supposed to be right.

Every safeguard—the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the courts—exists to slow things down, to make sure the truth is examined from every angle before someone’s life is destroyed. When we trade that for convenience, we don’t just lose justice; we lose our moral compass.

A Broken Compass in a Beautiful Land

I still love this country. I always will. That’s what makes my story so painful. America remains the greatest experiment in human freedom ever attempted. But freedom isn’t self-sustaining. It requires vigilance, humility, and accountability.

When government and corporate interests collide, when prosecutors wield unchecked authority, when the line between ethics and crime becomes a matter of convenience—that freedom begins to die, quietly, behind the language of law.

I didn’t lose faith in America. I lost faith in what parts of it have become: a system that has forgotten that the law is supposed to serve the people, not the other way around.

The Constitution was written to restrain power. But power, by its nature, resists restraint. It adapts, evolves, and finds loopholes. And the more it grows, the smaller the individual becomes. That’s why reform isn’t optional—it’s essential.

The Human Cost of “Justice”

Sometimes people ask me what the worst part of it all was. Was it the fear of prison? The shame? The headlines?

It was none of those. It was the quiet moments. The look in my family’s eyes when they tried to understand something that didn’t make sense. The awkward silence when someone asked, “What really happened?” and I had to explain that “what happened” wasn’t about guilt or innocence—it was about power and pressure.

It was realizing that truth didn’t matter. Not in that room. Not in that system.

When you’re accused by the federal government, you’re not fighting one lawyer—you’re fighting an army. They have investigators, analysts, resources, and the presumption of righteousness. You have yourself. And once they decide you’re guilty, everything you say is seen through that lens.

The system doesn’t just punish the accused. It punishes their families, their reputations, their sense of identity. It’s not rehabilitation—it’s eradication.

I served my time, but the sentence never really ends. Every time I fill out a form, every time someone searches my name online, every time I think about the word felony, I feel the weight of a judgment built on fiction.

What I Want People to Know

If there’s one thing I hope readers take from my story, it’s that justice is not a guarantee—it’s a responsibility. It belongs to all of us.

Don’t assume the system always gets it right. Don’t believe that every guilty plea means guilt. Don’t let convenience replace conscience.

We live in a country where power is seductive, where ambition can cloud integrity, and where silence allows injustice to thrive. But power only grows when people stop questioning it.

Ask questions. Demand accountability. Support transparency in your courts and government. Insist that corporations be held to the same ethical standards they preach. If the public doesn’t hold power accountable, no one will.

I used to think that ordinary people couldn’t change anything. Now I know that ordinary people are the only ones who ever do.

What I’ve Learned About Forgiveness

Over the years, I’ve wrestled with anger—anger at the prosecutors, at HP, at myself. I wanted to forgive, but forgiveness requires acknowledgment, and no one ever said, “We were wrong.”

So I had to find peace on my own.

Forgiveness, I learned, doesn’t mean pretending it never happened. It means refusing to let it define who you are. It means taking the pain and turning it into purpose. It means using the story that broke you to build something that helps others.

That’s what this book is for. It’s not vengeance—it’s warning. It’s my attempt to turn injustice into insight.

If my experience can help someone else—if it can stop one prosecutor from overreaching, one corporate lawyer from cutting corners, one citizen from pleading to something they didn’t do—then maybe the years I lost won’t be wasted.

The Hope That Remains

Despite everything, I still believe in redemption—not just for individuals, but for systems. The justice system can be fixed. It can evolve. But only if we stop pretending it’s perfect.

We need leaders who understand that humility is a strength, not a weakness. We need judges who remember that the Constitution was written to protect the accused, not empower the accuser. We need prosecutors who see themselves not as warriors for conviction, but as stewards of truth.

The power of reform lies not in legislation alone but in culture—in the courage to say, “We got it wrong, and we’re going to make it right.”

America’s greatness has never come from being flawless. It has always come from its ability to admit its flaws and fix them.

The Truth That Still Echoes

Every injustice leaves behind an echo—a question that refuses to fade. Mine is simple: Was I wrongly prosecuted?

I’ve asked that question a thousand times, and every time I do, I find the same answer. Yes.

But this book isn’t about me anymore. It’s about what happens when a system meant to protect the innocent forgets its purpose. It’s about how fragile freedom becomes when law and power stop serving truth.

If we can’t trust justice to be just, then we must rebuild it. Brick by brick, case by case, truth by truth.

I can’t reclaim the years I lost. I can’t erase the label or the pain. But I can shine a light on what happened—and in that light, I can still find something worth believing in.

Because as long as there are people willing to question, willing to reform, willing to speak truth to power, the echo of justice will never die.

The story doesn’t end here—it continues every time someone stands up and says, “This isn’t right.”
That’s the America I still believe in.
That’s the truth that still echoes.