Phillip Esforms at the 15th Annual Harold & Carroll Pump Foundation Gala at Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Century City, CA on August 7, 2015.
Tiffany Rose | Getty Images
Ah Owner of a retirement home in Florida A 20-year prison sentence commuted by then-President Donald Trump for a $1.3 billion Medicare fraud scheme in late 2020, he lost a federal court appeal and now has juries previously stalled. It looks like six health care criminal charges are headed for retrial.
Philip Esformes has appealed its convictions for fraud, money laundering and unlawful kickback receipt, arguing that the charges should be dismissed for prosecutorial misconduct and other grounds.
When indictments were filed against him and two others in 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice called it “the largest single criminal medical fraud case ever filed against an individual” in Department of Justice history. called.
3-Judge Panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected Esformes’ appeal of the ruling earlier this month.
The decision would have forced him to pay $44 million in fines and forfeiture orders related to his conviction.
esform lawyer Indicated They plan to request a rehearing of the appeal by the entire lineup of 11th Circuit judges.
but such a request almost always Face a long probability of success.
The same panel also ruled that it had no jurisdiction to address Esforum’s allegations that it prevented prosecutors from retrialing him on at least one of the six charges on which jurors failed to reach a verdict. Stated. at his trial.
Esformes’ attorneys argued that the new trial violated Trump’s leniency and double jeopardy clauses.
The appeals court ruled that “the hanging did not form the basis for the final judgment, so the case cannot be argued on the merits.”
“With limited exceptions irrelevant here, only the final judgment will be considered,” the committee wrote.
There is no federal law that explicitly states that prosecutors cannot retry a defendant on a stalled charge after a jury has been commuted on other counts on which the president was convicted. And there is no federal precedent addressing that issue.
If Esformes is found guilty in a retrial in federal court in South Florida, his lawyers will likely reopen the appeal’s allegation that the retrial was barred by Trump’s leniency.
Esformes attorney Kim Watterson said in a statement to CNBC:
“Rather, the Supreme Court, as a court of appeals, held that it lacked the necessary jurisdiction to determine the amnesty claim at this time, and expressly stated that it had not reached the merits of the claim.
Esforum’s efforts to dismiss his case have been supported by a group of Republican former U.S. Attorneys General, including Edmund Meath, John Ashcroft, Michael Mukassy, and Alberto Gonzalez, as well as former FBI Director and Federal Judge Lewis.・It was supported by a freelancer.
The group said the prosecutor in the Esformes case violated rules prohibiting the use of correspondence between defendants and their attorneys.
In its ruling, the Court of Appeals panel stated that prosecutors “not only considered privileged documents,
However, I tried to use them against Esformes twice before the trial. ”
The panel also said a lower court judge found prosecutors engaged in wrongdoing and made “malicious” efforts to obfuscate the conduct.
However, the appeals committee said its judge and a federal district court judge “rejected Esformes’ requests to dismiss the charges or disqualify members of the prosecution team.”
The panel said it agreed with the prosecution’s appeals argument that Esformes “failed to demonstrate ‘clear bias’ by encroaching on his privilege” of privacy in communications with attorneys.
“Thus, dismissing the charges or disqualifying the prosecution team would have been inappropriate,” the panel ruled.
Esforms, who was incarcerated at the time, was one of dozens of people pardoned by the president during the final months of Trump’s presidency.
The Justice Department says Esformes’ fraud scheme spanned 20 years and cost it an estimated $1.3 billion as a result of fraudulent claims against Medicare and Medicaid.
With the proceeds of that scheme, Esformes purchased a $1.6 million Ferrari Apera car, a $360,000 Greubel Forsey watch, and also paid for a female escort, the indictment says.
Prosecutors also said SForms paid a $300,000 bribe to Jerome Allen, then a men’s basketball coach at the University of Pennsylvania. recruit.
When Esforums was found guilty in 2019 in a trial of 20 criminal charges he faced, the FBI agent in charge of the Miami field office said he was “driven by an almost endless greed. He’s a man,” he said.
“Esformes cycled patients in poor condition to his facility who received inappropriate or unnecessary treatment and filed inappropriate Medicare and Medicaid claims,” the agent said.
“Furthermore, in his despicable deeds, he bribed doctors and regulators to further criminal activity.
