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Sentencing – Bribery

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//July 22, 2014//

Sentencing – Bribery

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//July 22, 2014//

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U.S. Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Criminal

Sentencing – Bribery

A defendant convicted of bribery was properly sentenced based on the full amount that he received from vendors.
“We can sustain the district court’s assessment based on the second of the two alternative measures it relied on: the total amount of money paid to Whiteagle by the companies seeking to do business with the Nation. It was reasonable to infer, as the district court did, that the three companies were willing to pay Whiteagle such large sums of money specifically because of his relationship with Pettibone and his professed ability to deliver Pettibone’s vote and influence within the Ho-Chunk legislature. For example, Roscoe Holmes, a former Cash Systems employee, himself thought that the monthly salary being paid to Whiteagle was excessive compensation for a lobbyist and advisor on tribal affairs (which is what Holmes understood Whiteagle’s role to be); and the amounts paid to Whiteagle were eye-popping relative to Cash Systems’ revenue. Moreover, Whiteagle’s insistence that his role be kept quiet (recall MCA’s laundering of his compensation through Support Consultants, and Whiteagle’s suggestions that Trinity hide the proposed consulting fees meant for Atherton and himself in other expenses) supported an inference that his compensation was not legitimately earned. It is also a fair inference, given the evidence presented at trial, that it was the bribes Whiteagle transmitted to Pettibone, rather than Whiteagle’s persuasiveness as a lobbyist, that secured Pettibone’s favorable action as a legislator: Whiteagle’s own communications with the vendors give rise to that inference. In short, it was perfectly reasonable for the court to conclude that Whiteagle would not have been able to command his ample, even exorbitant compensation from the companies absent his corrupt relationship with Pettibone. That renders the total compensation he received a reasonable monetary measure of the value of the bribery in this case. And as there is no dispute that Whiteagle was paid in excess of $2.5 million by the three companies, the court did not err in increasing Whiteagle’s offense level by 18 levels.”

Affirmed.

12-3554 U.S. v. Whiteagle

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, Conley, J., Rovner, J.

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