CEO in fraud case needs more than seven days prison: court

(Reuters) - A former chief executive who pleaded guilty to wrongdoing in a scheme that ultimately helped drive his company into bankruptcy could have been sent to prison for 10 years. The trial judge thought seven days was fair.

Not long enough, a federal appeals court said on Friday.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Michael Peppel, the former chief executive of the audio-visual technology company MCSi Inc, must be resentenced for his 2010 guilty plea to charges of conspiracy to commit fraud, false certification of a financial report, and money laundering.

U.S. District Judge Sandra Beckwith in Cincinnati abused her discretion in sentencing Peppel to an "unreasonably low" week behind bars based almost solely on her belief that the defendant was "a remarkably good man," the appeals court said.

Prosecutors had charged Peppel in December 2006 over an alleged fraud they said had begun six years earlier, amid financial difficulties at his publicly traded, Dayton, Ohio-based company.

Peppel was accused of working with his chief financial officer to inflate results through sham transactions with a firm called Mercatum Ltd, and companies such as FedEx Corp that were not implicated in wrongdoing. Prosecutors said he also sold $6.8 million of MCSi stock during this time.

By the end of 2003, MSCI was bankrupt, and a reported 1,300 people had lost their jobs.

Citing the need to punish Peppel and deter others, the government asked Beckwith at his October 2011 sentencing to impose a 97- to 121-month prison term. This was the length recommended, but not required, under federal guidelines.

But the judge said the five years since the indictment had been "punishing, literally and figuratively" for Peppel, who had begun working for an online pharmacy to support his five children. He also had a brother with multiple sclerosis.

"Michael's mistakes do not define him," Beckwith said. "I see it to be wasteful for the government to spend taxpayers' money to incarcerate someone that has the ability to create so much for this country and economy."

She also imposed a $5 million fine and the maximum three years of supervised release.

Circuit Judge Karen Nelson Moore, however, wrote for a unanimous three-judge appeals court panel that Beckwith was wrong to rely on "unremarkable aspects" of Peppel's life in imposing a "99.9975% reduction" to the recommended prison term.

"There is nothing to indicate that the support provided by Peppel to his family, friends, business associates, and community is in any way unique or more substantial than any other defendant who faces a custodial sentence," Moore wrote.

Beckwith was not immediately available for comment.

Ralph Kohnen, a lawyer for Peppel, on Friday said: "We expect that the judge will exercise the same common sense and fairness in imposing a similar sentence on remand."

U.S. Attorney Carter Stewart in a statement said he will seek a longer sentence, and that seven days "did not reflect the seriousness of the crime or create any measure of deterrence."

In November 2011, Beckwith sentenced MCSi's former CFO to one day in prison, plus three years supervised release and a $12,500 fine, court records show.

The case is U.S. v. Peppel, 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 11-4327.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Martha Graybow and Leslie Gevirtz)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ceo-fraud-case-needs-more-seven-days-prison-174114341--finance.html

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