UPDATE — At a hastily called hearing in U.S. District Court in Hartford today, the attorneys for Donna Bello and Jill Platt, convicted of multiple tax and wire fraud counts in connection with their operation of “gifting tables” on the shoreline, scored two wins. The action came after the judge postponed sentencing until next week.
At the outset of the hearing U.S. District Court Judge Alvin W. Thompson told a packed courtroom that “we have contested issues.” Three hours later those issues — the amount of loss to the victims and the government and the number of victims harmed in the gifting tables cases was reduced, in the defense’s favor.
A gifting table is an illegal pyramid scheme that entices people to invest money with the promise of large returns. Usually the promise fails.
The government agreed to having 10 victims instead of 50 and reduced the amount of loss to between $1 and $2.5 million instead of a loss that could have reached $7.5 million.
The government was seeking stiff prison sentences, in the 11 to 14 year range for Bello and Platt, but those numbers will now be reduced. The defense is still seeking sentences outside the federal guidelines, which the judge may or may not approve. Friends and family spoke to the judge about Bello and Platt, saying they were good people who helped others.
Jonathan J. Einhorn, Platt’s attorney noted how few “victims” of the gifting tables there were. “How bad can it be when there are a minimal number of victims seeking restitution?” he asked. Norman Pattis, Bello’s attorney, observed that the defendants “were targeted by the prosecution to send a message. I don’t know whether the other 37 women on the tables will be indicted but they are equally culpable.”
The government’s main witnesses, Eric Wethje, a special IRS agent based in New Haven, prepared a spreadsheet of 40 women who participated in the tables over a two or three year period, but he conceded it was not perfect and some information could not be obtained. Pattis called the spreadsheet “an impressionistic survey.”
By reducing the economic losses, the sentencing guidelines points were also reduced, thus reducing the possible sentence the two Guilford women face when they appear before Judge Thomson on Tuesday, August 13. Platt will face sentencing at 2 p.m. and Bello at 3 p.m.
Monday morning’s so-called “Fatico” hearing came at the defense’s request, during a 40-minute telephone conference between Judge Thompson and attorneys on Friday, Aug. 2.
A Fatico hearing is designed to let the judge evaluate whether conclusions or allegations outlined in a government sentencing memorandum that the defense disputes should be considered when deciding the punishment for the two women.
According to government prosecutors, the majority of women who testified at trial identified Bello and Platt “as the leaders and organizers of the gifting tables scheme in Connecticut.” These witnesses, as well as other documentary evidence admitted at trial, further established that the gifting tables were an extensive operation that involved more than 1,000 women.
One of those women was Branford Town Clerk Marianne Kelly whose records were subpoenaed in early March by the U.S. Attorney’s Office after she testified in the “gifting tables” pyramid scheme trial. During her testimony she had trouble remembering a key e‑mail she sent. Kelly participated in Platt’s table, she has said. Her town hall records were sent to the Internal Revenue Service in New Haven. So far there has been no announced result of that inquiry.
Tom Carson, the public information officer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, told the Eagle that there is “an ongoing investigation into gifting tables on the shoreline and elsewhere in state.” He would not comment specifically on the Kelly case, he said.
Douglas P. Morabito, the assistant United States Attorney who authored the sentencing memos for the government, wrote, “The gifting tables, which were marketed as a woman’s support and networking group, were actually the means by which women at the top of the pyramid received money. There were numerous pyramids operating at any given time. The only way for women on the gifting tables to recoup their money, and more, was to recruit new members to invest $5,000.” When they reached the top of the table they took home $40,000.
In his response to the government’s filed pre-sentence report, Norm Pattis, Bello’s defense attorney, wrote there was “neither the evidence adduced at trial nor an agreement between the defendant and the Government about loss amount.” Typically attorneys from each side would confer to try to come to arrive at a mutual decision. The government sentencing memorandum claims that Platt and Bello defrauded the government of upwards of $2.7 million, including federal tax loss.
“There is a complete absence of any record to support how such sums were arrived at. The lack of any methodology or any fact-finding on these startling sums renders them a presumptively unreasonable basis on which to sentence Ms. Bello,” Pattis wrote in his sentencing memo.
The government’s final $2.7 million to $ 7 million figure hikes her sentencing guidelines sentence 18 levels, Pattis wrote, “… and is simply unreasonable.” She and Platt want to be sentenced outside the guidelines, and the judge has the power to do so.
Today’s Fatico hearing required the government to explain how it reached its conclusion regarding sentence and amounts of fraud. Only Wethje, the IRS agent, testified. Pattis and Platt’s attorney, Jonathan J. Einhorn, also asked the court “to weigh the relative culpability based upon evidence at trial, as to both Donna Bello” and Platt. Neither woman took the stand.
Einhorn argued in his sentencing memo that Platt bought into Bello’s characterization of the tables as legal and therefore Platt deserved a lesser sentence.
She (Platt) “clearly deserves a lesser sentence, being another victim of the belief also popularized by Donna Bello, that the gifting tables were sanctioned by both lawyers and accountants,” Einhorn wrote.” He repeated this theme in court today. He also observed that “each table had its own leadership.” Bello and Platt stood trial together and sat at the same defense table. But Einhorn clearly sought to distance himself from Bello at today’s hearing.
At the hearing the attorneys sought to spread the leadership roles beyond Bello and Platt. But Morabito, the prosecutor, noted that “time and time again,” gifting table participants put them in leadership roles. “They were shown to be leaders in diagrams… they trained others; there is more than sufficient evidence on the record and in testimony that they were the organizers.”
A third defendant, BetteJane Hopkins of Essex, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service. She agreed to make restitution to the IRS for taxes, penalties and interest for participating in the gifting table scheme. She did not report her income on her tax returns. She faced a maximum five year prison term.
Hopkins wrote in her sentencing letter that from the time she became a target of the investigation in June, 2011, “I have done my best to cooperate with the authorities. Her attorney met with government attorneys, she said. She was also interviewed by authorities after she pleaded guilty. “I simply want to make everything right,” she wrote.
Nonetheless, the government is asking for a hefty sentence of from 30 to 37 months for Hopkins, considered high for a defendant who agrees to plead guilty and to cooperate with prosecutors to help make their case. She is expected to be sentenced Aug. 14.
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