Liu furious at friends' prison sentences

From the Politicker:

City Comptroller John Liu is fuming after his former campaign treasurer and a fund-raiser were sentenced to prison terms by a judge earlier today.

“For reasons I may never fully understand, the U.S. Attorney’s Office set out to destroy me with what has been described as an extraordinarily intrusive and exhaustive investigation,” Mr. Liu said in a statement, which continued to defend Ms. Hou.

“Failing to find that I had done anything wrong, they proceeded to set up a weak man and a wonderful young woman. Jenny Hou does not deserve this ordeal and injustice she has been put through,” he contended. “I am very sad but even more angry at what has occurred. The U.S. Attorney’s Office was wrong and should not be proud of its conduct.”

According to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office, Mr. Pan was sentenced to four months in prison while Ms. Hou was sentenced to 10 months. Both were assigned an additional three years of supervised release.

Vegas is calling him

From the NY Post:

He may have crapped out at his fraud trial, but a crooked fund-raiser for embattled city Comptroller John Liu has a shot at hitting the jackpot in Las Vegas.

Xing Wu “Oliver” Pan yesterday won permission to spend eight days in Sin City before he gets sentenced for trying to scam the city’s Campaign Finance Board into matching funds from straw donors.

Manhattan federal Judge Richard Sullivan granted Pan’s request to jet out to the gambling mecca from July 28 through Aug. 5 after neither prosecutors nor his pretrial-services officer raised an objection.

Court papers say Pan, a real-estate developer from New Jersey, is heading west for unspecified “business purposes,” and defense lawyer Irwin Rochman refused to elaborate on the reason for the trip.

Liu buddies convicted

From DNA Info:

A former aide and a fundraiser for City Comptroller John Liu were both found guilty in federal court on Thursday of helping to concoct a straw-donor scheme to benefit Liu's campaign, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.

Donor Xing Wu “Oliver” Pan, 47, and former Liu campaign treasurer Jia “Jenny” Hou, 26, were accused of skirting campaign finance limits and defrauding the city of matching funds by setting up "straw donors" to Liu's campaign.

Those straw donors allegedly gave money in groups to Liu's campaign and were reimbursed at a later date by the real donors.

“As the jury found, Jia Hou and Oliver Pan stuck a knife into the heart of New York City’s campaign finance law by violating the prohibition against illegal campaign contributions, all to corruptly advantage the campaign of a candidate for citywide office," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a press release.

"Cases like this give the people of New York yet another reason to be troubled by the electoral process, and they have a right to demand fair, open, and honest elections untainted by cynical subversion of campaign finance laws."

Pan was ultimately found guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and attempted wire fraud, and Hou was found guilty of attempted wire fraud, making false statements and obstruction of justice. She was found not guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Pan now faces a maximum of 40 years in prison, and Hou faces up to 45 years, according to a spokeswoman from Bharara's office.

Oliver Pan conveniently lost his mind

From the NY Post:

The former fund-raiser charged with scheming to funnel illegal campaign contributions to embattled city Comptroller John Liu has been sent to the nuthouse, further delaying his trial.

Xing Wu “Oliver” Pan is “involuntarily committed in connection with a mental-health condition” and undergoing treatment, Manhattan federal Judge Richard Sullivan said in court today.

Sullivan put off Pan’s trial, which was supposed to be under way already, until April 15 — unless Pan is fit before then.

Sources have told The Post that Pan was locked up Friday over fears he was suicidal.

Defense lawyer Irwin Rochman said he would be ready for trial within a few day of Pan’s release.

And so it begins

From The Politicker:

This afternoon, just as comptroller and likely 2013 mayoral candidate John Liu appeared alongside Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a press conference discussing the post-Sandy state of the city’s finances, legal arguments got underway this afternoon in the trial of his supporter Xing Wu “Oliver” Pan and his young campaign treasurer Jia “Jenny” Hou, who are being accused of participating in a conspiracy to direct illegal contributions to Mr. Liu’s war chest. In the courtroom today, Judge Richard Sullivan rejected four pre-trial motions requested by Mr. Pan and Ms. Hou’s attorneys and ordered the trial to begin as scheduled February 4.

The first motion argued before the court this afternoon was presented by Mr. Pan’s lawyer, Irwin Rockman. He said the case against his client should be dismissed entirely due to “outrageous government conduct,” namely that FBI agents continued their undercover investigation of Mr. Pan though he said they should have known “Mr. Pan had no interest in engaging in a violation of campaign finance law.” He based this argument on the claim wiretap recordings indicate Mr. Pan repeatedly told an undercover agent who posed as a Houston businessman eager to have funds in excess of the maximum allowed amount funneled to Mr. Liu through a system of straw donors about Mr. Liu’s campaign “self-imposed limit of $800″ on contributions. Mr. Rockman also said his client had been “terrorized” by law enforcement agents who subjected him to an “ominous vague threat” by indicating they knew the whereabouts of his wife and children. The lawyer said this was especially traumatizing to Mr. Pan because he spent his “formative years” in the “totalitarian regime” of the People’s Republic of China.

Judge Sullivan indicated Mr. Rockman’s motion had no legal precedent and said he felt like he was being asked to rule based on “squishy stuff in the pit of my belly” rather than the rule of law.

“This is a court of law, not a psychiatrist’s couch,” the judge said.

Unsurprisingly given his reaction to the argument, Judge Sullivan ended up rejecting the motion and siding with the prosecution’s contention the issues raised by Mr. Rockman did not constitute a violation of due process.

Liu pals indicted; "support rally" planned

From the Daily News:

Embattled Controller John Liu’s former campaign treasurer, Jia (Jenny) Hou, was named in an indictment with fund-raiser Xing Wu (Oliver) Pan.

Pan was busted in November for trying to get around campaign contribution limits by rounding up straw donors to give more than $13,000 to Liu’s mayoral campaign.

Hou, 25, was arrested in February and accused of taking part in the same scheme by directing at least 40 fraudulent donations to the campaign.

The two cases were joined on Thursday.

Hou was already arraigned on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, attempting to commit wire fraud and obstruction of justice. Each charge carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.

The new indictment added one charge of making a false statement, which carries an additional five years in jail.

From the NY Post:

City Comptroller John Liu’s former campaign treasurer has been hit with a new charge of lying to the FBI during its probe of contributions to the embattled mayoral contender.

Jia “Jenny” Hou allegedly made the bogus statements on Feb. 27, one day before she was busted on charges of scheming to funnel illegal donations to Liu’s campaign.

Hou pretended that a Jan. 17 report she filed with the city Campaign Finance Board included all campaign-contribution bundlers “and [that] no one was left off,” according to a new indictment of fund-raiser Xing Wu “Oliver” Pan.

Hou also falsely claimed she had turned over “all responsive documents” after checking “every single e-mail in her e-mail account,” the Manhattan federal court filing says.

From Capital Tonight:

A reader forwarded an email invite sent by veteran Democratic consultant Bill Lynch to a “support” rally being held Monday for embattled NYC Comptroller John Liu “in light of recent investigations.”

The event is being held at a church, and Lynch is careful to note that this is NOT a campaign event, nor an effort to secure endorsements, but merely a moment to demonstrate general support for the comptroller as he battles for his political life.

Lynch’s firm, Bill Lynch Associates, served as the general consultant for Liu’s successful 2009 run for comptroller.

Liu has refused to pull the plug on his aspirations to run for NYC mayor in 2013, despite the fact that a top campaign aide was arrested in February on allegations of campaign finance fraud and a bundler was indicted on charges of conspiracy and wire fraud.

It will be interesting – not to mention telling – to see who shows up Monday.

Federal jury indicts Liu bundler

From the NY Times:

A federal grand jury on Wednesday indicted a top fund-raiser for the city comptroller, John C. Liu, on charges that he helped illegally direct thousands of dollars into Mr. Liu’s campaign account.

The five-page indictment against Xing Wu Pan, a New Jersey real estate developer who is also known as Oliver, did not add any new details to the original criminal complaint, which was filed in November.

But it did signify that the charges against Mr. Pan — one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of attempting to commit wire fraud, which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years — had passed the next legal hurdle. It also suggested that, contrary to speculation, no plea deal appeared to be imminent.