Conviction At Any Cost

Book excerpt: It was the perfect storm. A group of executives with the support of a Fortune 500 rival plotting corporate espionage to destroy a leading insurance brokerage firm. A new U.S. Attorney out to cement his professional status. An FBI team needing a collar. A prosecutor trying to fix his tarnished reputation. A judge looking to solidify his reputation on the bench. A defense attorney worried more about the bottom line than winning his case. And the self-made CEO who didn't see it coming--until the tsunami hit and Michael Segal was drowned in a flood of greed, avarice, deception, self-interest, and an unbridled climb to power. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Maurice Possley tells how the case against Michael Segal was laid, brick by brick, defying justice, evidence and even common sense after he refused to wear an FBI wire to entrap colleagues. As gripping as a legal thriller by Scott Turow or John Grisham, this nonfiction account of how an innocent man was used as a tool by a few unscrupulous people to bolster their own ambitions should raise alarms about how easily the U.S. criminal justice system, at times, can be used and abused for personal gain. Long before facts lost their meaning, Segal's story stood as a terrifying testament to how far manipulating the truth can go and how badly it can hurt the innocent. The United States v. Segal should never have been a case at all. The evidence against Segal was flimsy at best, there were no victims, no misrepresentations, no one lost any money, and it was an accounting crime without any government forensics and incomplete and inaccurate evidence. So why did a man who had no record and was known for his business and philanthropic pursuits receive a prison sentence of 10 years? As Possley takes us down the wormhole into the case, he reveals: The FBI tried to coerce Segal to secretly tape colleagues and business and political acquaintances. Former trusted, top-level employees conspired with a Fortune 500 competitor for months to take Segal's company--or take him down. Segal's personal attorney was bugged and attorney-client privilege went ignored. A former employee hacked into confidential files and delivered hundreds of documents to the group that wanted to seize or destroy his company--and was never even arrested. The stolen files contents were shared with the FBI and prosecutor. The prosecutor never used a government-sanctioned analysis of the supposed accounting crime. No qualified government or independent forensic accounting of his business was ever presented to the court by the government. Hundreds of stolen, company emails, including those with attorney protected, were found on a rival's server. The chief prosecutor had a record of past prosecutorial misconduct allegations. Key witnesses changed their testimonies after being contacted by the FBI. After Segal's lawyers made pretrial motions for his constitutional rights, prosecutors filed superseding indictments. At a time when criminal justice reform is being discussed by all the presidential candidates, Segal's case takes on a new meaning. What is the cost of prosecution for its own sake--and what happens when there is a code of silence and few checks and balances on those who are sworn to uphold the law?