John Rogers: From Net 54 to Prison

[calvindog]

Originally Posted by vintagewhitesox

You wouldn't want to spend 1 minute in a federal prison, no matter where you are housed. They are horrible places that take away your freedom and your security is never insured. I wouldn't trade 20 million for my freedom and my family.

Rogers' arraignment is on 10/7. He hasn't been indicted which makes it sound like he will most likely plead guilty.
He will have a similar problem like Allen, with the obstruction of justice issue. Allen warned Rogers about the FBI raid, and if Rogers destroyed documents in anticipation of that raid, he's got a problem.
A judge can consider similarly situated defendants' sentences (i.e, Allen, Mastro) in fashioning a sentence for Rogers. Most likely he won't get higher than Allen, but not less than Mastro.

Rogers has a huge bank fraud to deal with which Mastro and Allen did not. I suspect his sentencing guidelines will be significantly higher; in addition, there won't be the same dispute as to loss amount as there was with Mastro and Allen which caused some of the concessions made by the feds at sentencing.

And of course, no one has ever claimed that Mastro made even remotely close to $20 million from his scheme. Not even close. The government claimed that Mastro made between 400K and a million dollars although Mastro destroyed bidding records which could have raised that figure. Assuming he stole $2 million, he also paid a 250K fine and probably a $1 million in legal fees. One would have to be crazy to want to become a felon, lose their reputation and livelihood and spend 20 months in prison for maybe a 750K gain. I think when you appreciate how little money he actually made from his fraud it becomes clear that Mastro was more interested in power than money. He had a very profitable business without the fraud. Rogers, on the other hand, was just a greedy, dishonest lowlife.