Perhaps the best examples of coerced plea agreements have yet to be made known.
Over the past three or four years, hundreds of mostly young, well-educated business people who buy and sell property have been swept up in Operation Quick Flip, the Justice Department's crusade against mortgage fraud.
The Department's story is that sometime around the turn of the century, hundreds of business people (nearly all of whom had no criminal history) in virtually every metro area in the nation turned to lives of "organized crime" by tricking lenders into making bad loans.
And while clearly some of the accused deserved to be prosecuted for obviously criminal acts, in other instances overzealous federal agents and prosecutors used their breathtaking powers to shape the facts to fit the government's big-picture story of the crusade.
We haven't heard many stories about heavy handed "plea bargaining" in those instances because part of the deal is the sinister extortion clause the government puts in all of its "deals." It notes that complaining about draconian alternatives to accepting the government's "deal" means failing to take responsibility for the crime...which means the government can renege on whatever meager concessions it made and impose harsher punishments.
In my research for a book on this, I've met three people who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges to avoid virtual life sentences of up to 30 years in prison. All three were sentenced to six months of home detention and ordered to pay restitution. All three had been operating with advice from attorneys in the activities (which their attorneys considered "gray areas"...leaving lines blank on loan apps, for example) that put them in the federal crosshairs. But when they offered that as evidence they lacked criminal intent, agents and prosecutors merely threatened to increase the number of charges from two or three to more than a hundred.
Would like to hear from anyone who has information on this phenomenon. email me at
