Law360 is providing free access to its coronavirus coverage to make sure all members of the legal community have accurate information in this time of uncertainty and change. Use the form below to sign up for any of our weekly newsletters. Signing up for any of our section newsletters will opt you in to the weekly Coronavirus briefing.
Sign up for our Asset Management newsletter
You must correct or enter the following before you can sign up:
Thank You!
Law360 (April 20, 2020, 6:38 PM EDT) -- A judge allowed a former Och-Ziff Capital Management Group executive to serve the last week of a three-month prison sentence at his parents' home after the Bureau of Prisons attempted to release him amid the pandemic but ran into administrative hurdles.
Michael Leslie Cohen, 48, the former head of the New York-based hedge fund's European office, had been in the home stretch of a prison stint imposed after he pled guilty to lying to investigators. He was initially charged with securities fraud for allegedly failing to disclose a conflict of interest to an investor.
In early April, the BOP decided that Cohen was eligible to serve the last 20 days of his sentence in home confinement under guidelines that Attorney General William Barr announced in late March. The guidelines were meant to thin the prison population to protect inmates from the novel coronavirus.
According to a letter Cohen's counsel filed with U.S. District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis, Cohen went into solitary confinement on April 7 in order to quarantine ahead of a planned April 20 release.
However, the BOP subsequently told Cohen's attorneys that he could not be let out on supervised release because the probation office in Maine, where Cohen's parents live, was closed until May and nobody could supervise him. If not released, Cohen would have had to spend another week in solitary where he is alone 23 hours a day, his attorney wrote.
In a ruling signed on Friday and docketed on Monday, Judge Garaufis found that Cohen's "present circumstance qualifies as an 'extraordinary and compelling reason'" to modify his sentence. The judge ordered Cohen released to unsupervised home confinement at his parents' house.
At his sentencing in November, Judge Garaufis shot down Cohen's bid for no prison time, making an impassioned statement about how the wealthy are entitled to the same treatment as the poor in the eyes of the law.
Och-Ziff admitted in 2016 that it paid bribes in Libya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and paid $412 million in criminal and civil penalties.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had sued Cohen for his alleged involvement in the bribery, but Judge Garaufis dismissed the case, saying it was brought outside the statute of limitations.
The judge previously had strong words for prosecutors over the fact that a middleman was the only individual criminally charged in the Och-Ziff bribery scheme. The hedge fund's former CEO Daniel Och and Chief Financial Officer Joel M. Frank have settled with the SEC.
Counsel for Cohen did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The government is represented by David C. Pitluck, James P. McDonald and Jonathan P. Lax of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York and Gerald M. Moody Jr. of the U.S. Justice Department's Fraud Section.
Cohen is represented by Ronald White and Amanda Aikman of Morrison & Foerster LLP and Paul H. Schoeman of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP.
The case is U.S. v. Cohen, case number 1:17-cr-00544, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
--Editing by Jay Jackson Jr.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
