Judge Shira Scheindlin
The U.S. filed an indictment charging the defendants with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, and bank fraud. The U.S. later filed an S1 Superseding Indictment that charged the defendants with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, and bank fraud and subsequently filed an S2 Superseding Indictment charging defendants with a scheme to defraud lending institutions and individuals and engaging in fraudulent real estate and mortgage transactions involving several properties. The only unifying thread common to all of the properties is the alleged use of "straw purchasers and borrowers." Defendant Abakporo moved to dismiss one count of the S2 Superseding Indictment. The court determined that the S2 Indictment is duplicitous in that it conflates conspiracy to commit wire fraud with conspiracy to commit bank fraud in one count. The court held that the appropriate remedy is to decouple the transactions by separating the two conspiracies into two separate counts and directed the U.S. to reconfigure the counts in a third superseding indictment.
