The Greens were charged by criminal complaint filed on December 7, 2007 and were arrested on December 18, 2007. On October 1, 2008, a superseding indictment was filed alleging additional facts, adding money laundering and tax counts, and seeking criminal forfeiture. The tax counts, however, were brought only against Patricia Green. The Greens pleaded not guilty. A restraining order was issued preventing the Greens from disposing of their assets until after trial. On March 11, 2009, a second superseding indictment was filed, which added a count of obstruction of justice against Gerald Green.
On September 11, 2009, after a two-and-a-half week trial, a jury found the Greens both guilty of conspiracy to violate the FCPA and money laundering laws along with substantive violations of those laws. The jury also found Patricia Green guilty of falsely subscribing U.S. income tax returns in connection with their bribery scheme. Prosecutors dismissed a substantive money laundering count prior to the case going to the jury. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the obstruction of justice count against Gerald Green. On August 13, 2010, the court entered a general order of forfeiture against the Greens. The court entered a personal forfeiture judgment against the defendants jointly and severally in the amount of $1,049,465 plus the amount of each defendant’s share of the Artis Design Corporation’s Benefits Plan, representing the amount defendants obtained as proceeds of the offenses. On September 10, 2010, the court sentenced the defendants to six months in prison and three years of supervised release. The court waived other fines but ordered Gerald Green to pay a special assessment of $1,700 and Patricia Green to pay a special assessment of $1,900. The court also ordered that defendants jointly and severally pay restitution in the amount of $250,000. The government appealed the sentence to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on October 22, 2010, but subsequently withdrew the appeal on August 23, 2011. The defendants then appealed the restitution order, claiming that the court could not order restitution without a jury’s finding of an identifiable victim who suffered a pecuniary loss. However, on July 11, 2013, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s ruling.
Related Case.
On January 28, 2009, the senior government official with TAT, Juthamas Siriwan, and her daughter, Jittisopa Siriwan, both Thai citizens, were indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. They are charged with transporting funds to promote unlawful activity, namely bribery of a foreign official in violation of the FCPA, conspiring to do so, and aiding and abetting. The Greens are identified in the indictment as co-conspirators. On August 19, 2011, the Siriwans moved to dismiss the indictments on the ground that the government’s charges rely on an expansive interpretation of “promotion of money laundering” under the Money Laundering Control Act to circumvent the fact that the FCPA does not criminalize a foreign public official’s receipt of a bribe. During a hearing on March 2013, the prosecution set forth its theory of money laundering, whereby an “offense against a foreign nation” is the purported specified unlawful activity. Subsequently, the court issued a stay of the case pending a decision by Thai authorities as to whether the defendants violated Thai law, thus constituting an “offense against a foreign nation.” In August 2015, Thai prosecutors indicted Juthamas Siriwan and her daughter, Jittisopha Siriwan, on charges of taking bribes, corruption, and bid rigging.
The Criminal Court in Thailand imposed a 50-year sentence on Juthamas Siriwan and a sentence of 44-years on Jittisopa Siriwan, and both defendants have been imprisoned in Thailand since March 2017. In response to this development, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California dismissed the indictment against Juthamas Siriwan and Hittisopa Siriwan on January 4, 2019.
