It was a dramatic courtroom appearance by both Ifeanyichukwu Eric Abakporo, and Latanya Pierce, who faced their day in court. They were convicted in a wide-ranging series of illegal transactions in New York City that included the defrauding of banks, mortgage lenders, property owners, conspiracy wire fraud, and the defrauding of property buyers in a Federal case in 2013. Today was the day of their sentencing.
Much like the legal proceedings in the U.S. District Court two weeks ago, defense attorneys again, argued over technicalities in what should have been a straight forward sentence to the series of crimes the two had been convicted of, in a jury trial back in July of 2013.
At the end of it, Abakporo, a former Brooklyn-based civil attorney, and Pastor of the Pentecostal Deeper Life Bible Church, will be in federal prison for the next six years. While his co-defendant in the case, Latanya Pierce, will serve two and half years, 30 months, in her conviction in federal court.
What the team of defense lawyers argued over, again, were four legal matters of what they termed, “loss versus intended loss,” and the “relevant conduct,” on the part of their clients in the series of transactions they carried out. Legal experts say the court maneuver is one that lawyers use in the hopes of a lesser sentence for convicted felons. It is a technicality used that often delays the inevitable, but one that can shave-off considerable time issued by a presiding judge.
Federal sentencing guidelines are complex. In the U.S. court system the laws are more complex in the federal system, than in the lower, or state and municipal courts around the country.
One legal expert broke down the federal legal proceedings to a SaharaReporters correspondent covering this trial, and had explained the defense strategy. It is a kind of ‘point system,’ a legal move to give the judge wider discretion over sentences handed out. Although that point system, in legal terms, is not binding for any judge.
The presiding U.S. District Court Judge in this case, Shira A. Scheindlin, arrived ten minutes late to her bench, explaining that she had received an avalanche of legal papers, and, more recently, an ‘off-the-record’ telephone call days ago, and other calls, leading up to this sentencing hearing. She said it was “extraordinary.”
In her recounting of the legal moves dating back to January of this year, Judge Scheindlin said that she had been the recipient of legal motions, counter arguments, and dozens of legal submissions made between the beginning of the year, up until this sentencing date. Yet, she said she would “not be deterred” in making the recommended sentences fitting the severity of the crimes the two had been convicted of.
Abakporo was found guilty of the federal charges of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and bank transfer fraud, involving at least two mortgage property lenders, and at least a dozen individuals. While Latanya Pierce, his co-defendant was also found guilty on all of the federal counts, and had a separate set of attorneys representing her.
In the case of Pierce, her attorneys talked about “uncharged properties” that she should not be linked to with Abakporo in this case. Again, it was a legal technicality that slowed down the inevitable.
Much to the exasperation of Judge Scheindlin, who kept calm, but whose patience was beginning to visibly wear thin, she recounted, for over an hour, the points and counter points made by both government and defense attorneys. Those points included matters of relevant conduct; versus irrelevant conduct in the cases of fraud the two had carried out for nearly a decade.
Going over legal papers on her desk, Judge Scheindlin talked about the ‘sophisticated schemes’ by both defendants that included forgery. In the case of Abakporo, she took aim at what she termed his ‘abuse of power,’ both as a civil attorney, and especially, as pastor of the Brooklyn-based Deeper Life Bible Church. While there was no proof that they targeted vulnerable and elderly victims, the judge noted that even the elderly they targeted, were the same of many of the other victims in the nine-year long scams they ran across New York.
Once all of the legal arguments were made, and aired here, in a proceeding that lasted for the better part of two hours, the sentencing and the closing comments of both defendants were heard for the last time.
It was high drama.
Abakporo was first. He stood before the judge wearing a gray colored two-piece suit, white shirt, and a red colored tie. He was defiant, and even cocky, and to some observers, almost believable. He said to the hushed courtroom that contained 17 spectators, “All I did was do my work as a lawyer.” He said that he was a victim of what he called, ‘sub-party transactions,’ and it was those transactions that were the ‘sole reason’ for his conviction in this case.
On at least two occasions the judge had to interrupt Abakporo, telling him that his time was limited, and that this was not the place to re-try a case that had already been decided by a jury.
He went on, still maintaining his innocence, adding that his conviction and sentencing in this case was, “a sad commentary for a man who works around the clock.” At times he was loud, and dramatic, saying that he was “a Christian,” and a good man. “I didn’t rob any banks,” he maintained, and added that he was “a victim of prosecutorial misconduct.” He took the role of the victim, and added “persecution is what I faced. Witnesses lied from the beginning (at this trial.) I stole nothing.”
The judge was not convinced, and said that she was astounded by his arrogance in showing no remorse for the crimes that he was convicted of. Using what she called a ‘non-guideline sentence,’ a request granted to the defense, Abakporo was hit with a 72 month, or six-year sentence. Judge Scheindlin immediately remanded Abakporo into federal custody. She advised him that he had 14 days to file an appeal.
Abakporo’s wife, Rosemary, and two daughters, age 15 and 3, respectively, openly wept in the rear of the courtroom. He was allowed to join them for a few moments before being whisked away by three members of the U.S. Marshall’s Office. They took his jacket, and demanded that he hand over his red tie.
He will likely be immediately deported back to Nigeria once he has served his six-year term. What happens to his wife, Rosemary, and two daughters now is unclear. She reportedly suffers from an undisclosed medical condition, and treatment for it in Nigeria is unavailable, defense attorneys noted. It remains an open question whether Immigration officials would allow Abakporo to stay in the U.S. to care for an ailing spouse. Legal experts say, however, it is unlikely.
In the case of Latanya Pierce, her closing words and presentation before the judge was far different. She was humble, and showed remorse. Pierce said that she had “learned some important lessons in this case,” claiming that she had worked in real estate in New Jersey, across the Hudson River, and had not gotten involved with property deals in New York prior to her business dealings with Abakporo.
She said, as she faced the judge, that she felt like “the biggest fool in the world.” She is a single mother who is stretched to the financial limit, Pierce said. A single mother who also owns a home in New Jersey, a house she is now likely to lose.
Pierce said that she “didn’t have a clue” as to what legal, and real estate documents, she had signed under the suggestion of Abakporo, a man, she said, she trusted. She cried openly during the reading of her written statement, and said that her child would now be in the care of her two cousins, who were present in the courtroom. Her lesson out of all of this, Pierce said, was that she would “no longer have a blind trust,” in future financial dealings.
Judge Scheindlin issued Pierce a 30-month sentence, with an additional three (3) years of supervisory probation release. The judge was more lenient with Pierce, than she was with Abakporo. At press time it was not clear if she remanded Pierce immediately into federal custody.
In the case of Abakporo, however, Judge Scheindlin said that the six-year sentence issued to him was significant punishment for the crimes he had committed. Scheindlin, looking directly at Abakporo, called it “significant punishment” and noted that he was a flight risk, hence, her call not to issue him more time to organize his affairs. Of note, the judge said that Abakporo was a man whom “the public needs to be protected from.”
Spelling it out in writing, Judge Scheindlin issued the following: “The Court makes the following recommendations to the Bureau of Prisons: That defendant be designated to a facility as close to NYC as possible. That defendant be designated at a security level as close to the nature of the offense as possible. A Special Assessment of $300, which is due immediately.”
Out of the seven properties cited in this federal wire fraud case, perhaps the most egregious instance was Abakporo’s swindle of Ina McCarther, an 80-year-old African-American woman who owned a Harlem property. She had purchased the northern Harlem Saint Nicholas Avenue building back in 1954, and had hoped to earn nearly $4 million U.S. dollars in the sale. McCarther, a wheelchair-bound retired teacher, was not present in the courtroom.
Abakporo, a former pastor at the Deeper Life Bible Pentacostal Church, a religious institution based in Nigeria, used his religious connection, and the fact that he was a Brooklyn-based civil lawyer, to impress McCarther into trusting him. She did, and paid a price. Abakporo represents that Nigerian-based Pentecostal church in New York. This was a key factor in the judge’s decision to issue immediate remanding, also noting that the public trust he earned was “abused,” and his white collar crimes coupled, with his religious connections, had “played a major role in this nine year conspiracy.”
The judge noted that there were likely many other untold stories connected to the crimes Abakporo committed, that he had “ruined the lives” of at least a dozen people, people, Judge Scheinlin noted, who had lost homes, and money. The crimes also included forgeries, and other crimes that “left people hurt and homeless.”
SaharaReporters was also a target of Eric Abakporo’s in a $30 million U.S. dollar libel suit, when the media entity reported the story of a fraudulent Nigerian U.N. Mission contract connected to him back in 2010. That story surrounded his alleged corruption ties relating to the non-delivery of services of renovation projects at the Nigerian mission to the UN.
The renovation project involved Prof. Joy Ogwu, the Nigerian Permanent representative to the UN, who is also happens to be Abakporo’s cousin. While Abakporo faces jail time for his criminal conduct in the real estate fraud, the Nigerian authorities refused to investigate a petition submitted by the whistleblowers familiar with the inside deal, revealing the Abakporo/Ogwu’s fraudulent transactions at the UN mission.
Prof. Joy Ogwu remains in her position as the Nigerian Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
The threat of the libel suit against SaharaReporters stood, but it was later dropped by Abakporo, when he was indicted in this very federal case, for bank and wire fraud conspiracy. In total, Abakporo’s crimes were such that they covered a wide range of complex transactions in three out of New York City’s five boroughs.
Yet, his targeting of the media did not start there. Two years before, in 2008, a lawsuit Abakporo had brought against another New York media entity was later thrown out of state court in early January of 2013. The suit, known as ‘Abakporo verses (the New York) Daily News,’ came after two articles appeared in that newspaper about a questionable Brooklyn real estate transaction he was involved with. The stories were published in March and April of 2008.
He had targeted two New York Daily News reporters, William Sherman, and Andrew Theodorakis, respectively, on their published stories. A panel of three judges in the State Supreme Court Case had found the ‘Daily News’ story to be completely true and, Abakporo’s claims in filing his case against them, to be baseless. The Brooklyn Appellate Court decision was rendered, formally, in early 2013.
In total, and not including the fraudulent contracts involving the Nigerian Permanent Mission to the UN, Abakporo and Pierce were indicted for over $2.5 million U.S. dollars in property and fraud cases across New York.
Yet, in the reporting of this complex story, details of other cases Abakporo is allegedly linked to continue to surface, even at the time of his sentencing in this case.
Eric Buckvar is a New York-based attorney who bumped into a SaharaReporters correspondent minutes before Judge Scheindlin handed down the sentences in the federal case. Buckvar, who spoke to the correspondent outside the courtroom, said that he is involved in yet another civil case where Abakporo had allegedly swindled his client out of $250,000.00 U.S. dollars in a business deal.
His client, who was in Nigeria at the time, was not hopeful in getting restitution from a man who had already been convicted of similar charges in this highly publicized federal case.
SaharaReporters obtained a copy of legal papers filed in November of 2010 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court regarding the financial insolvency of the Deeper Life Bible Church, where Abakporo served as Pastor. The church moved to a new Brooklyn address since the bankruptcy filing.
The church still has an active URL web presence; with the last entry showing the church had sponsored a ‘National Youth Conference’ in July 2012. Yet, a Face Book page and Twitter account were removed. The church continues to have an active telephone number, but when a SaharaReporters correspondent called the ‘718’ number, there was an electronic outgoing message to callers requesting callers to leave a message. Only one problem there, the incoming message box was full.
Like so many other of Abakporo’s dealings, there remain many unanswered questions regarding his other unreported business dealings. There were no defenders for him present in federal court, ready to step forward to defend his honor. Yet, suggested Attorney Eric Buckvar, there are likely many other untold voices, not heard in this federal trial, where he was convicted of committing serious crimes, and where he will now sit paying for those offenses in a federal prison, somewhere in the U.S. for the next six years.
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