IBJNews

Durham lawyer balks at proposed 225-year sentence

Back to TopCommentsE-mailPrint

The attorney for convicted Ponzi schemer Tim Durham is howling in protest at a presentencing report that recommends the Indianapolis financier spend around 225 years in prison and be ordered to pay $209 million in restitution.

The report is not public, but Durham’s attorney, John Tompkins, revealed its contents in a 38-page filing Wednesday that called the harshness of the proposed sentence “absurd.”

Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson is scheduled to sentence Durham, 50, and co-defendants Jim Cochran and Rick Snow on Nov. 30. A federal jury in June found Durham guilty on all 12 felony charges stemming from the collapse of Akron, Ohio-based Fair Finance Co.

Durham co-owned Fair with Indianapolis businessman Jim Cochran, who was convicted on eight of 12 felony charges. Snow, the company’s chief financial officer, was convicted on five of 12 counts.

Prosecutors charged that after Durham and Cochran bought the business in 2002, they raided its coffers to fund their lavish lifestyles and to cover losses at failing businesses they owned.

The huge withdrawals—which were recorded as loans but were not repaid—left Fair without the means to repay 5,000 Ohio residents who purchased more than $200 million of the company's unsecured investment certificates, according to a grand jury indictment unsealed in March 2011.

Judges have final say on sentencings but typically rely on presentencing reports, which are prepared by federal probation employees. Prosecutors did not lodge an objection to the report by Wednesday's deadline.

Tompkins’ objection argued that the report miscalculates the losses suffered by investors, includes a range of allegations that weren’t proven at trial and blames Durham for events outside his control.

Fair shut down in November 2009, following a surprise raid of the company’s offices by FBI agents. A month earlier, IBJ had published an investigative story that questioned whether the insider loans imperiled the company’s ability to repay investors.

“The FBI’s decision to raid Fair Finance’s offices, seize records and just walk away leaving fear and panic  … caused the disintegration of a company that employed approximately 75 employees, and held hundreds of millions of dollars in assets,” Tompkins said in his filing.

Court records don’t say what prison terms presentencing reports recommend for Cochran and Snow. Snow’s attorney did not object to the report. A recently appointed public defender representing Cochran was granted more time to decide whether to object.

Prosecutors made available hours of wiretapped conversations between Durham and Cochran, as they scrambled to keep Fair afloat. IBJ collected some key exchanges in a series of edited recordings. In the conversation below, from Nov. 24, 2009, Cochran and Durham briefly discuss the possibility they could serve jail time.

 

 

ADVERTISEMENT

  • Tim Durham's death sentence?
    I could not agree with you more. 225 years for being a con-artist? There are people who committed much worse crimes who don't spend their life in prison.
  • Tompkins!!????????
    Millions of dollars in assets, then where are they and how is it the Trustee can't find them. How much did Obsidian owe 30MM++ and had one company that was actually making money (United)and couldn't pay back it's loan in a hundred years. What about all the "assets" that were being carried on the books as loans for companies that were closed for many years. The fact is this ship was sinking for years and Captain Timmy was at the helm.
  • Prison for Non-violent Criminals
    Putting Tim in prison is a complete waste of our tax dollars. The man should go back to work and be monitored/put on probation, etc. but be required to work and pay back some of the lost money. We are paying too much for non-violent criminals to be housed, fed and educated on our tax dollars. Instead, why not create a few more jobs by adding monitors for the non-violent offenders? He should work the rest of his life - not lounge around in a white collar prison playing tennis and eating bon-bons all day!
    • What else is there to say
      Well done Mikey - you summed up the life of Durham perfectly. Rot in jail Timmy

    Post a comment to this story

    COMMENTS POLICY
    We reserve the right to remove any post that we feel is obscene, profane, vulgar, racist, sexually explicit, abusive, or hateful.
     
    You are legally responsible for what you post and your anonymity is not guaranteed.
     
    Posts that insult, defame, threaten, harass or abuse other readers or people mentioned in IBJ editorial content are also subject to removal. Please respect the privacy of individuals and refrain from posting personal information.
     
    No solicitations, spamming or advertisements are allowed. Readers may post links to other informational websites that are relevant to the topic at hand, but please do not link to objectionable material.
     
    We may remove messages that are unrelated to the topic, encourage illegal activity, use all capital letters or are unreadable.
     

    Messages that are flagged by readers as objectionable will be reviewed and may or may not be removed. Please do not flag a post simply because you disagree with it.

    Sponsored by
    ADVERTISEMENT

    facebook - twitter on Facebook & Twitter

    Follow on TwitterFollow IBJ on Facebook:
    Follow on TwitterFollow IBJ's Tweets on these topics:
     
    Subscribe to IBJ
    1. Good ole' Obamacare. Thanks liberals and those who didn't bother to vote.

    2. Yes. Blame those who were too lazy to go vote Obama out and those who voted him in again. That's my take on it. I know folks won't get it on the left. OK. Start berating me now!

    3. Serioulsy, people are AGINST this project? Most communities would be salivating over a project like this. You'd rather have an empty eye-sore gas station and shacks posing as apartments? This project is exactly what BR needs. BUILD IT MR MAYOR. And yes, I am a BR resident, and have been for 20 years.

    4. As a St. Vincent employee of over 20 years, I am saddened and disheartened by this announcement. Unfortunately, as the healthcare "industry" continues on this political and corporate path, all that St. Vincent Hospital has stood for spiritually for its employees and this community is being sucked dry. I know it truly has no choice. It is not just Obamacare or just competition or just any single thing. This trend started long before I was even born when the government became involved in healthcare and it became an "industry." I grieve for those who will lose their jobs, one of whom may be me, but I also grieve for this hospital which I have served for over 20 years. May God give us and it the grace to withstand the future of healthcare.

    5. Why do people constantly harp on this issue and act ignorant about what a city population measures? A city's population is the city's population. There is no argument or debate about it. If you want to measure the density of a city--measure it. If you want to measure the size of a metropolitan area, then measure the metropolitan population. City boundaries cover different sized areas--and they always have (though the disparity has probably increased since about 1900 or so when more cities began annexing their surrounding communities). For example, San Francisco only covers 49 square miles while Houston cover nearly 600 square miles. No one argues about the population rankings of either city even though they clearly cover extremely different sized areas. Indianapolis is the 13 largest city by population in the U.S. That is a fact. While the population of a metropolitan area may give you a better sense of how large a community is, as noted, even metro areas can vary widely in the size of geographic area they cover--so that is not a perfect comparison either.

    ADVERTISEMENT