Defense attorneys in the federal fraud trial of Fair Finance executives Tim Durham, Jim Cochran and Rick Snow rested their cases Tuesday morning after calling just one witness and introducing a handful of exhibits.
Attorneys for Tim Durham and his co-defendants are expected to start their defense Tuesday morning and wrap it up in the afternoon. The jury is expected to begin deliberations Wednesday.
In the weeks before an FBI raid shut down Fair Finance Co., top company executives led by Indianapolis financier Tim Durham devised a last-ditch maneuver they hoped would persuade Ohio regulators to allow them to keep selling investment certificates.
A series of government-recorded phone calls have provided some of the most riveting courtroom moments during the fraud trial of Tim Durham and two co-defendants.
The accounting firm Tim Durham hired to review the Ohio company’s 2003 finances refused to complete an audit because of concerns about the accuracy of its numbers and the appropriateness of its practices. The FBI raided Fair Finance in November 2009.
Rick Snow, Fair Finance Co.'s former chief financial officer, isn't accused of collecting insider loans like co-defendants Tim Durham and Jim Cochran. But he's facing the same felony charges.
Federal prosecutors in the Tim Durham fraud trial on Wednesday sought to introduce into evidence an IBJ investigative report from October 2009, but a judge agreed with a defense attorney and denied the request.
The men who presided over Ohio-based Fair Finance were at their wits end by late 2009. In government-recorded phone calls and intercepted e-mails introduced as evidence in U.S. District Court this week, they come across as exhausted, angry and determined.
Donald Russell, a retired deputy sheriff, is among the more than 5,000 clients of Fair Finance who lost big investments with the Ohio firm. After testifying on Tuesday during the fraud trial for Fair owner Tim Durham, he shared his story with IBJ.
Tim Durham and his co-defendants in the fraud case involving Fair Finance sit on the same side of the courtroom, but that doesn't mean their interests are always aligned.
The former controller at Fair Finance is testifying at the fraud trial of Tim Durham as a star witness for the federal government in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
The man whose father founded Ohio-based Fair Finance during the Great Depression led off the government's case on Monday against the Indianapolis men accused of looting the company and leaving its investors with $200 million in losses.
A federal judge and a handful of attorneys are selecting jurors who could determine the fate of indicted financier Tim Durham and his co-defendants. The jury-selection process, which began Friday morning, launched what’s expected to be a three-week trial over alleged wire and securities fraud.
The criminal case against Tim Durham and co-defendants Jim Cochran and Rick Snow is set to begin Friday in front of federal Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson. Prospective jurors in the high-profile trial will be asked whether they can be impartial and not be influenced by what they have heard, read or seen about the case.
Tim Durham’s attorney is hellbent on preventing prosecutors from fixating on the things that made the Indianapolis financier a staple of TV news and gossip columns—his fancy cars, waterfront mansion and other trappings of a lavish lifestyle. Durham’s trial is set to begin on Friday.
The FBI had been investigating Tim Durham since March 2009, when his friend Dan Laikin, a Fair Finance board member, offered up incriminating information on the Indianapolis financier in hopes of securing a lighter sentence for himself in an unrelated case.
A federal judge in Indianapolis refused to throw out wiretap evidence in the $200 million fraud trial of former Indiana businessman Tim Durham as the government outlined a case largely based on those recordings.
The ruling by federal Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson is a big setback for Durham and his attorney, John Tompkins, who in court papers had alleged “outrageous government misconduct.”
Attorneys assisting the Fair Finance Co. bankruptcy trustee have agreed to no longer be paid by the hour but instead on a contingency based on a percentage of funds recovered for shareholders of the company owned by indicted financier Tim Durham.
Lawyers overseeing Fair Finance's liquidation charge that, every step of the way, businesspeople who crossed Tim Durham’s path and witnessed questionable behavior looked the other way—because it was highly profitable for them to do so.
