Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Guilty of misdemeanors, flagged (falsely) as felons
Family wants to know who misreported case
When people plead guilty to misdemeanor charges, they typically don’t expect to be flagged in private and public databases as convicted felons. But a Las Vegas family says that’s exactly what happened after federal authorities shut down their illegal sports betting ring.
For years, Glen Cobb, his octogenarian parents and his stepdaughter used offshore betting sites to boost their casino-based gambling operation. In 2015, they pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges and agreed to forefeit $4.2 million to the federal government — apparent closure to a case that started 13 years earlier when authorities opened their investigation.
Closure, however, didn’t follow. In a strongly worded motion filed in federal court this week, defense lawyers for the family accuse the government of circulating false information about the convictions.
Attorneys Kathleen Bliss and John Kinchen claim that, after the misdemeanor convictions, financial institutions closed the family’s accounts, and law enforcement officials denied Glen Cobb’s application for a concealed carry permit.
The reason provided in both instances? The family members are listed in various databases as convicted felons.
“This Court has already entered an order of formal judgment and conviction declaring that each defendant is guilty of a misdemeanor,” lawyers wrote in the Wednesday filing. “Thus the circulation or entry of false information … that the family members are convicted felons has been done in direct contradiction of this Court’s prior orders.” The U.S. attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment.
PRIVATE-SECTOR DATABASES
In their filing, defense attorneys asked the court to order the government to provide a list of databases in which the Cobbs are registered as felons. They also are seeking the name and contact information of the person or agency responsible for the mistake. And they want to know more about how the false information seeped into private-sector databases — specifically those of the banks and credit reporting agencies that first alerted the Cobbs of the problem.
Federal authorities seized $13.2 million when they cracked their decade-long investigation into the Cobb family’s illegal bookmaking operation. The government returned more than $9 million of those funds after lawyers negotiated a forfeiture amount of $4.2 million as part of the plea agreement. That’s where the trouble started.
When the Cobb family tried to deposit the returned funds, they “learned that their accounts were closed because these financial institutions were purportedly informed by the government that the family members were convicted felons — an utter falsehood,” Bliss and Kinchen wrote in the filing.
The family managed to correct the mistake without the help of the court, but that took months to accomplish, the lawyers wrote.
“Because correcting this misinformation took longer than 30 days, these financial institutions unilaterally sold their assets giving rise to large capital gains, unwanted tax bills, and countless hours trying to remedy the situation,” the lawyers wrote.
A NEW PROBLEM
In January, Glen Cobb encountered a new problem. The Metropolitan Police Department informed Cobb that he was denied a concealed firearms permit, because he is registered as a convicted felon in the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System database.
“Glen is an avid gun collector and being falsely registered as a convicted felon not only wrongly denies him the issuance of a concealed carry permit, in contravention of his Second Amendment rights, but this wrongful designation also subjects him to false arrest by law enforcement for the illegal possession of a firearm,” Bliss and Kinchen wrote.
“I wish that public service would pay attention to mistakes that were obviously made,” Bliss said Friday. “It’s sad that I’m actually having to ask the court for an order to show cause when someone should take the lead in trying to fix this problem.”