SDNY COURTHOUSE, August 30 – A man who pled guilty to cashing tens of thousands of dollars of fraudulent checks was set to be sentenced on August 30 - but wasn't.
His lawyer said that he recently rented a storefront to become a barber. The sentencing has been delayed pending more information on if any jail time would hurt the start-up business. It happened in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in the courtroom of Judge Vernon S. Broderick. With two dozen of the defendant's family and friends in the gallery, Judge Broderick asked Assistant US Attorney Elizabeth Espinosa how much money the defendant Joshua Rodriguez really got. (It appears AUSA Espinosa was standing in for the two other AUSA listed in the sentencing submission, Daniel Nessim and Jarrod Schaeffer).
Then Rodriguez' lawyer Grainne E. O'Neill described the barbershop, not yet open. Judge Broderick inquired into the length of the lease, how much Rodriguez would be hurt if he put "put in," meaning jail.
Amid reactions in the gallery he may or may not have been aware of, Judge Broderick did not sentence Rodriguez. Instead he gave O'Neill until September 20 to submit more about how the barber shop could not run, nor any lease money be returned, if there is any jail time. AUSA Espinosa or her colleagues then have a week to respond. Then Broderick may or may not choose another day to impose sentence. The case is US v. Rodriguez, 19-cr-12, with many citations to 11-cr-59 (Lewis A. Kaplan).
Previously before Judge Broderick: more than a year ago, Sajid Javed pled guilty to $7 million of Medicade fraud through seven pharmacies, charging for prescription drugs never dispensed to customers. Usually the gap between a plea and sentencing is far less. But in this case Javed contested the loss amount, and his doctor wife was continuing in a medical residency. This last arose on April 26 in the SDNY courtroom of Judge Broderick.
Javed's lawyer said his client stood out in his support of his wife's career because, he said, there is resistance to female doctors in their native Pakistan. Then he asked that actually going to jail be put off into the summer... of 2020.
Judge Broderick wondered if this was even possible, and said he did not like long gaps between imposing sentence and it beginning to be served, since things can change. While called it unusual, he allowed Javed's doctor wife to speak from the gallery. She said due to her age, 39, she is already old for the residency. By next year, she said, her four year old son will be in soon. He meanwhile was eating Lay's potato chips and looking up smiling over the gallery bench at Inner City Press, the only media present (which joked back).
