Known as “Posh George”, George Cottrell was a volunteer for Farage in 2016 before his arrest in the US on money-laundering charges and ultimate guilty plea to one count of wire fraud in a case unrelated to his work at Ukip, Farage’s party at the time. The crime was committed in 2014, before Cottrell worked for either the anti-EU party or Farage.
Cottrell served eight months after a plea agreement that reduced his possible prison sentence from a maximum of 20 years, according to court documents at the time.
In English terms, he served 8 months on remand and was sentenced to time already served…..
Be interesting to know what the details of the case were, since the Graun’s calling it “money laundering”. Doing international money transfers without understanding the extensive & complicated regulations is an easy way to get yourself inadvertently committing an offence
Plead guilty and you get a 6 to 12 month sentence: plead not guilty and you could receive a 20 year sentence. Even the innocent would likely plead guilty.
8 months on remand
v
20 years
Despite their 97% conviction rate it looks like the feds were not confident of their case.
I’m sure this will influence all those dozens of guardian readers who are considering voting Reform.
Only kidding. There aren’t any.
Be interesting to know what the details of the case were
If the details aren’t publicised, then it was clearly either very minor or something many wouldn’t realise was a crime. ‘Wire fraud’ seems to cover a lot in the Banana Republic of Yankistan.
All Reform candidates can expect to have their online lives eviscerated and the slightest thing jumped on. Because the Terriblegraph is as desperate to be rid of them as the lefty papers.
This sort of self-righteous crap leads to politics being even more dominated by the sort of power-mad little shit who fantasises about ordering people around from age 10 and thus is very careful about online utterances.
“wire fraud” seems to be both broadly and vaguely defined, and a favourite fall-back for Yankee Federal prosecutors who can’t get any more substantive charge to stick.
In their definition, “fraud” includes “a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services”; the courts have described this as criminalising “conduct which fails to match the reflection of moral uprightness … in business life of members of society”.
In other words, they feel you’ve been a bit iffy, can’t find anything wrong, but if you ever sent an email about it they can threaten you with 20 years for wire fraud to bully you into a plea bargain.
Marius said:
“This sort of self-righteous crap leads to politics being even more dominated by the sort of power-mad little shit who fantasises about ordering people around from age 10”
Oh, I hadn’t realised this was another post about Murphy.
Regardless of the merits of the case, he has served his time and that should suffice.