Case Summaries: Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (Sept. 2024)

This post summarizes published criminal law and related cases released by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals during September 2024. Cases of potential interest to state practitioners are summarized monthly. Previous summaries of Fourth Circuit cases are available here. No violation of the defendant’s right to counsel of his choice where his chosen attorney became a material witness for the government; district court did not improperly limit cross-examination of former attorney where the testimony sought was unrelated to the defendant’s charges U.S. v. Freitekh, 114 F.4th 292 (Sept. 3, 2024). The defendants were father (Izzat) and son (Tarik). They operated a restaurant in Charlotte, North Carolina, together along with other members of the immediate family. In the face of widespread business closures relating to the COVID-19 pandemic in Spring of 2020, the defendants applied for Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) loans totaling $1.75 million dollars. Investigators later determined that the loan applications were fraudulent. The applications claimed businesses and employees that did not exist, overstated the number of employees and payrolls, and in some instances, used forged documents. When the defendants received the money from the loans, Izzat wrote checks of $30,000.00 to each of the family members, despite none of them being listed as employees of the companies listed in the loan applications. At some point during the investigation, Izzat and his attorney met with federal authorities and claimed that a third party had handled the loan applications in exchange for a percentage of the total loan amount. This turned out [...]