Sports journalist Joe Posnanski wrote this about baseball:
“I never argue with people who say baseball is boring, because baseball is boring. And then, suddenly, it isn’t. And that’s what makes it great.”
The same could be said of the trial I’ve been covering from the gallery of U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor’s courtroom in Fort Worth.
The hard maple benches are as comfortable as concrete church pews. The days are longer than The Godfather trilogy spliced together. The testimony from the witness stand can be excruciatingly boring.
Then, suddenly, it isn’t.
Jurors in the first three days of the trial heard testimony from the prosecution’s roster of auditors, asset managers, analysts, bankers, brokers, controllers, developers, investment dealers, IT employees, a chief financial officer and more than one “custodian of record.”
The butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker have not testified, but there’s time yet.
Prosecutors wanted to start their case with a bang, and nothing screams excitement like a gaggle of auditors and multiple custodians of record, right?
The charges in this white-collar showdown are serious and the stakes are high. The UDF executives face potentially long prison sentences if they’re convicted. The dollar figures involved place it among the nation’s largest financial fraud cases.
Hollis Greenlaw, CEO of Grapevine-based residential real estate lender United Development Funding, and three other top executives of UDF are charged with conspiring to illegally commingle investment dollars in three of the company’s different funds to deceive investors and banks, prosecutors in the Northern District of Texas allege.
Greenlaw and Benjamin Wissink, Cara Obert and Brandon Jester are charged in a 10-count indictment with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud affecting a financial institution, one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and seven counts of securities fraud/aiding and abetting.
The UDF executives, who have pleaded not guilty, say the charges are without merit.
Here are some of my trial notes from the cheap seats and some observations about matters that are otherwise being left unsaid.
To continue reading Hethecock’s takeaways, read the full article here.