BREAKING NEWS: John Yeh Trial Update Results
This source came from iDeafNews. John Yeh was sentence for 108 months and his brother Joseph Yeh was sentence for 55 months. More detailed story will be available and will update here.
Video from John Yeh with the result from trial:
Thank you iDeafNews for the updates.
UPDATE: (Credit to clercjr.wordpress.com for this information)
Today, Judge Pisano sentenced John Yeh to 108 months in federal prison with 3 years of post-prison supervised release (aka parole supervision). He was given credit for the time he spent in a Maryland jail earlier this year before state charges were dropped over an unrelated matter.
Joseph Yeh was sentenced to 55 months in federal prison with 3 years of supervised release.
In a surprise move, Viable changed their plea to guilty on only one count; the government dropped all other counts. Judge Pisano also waived a pre-sentencing report (PSR) for Viable. He put them on one year of probation.
For each of the 3 defendants above, Judge Pisano also ordered them to pay $20 million. So, yep, that’s $60 million total. Will the U.S. government ever see most of that money back? I doubt it, but it’s probably to serve as a deterrent to prevent anyone else from ever thinking about trying a scam like this in the future after seeing how stiff the consequences for this one were.
Judge Pisano agreed to send special recommendations to the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) for the Yehs. Not all judges do that, but some will. The BOP is not required to follow Judge Pisano’s special recommendations (other than the sentencing length and conditions) but they generally will try to honor the requests if possible.
A common special recommendation is to specify the convicts be imprisoned somewhere relatively near their family if possible so that it’s easier for their family and friends to provide support during their incarceration through face-to-face visits. Other recommendations might include special diet, medication, segregation (or not).
Both Yehs will report to federal prison on January 11, 2012 at noon. The first prison they go to may not be their “final” home because the first place is usually a processing facility where they evaluate new inmates to determine best placement into an available prison facility. This process may take maybe a month before the next transfer.
Once they are entered in the “prison system”, they will have an inmate number and a special mailing address. I will post this information when I see it on the BOP’s inmate locator website.
Judge Pisano agreed to continue their bail, which means they are free on bail for now, until they report to prison. Some judges will revoke bail upon sentencing to jail or prison, but I’m guessing he gave them a little time to enjoy holidays with family and friends and to get their affairs in order.
Next hearing will be Kathleen Valle’s on Monday December 5th where the court will formally drop all charges against her due to successful completion of the Pre-Trial Diversion program.
Unless rescheduled, there should be two more sentencing hearings in December.
After today’s events, the final numbers:
25 defendants pleaded guilty
1 convicted at trial
1 pleaded guilty but will have all charges dropped
Credit update to (Gazette.net)
A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced John T.C. Yeh, former CEO of Rockville deaf services business Viable, to nine years in prison and ordered him to pay restitution of $20 million for his role in a multimillion-dollar government fraud case.
His brother, former Viable vice president Joseph Yeh, received a prison sentence of 55 months on Wednesday and also was ordered by Judge Joel A. Pisano to pay $20 million in restitution.
In November 2009, John and Joseph Yeh were among 26 people nationwide to be indicted for conspiring to defraud the Federal Communications Commission’s Video Relay Service program, which helps deaf people communicate, by billing the government for millions of dollars in illegitimate calls. They pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud in October 2010.
John Yeh is eligible for a credit of his prison term when he was held during revocation of bail, according to records from U.S. District Court in Trenton, N.J.
Paul F. Kemp, a partner with Ethridge, Quinn, Kemp, McAuliffe, Rowan & Hartinger of Rockville who represented John Yeh, noted that prosecutors were asking for 15 years in prison and the maximum prison sentence the brothers faced was 20 years. He said Wednesday that he does not plan to appeal the sentencing.
“I wish [the prison term] had been shorter, but the judge tried to be fair,” Kemp said. “He was trying to find a middle ground.”
Stanley J. Reed, a principal with Lerch, Early and Brewer in Bethesda who represented Joseph Yeh, also said Wednesday he does not plan to appeal his client’s sentence.
“The judge did a superb job of balancing all of the issues and factors,” Reed said. “Joseph and John are grateful for the amazing outpouring of support they got from the community and the deaf community.”
About 100 people, many from the deaf community, traveled from across the country and even from overseas to support the Yehs at the sentencing hearing, Reed said.
About eight character witnesses testified on the Yehs’ behalf Wednesday, which likely helped their case, Kemp said. “We were grateful to the witnesses who came forward,” he said.
Pisano recommended to the Bureau of Prisons that the Yehs be incarcerated together in a federal prison camp in Cumberland, to be close to family members and be provided with all services they were entitled to under federal disability laws.
During the four-plus-hour hearing Wednesday, the Yehs were “remorseful, somber, scared and very focused on listening to everything the judge said,” Kemp said. The Yehs are not eligible for parole but can receive five days of “good time” per month credited against their prison terms, he said.
Pisano also sentenced both Yehs to three years of supervised release.
“It was a long journey to get here,” Kemp said. “We are glad that we had a thoughtful, considerate judge.”
Two other former Viable executives, Anthony Mowl and Donald Tropp, are among those who have pleaded guilty in the case. They are scheduled to be sentenced by Pisano on Dec. 14 in New Jersey, according to court documents.
John Yeh has long been involved with organizations that advocate for the deaf community, such as the National Asian Deaf Congress and National Deaf Business Institute. He was a trustee of Gallaudet University, a Washington, D.C., institution that specializes in education for deaf people, for more than a decade. Deaf Life, a monthly national magazine founded in 1987, honored him as its Deaf Person of the Year in 2008.
Yeh founded Viable in 2005 to develop and market real-time transcription text and video relay services to help deaf and other hard-of-hearing people communicate. Within three years, Viable had shot up from a handful of workers to almost 200 full- and part-time employees, while annual revenues exceeded $7 million.
But prosecutors said in court documents that Viable charged the government for millions of dollars in illegitimate, or “run,” calls.
A previous business that John Yeh formed, software engineering and integration company Integrated Microcomputer Systems, in Rockville with the help of his brothers, reached $40 million in revenue in 1995 before he sold it in 1996.
kshay@gazette.net
