posted 10-06-2008 07:51 PM            

A real estate loan officer pled guilty today in Federal Court to bank fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering.

A provision of the plea was that the subject submit to a polygraph examination to determine the extent of his assets to satisfy the property forfeiture provisions of the plea agreement and the indictment.

The charges to which the subject pled guilty could result in a sentence of up to 30 years in federal prison. However as part of the plea agreement, the parties have agreed to a joint recommendation of a sentence of 63 months in prison. The court is also free to order resititution to the victim banks.

This is a popular scam today where the loan officer finds a straw buyer, and falsifies their financial background and employment. The banks are so competitive they don't check it out, then they get stuck with a forclosure when the straw buyer disappears. The loan officer gets most of the loaned
Bank money plus a commission. In this case it was about four hundred thousand dollars.

It seems that the federal courts are inclined to employ polygraph examinations in their pre-sentence phase of the trial. I wonder if any members of this forum have conducted this type of exam??

In this type of situation what question format would you recommend?

posted 10-07-2008 12:36 AM            

The ones I have conducted were straight forward and similar in nature to investigative polygraphs (minus the consequences one faces for not being truthful).

It has been my experience, both personal and through researching case law, that the inherent bias that polygraph faces in the eyes of most courts for evidentiary use is mostly related to the fear that it will unduly subvert the trier of facts main duty. However, it is amiably used for administrative purposes by the courts (e.g. pre-sentencing, purposed co-defendant testimony, requests for new trials).

Because they are used in or by the court, I handle them as evidentiary examinations (even when they will not be testified to or placed on the record).

posted 10-16-2008 06:20 PM            

I've done several of these for the U.S. Marshal's or a state agency where the courts wanted an independent examiner. In all of them, I used two, single-issue ("You Phase" ZCT) formats. One test dealt with whether or not they declared /reported (whatever term we decided on in the pre-test) all assets and the second test dealt with whether they had hidden any assets (under some alias/pseudonym or they were put in someone else's name; e.g.,friend/relative/etc).

They can pass the 1st exam if they have the ability to rationalize that they didn't have to "declare" these other assets since they were technically in someone else's possession or name. They could not, however pass the 2nd exam. I have seen tests done like this where an MGQT format was used covering both issues, but the more issues - the more chance for error so I always split them.

If they go DI or Inconclusive, then I'll go into a series of searching POT's as to what they form they have hidden the assets in (cash, jewelry, property, negotiable bonds, drugs, etc) and then where they might be hidden; e.g., offshore accounts, domestic accounts, safe deposit boxes, secure storage units, etc.

CQ's deal with falsification, lying, cheating, violating moral ethics or moral turpitude,etc.

My most recent case was a man involved with Russian organized crime (different from Russian Mafia) in the U.S. who had declared (after everything else was confiscated) only a diamond ring (family heirloom) they let him keep which was worth a significant amount of money. If he lied, it meant a lot more years under the federal sentencing guidelines. He was clearly NDI on the "declare" test but clearly DI on the "hidden" test. Through a series of POT's, we found an new Rolls worth about $300,000 which was parked in a waterfront villa either on the French or Italian Riveria(I can't remember which). The property was in a girlfriend/lover's name (different from the girlfriend/lover he was living with in the U.S.) and the trunk was full of cash and gold in the millions.

The whole process took 3 days of testing with all of the POT's. He couldn't refuse the POT's since he was DI on the 2nd test because he would have been given the additional years for refusing to cooperate, anyway so he decided to "take his best shot" before ultimately confessing.

Anyway - a multi-issue or multi-facet test may not work with some of these individuals which is why I recommend doing however many single-issue tests are necessary depending upon the circumstances since one issue may "overpower" the other issues and dampen the responses to where you could get NDI charts which is highly-unlikely with a series of single-issue tests.

I hope this helps. Good luck!