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FCPA unit assistant chief Lorinda Laryea is scheduled to try the Hoskins case and has appeared in both the 
Chatbum and Cevallos Diaz cases. 
On Oct. 28, the same day the Hoskins trial opens, former Barbados minister Donville Inniss is scheduled to go 
on trial in Brooklyn. 
Inniss is not charged with violating the FCPA but rather with conspiracy and money laundering for allegedly 
taking $36,000 in bribes from an insurer called the Insurance Corp. of Barbados Ltd. It is the second time the 
FCPA unit went after a foreign official after a company disclosed bribes and itself dodged charges under the 
FCPA corporate enforcement policy. The other case is on appeal in the Ninth Circuit. 
The last of the six trials is scheduled to begin the next day in Maryland. Former Transport Logistics 
International Inc. executive Mark Lambert stands accused of bribing a Russian energy official to get the 
company contracts with the Russian government. According to Wemick, who was on the case before he left the 
DOJ, FCPA assistant chief linilmtias 
joined the trial team. 
The trial pileup is due in part to the number of individuals the FCPA unit has charged, which has gone up 
slightly in the past three years, according to an annual tally by Shearinan & Sterling LLP. According to the 
firm's figures, 21 people were charged in 2018, a nine-year high. 
The unit is on track to top that, with 21 individuals already charged in 2019, according to the DOJ. 
An increase in prosecutors and agents is behind the uptick in cases, Wemick said. The unit has grown from 19 
attorneys in 2014 to its current 32 and sought to hire more experienced attorneys over the same period, he said. 
In 2015, the FBI created permanent international corruption squads in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, 
D.C., and it added a fourth this year in Miami. On top of that, Wernick pointed to criminal investigators from 
the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security working with the FCPA unit as well as the increased access 
to foreign evidence that U.S. prosecutors get via tighter relationships with their overseas peers. 
More agents means cases can be made the old-fashioned way, through wiretaps, undercover work and flipped 
cooperators. Those methods are also subject to challenges by defendants who feel their rights were violated; 
several challenges have been raised this year. 
Chatbum claimed it was improper for a cooperator to tape his calls after he retained counsel. Lambert called for 
an evidentiary hearing into an FBI informant and cooperator's roles in recruiting him into the alleged bribery 
scheme. And Richard Boncy and Joseph Baptiste, who were convicted in Boston this year of a scheme to bribe 
officials in Haiti, complained that the FBI deleted some calls that agents recorded 
Those bids have not succeeded so far, but as with all trials, they could resurface if the cases end up on appeal. 
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I Tried to Tell the World About the MCC. No One Wanted to Listen. 
The Atlantic 
By Jeanne Theoharis 
8/16/19 
"URGENT," the emails were marked. Since Jeffrey Epstein's death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, at 
least 20 reporters and shows from a broad cross section of the nation's major news outlets have reached out for 
context and comment about the federal penitentiary. I spent a decade trying to get media outlets to pay attention 
to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, pleading with journalists for hours on the phone, 
over email, and in person, to launch investigations of the jail. Over and over, for years, these media 
organizations did not follow up. 
Suddenly, there was urgency to talk about the conditions at MCC. The jail now provided an intriguingly grimy 
backdrop to an already sordid story. The question is whether a sustained light will actually be shined on the 
conditions there, or whether the widespread fascination with MCC just becomes part of the spectacle. 
I spent years, alongside lawyers, civil-rights leaders, concerned citizens, and family members of the 
incarcerated, taking part in vigils outside MCC to call attention to the inhumanity happening within its walls. 
Over and over, Department of Justice officials did nothing. 
I went to court hearings and read court filings where people being held there attested to the inhumane conditions 
at MCC. Judges repeatedly refused to intervene. Nearly all were persuaded by the government's incessant 
claims that such conditions were justified by necessity and national security. 
When the news broke about Epstein's death, Attorney General William Barr said he was shocked, calling for an 
investigation into the "serious irregularities" at MCC. Then on Tuesday, attempting to foist the blame on 
underlings, he reassigned the warden and put two guards on administrative leave. 
This is willful shock, a deeply disingenuous surprise. The scandal is not a few rogue employees. The surprise is 
not that a man in federal custody who had shown suicidal tendencies managed to kill himself, nor conversely 
that a man could be killed behind bars. Barr and his DOJ (like previous DOJ officials) knew MCC was 
structured on "irregularities." So did U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, and his predecessor, Preet Bharara. So 
did the judges of the Southern District of New York. The federal prison system is replete with "irregularities." 
The real scandal is that the horrors of MCC have existed for decades, hidden in plain sight. The journalist Aviva 
Stahl published a searing expose last year in Gothamist on conditions at MCC that documented the filth, 
rodents, overflowing sewage, deeply substandard medical care, wrenching isolation, and the often indifferent—
and at times, cruel—staff. From reports from lawyers and people imprisoned there, to the legal motions they 
have filed attempting to mitigate the inhumane conditions, to the hundreds of administrative remedies prisoners 
have filled out to request remediation (the first step prisoners must take to document problems with their 
conditions), to the research of scholars and human-rights organizations, the abusive and corrupt conditions at 
MCC are well documented. 
But a broad swath of public officials, from the attorney general on down, have chosen to countenance these 
conditions—and major news organizations haven't pressed the issue. As attention finally came to the despicable 
conditions at Rikers, few journalists looked across the river to MCC. Perhaps many labored under the 
misapprehension that while state and local (and private) jails might be mismanaged, abusive, and decrepit, the 
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federal government runs a largely rights-respecting, clean operation. On top of this, the federal government—
and the Bureau of Prisons in particular—makes it supremely difficult to investigate its prisons and jails, 
constantly throwing up justifications for denying access to the materials researchers want ("too burdensome," " 
national security," "privacy," "internal agency workings") and shrouding their practices in secrecy . 
When news about MCC reaches the public, it typically comes in sensational stories about alleged mega-
criminals such as Epstein, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, or Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman being held there—the 
crimes with which they are charged completely obscuring the jail itself. Moreover, while Americans broadly 
profess to oppose torture and cruelty, there's a tendency to look away from (or even take some glee in) the 
abusive conditions facing incarcerated people, particularly those who are publicly reviled. 
I don't know why the overwhelming majority of journalists I talked with over the years never published serious 
investigations into MCC. Perhaps racialized assumptions played a role, separating victims of government abuse 
whose situations seemed urgent and worthy of months of painstaking research from those who are assumed to 
pose exceptional danger and thus perhaps deserve extreme measures. I was highlighting the inhumane 
conditions that largely unknown Muslims facing terrorism charges were experiencing at MCC. Now they are 
calling me about the fiber-rich, white Jeffrey Epstein. 
Or perhaps it was the simple incongruity of the U.S. government running a high-rise dungeon in Manhattan's 
financial district, which featured conditions more commonly associated with the jails of foreign dictatorships. 
The descriptions of the dirty, decrepit, vermin-infested, hyper-isolating jail sitting in an elite zip code never 
seemed to stick. 
The public attention to Epstein's suicide could change that—but only if the public resists the seductive scandal 
of it all and insists on seeing the structural problems that Epstein's time at MCC exposes. 
First the basics: MCC is a pretrial federal facility run by the Bureau of Prisons, which is part of the Department 
of Justice and overseen by Congress, that holds people awaiting trial on charges in the Southern District of New 
York. This means that the people it holds are presumed innocent, and the law ostensibly prohibits their 
punishment before conviction. Opened in 1975, MCC today houses about 750 people in a facility built for fewer 
than 500. The conditions of their confinement vary widely, depending on where they are held, from the general 
population to the Special Housing Unit on the ninth floor to the fearsome 10 South wing. The SHU is for people 
the jail deems not safe in general population or who have allegedly broken jail rules; it features much more 
restrictive conditions, including solitary confinement. Epstein began in the general population but was 
reportedly in the SHU on 9 South when he died. 
Lawyers and people held there awaiting trial regularly report appalling conditions. The temperature is not 
adequately regulated; the facility is often sweltering in the summer and so cold in the winter that prisoners 
report having trouble thinking and wearing layers of clothes to be able to sleep. A single psychiatrist serves both 
MCC and the Metropolitan Detention Center, another federal facility located in Brooklyn. People report being 
"treated" through the slat in their cell door. The facility is run down, and the plumbing and elevators break 
often. 
The most inhumane section of MCC is 10 South. The majority of the people held there over the past two 
decades have been Muslims facing terrorism charges; Guzman was held there as well. No outdoor recreation is 
allowed for 10 South prisoners, and windows are frosted so they are cut off from natural air and light. Besides 
the filth and vermin (even cell-cleaning supplies are often denied), one chief complaint is the lack of ventilation. 
On 10 South, prisoners are alone in their cells almost all of the time; they even shower there. Their sole escape 
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is the hour when they are moved to a solitary cage for exercise. Sometimes, that recreation is denied, leaving 
prisoners to go days without leaving their cells. Cells are electronically surveilled, so that every action—
including using the toilet, showering, and talking—is monitored. 
The defense attorney Robert Boyle has described the conditions at MCC as producing "a continuing 
deterioration in his [client's] health" and has noted reports from other lawyers with clients in similar conditions 
"unable to make rational decisions in relation to the trial they face." 
Nearly all of the people held on 10 South are under special administrative measures imposed by the attorney 
general, which restrict their communication with the outside world. On 10 South, you can be punished for 
yelling through the walls, for saying "As-Salaam Alaikum" to another prisoner, for making the call to prayer. 
While some talk between prisoners through walls or doors is not punished, there is always the threat of 
punishment, and sometimes guards exercise their prerogative to do so. Prisoners report going months without 
any talking—all before they have been convicted of any crime. 
The SAMs also mean that anyone in contact with the prisoner, a list typically restricted to a lawyer and the 
prisoner's immediate family, is forbidden from communicating anything they hear from the detainee. Put 
another way, lawyers or family members can be punished for disclosing any specifics of the conditions they 
hear the prisoner is facing. 
The British civil-rights lawyer Gareth Peirce, who has spent decades defending Irish and Muslim prisoners 
accused of terrorism, visited MCC after clients she was representing were extradited from the UK to the U.S. 
No stranger to prison abuses, Peirce was astonished by the conditions at MCC. "Diabolical," was how she 
described it. 
According to studies, rates of suicide in jail are higher than in prison. And Epstein had reportedly already made 
one attempt to take his own life. While MCC is a special breed of hell, its approach to mental health is 
indicative of the BOP's broad, cruel indifference to mental-health care. Faced with a spate of suicides in 2012, 
for instance, the BOP director sent every prisoner in federal custody an absurd letter. "At times you may feel 
hopeless about your future, and your thought may turn to suicide," Director Charles E. Samuels wrote, "If you 
are unable to think of solutions other than suicide, it is not because solutions do not exist; it is because you are 
currently unable to see them. Do not lose hope." 
International organizations have condemned MCC's conditions. From 2007 to 2012, the European Court for 
Human Rights stayed the extradition of six UK subjects, concerned about inhumane prison conditions at U.S. 
federal facilities like MCC and the nation's supermax prison in Colorado, before finally capitulating to U.S. 
pressure in 2012. Amnesty International in 2014 decried the conditions at MCC, as has the former UN Special 
Rapporteur for Torture Juan Mendez; so, too, did a extensive 2014 report by Human Rights Watch and 
Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute. 
The question now is whether MCC will just serve as the dirty backdrop to bizarre conspiracy theories and 
sordid accountings of Epstein's last hours, allowing the inhumanity to remain hidden in plain sight—or whether 
Epstein's death is going to finally force us to see what is going on in Lower Manhattan and insist conditions at 
MCC finally be addressed. 
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