Opinion ID: 149697
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Confidential informant Ted

Text: Chinn was assigned in 2000 to do some background information on Struckman for an investigation of the Global Prosperity program. He made rough notes in September of that year about a meeting with an anonymous informant he designated Ted. Chinn's notes indicate that Ted divulged personal information about Struckman, including addresses, marital history, a bank account number used by Struckman or his daughters, and other information about Struckman's family. On at least eight later occasions between September 2000 and December 2001, Chinn made rough, contemporaneous notes about additional conversations with Ted. He did not generate contemporaneous Memoranda of Investigation (MOIs), the proper format for documenting agents' contacts with informants, to memorialize these contacts. The information attributed to Ted in the notes is wide-ranging, including Social Security numbers for members of Struckman's family, license plate numbers for vehicles at Struckman's home, locations of safe deposit boxes, and Struckman's daughter's plan to move to a new residence, including her new address. In March of 2001, Hardaway wrote an MOI detailing a conversation with Ted, the same confidential informant with whom Chinn had been in contact. Between April 17, 2001, and December 12, 2001, Hardaway wrote MOIs for nineteen additional contacts with Ted. In addition to personal information about Struckman's family, the MOIs and rough notes used to produce them include[d] reaction to grand jury appearances by [Struckman and his daughter], reaction to subpoenas by family members, Social Security Numbers, addresses to residences, expenditures, phone and fax numbers, transfer of funds, and arguments and marital problems among the family. On December 17, 2001, Hardaway sent an e-mail to Chinn requesting that he finally finish those memos regarding the information obtained from Ted, because Hardaway was being asked[ ] by the attorneys for the memos. Chinn later testified that he eventually generated after-the-fact MOIs for his contacts with Ted, although he did not specify when he did so. It is clear, however, that Chinn never produced additional MOIs for contact with Ted occurring after the December 2001 e-mail, and Hardaway produced only two more, dated January 3 and 8, 2002. Nonetheless, Hardaway and Chinn continued to attribute later-acquired information, including information that Struckman was in Panama and about his activities there, to Ted well after January 8, 2002. Suspicious as to whether Ted existed, defense counsel before trial sought to discover Ted's identity, arguing that unless [`Ted'] is in a very close relationship with defendant, the government would not have been able to obtain such information but for the use of illegal wiretaps. The district court concluded that Struckman had made the requisite minimal threshold showing that the identity of Ted would be relevant to a defense of governmental misconduct requiring dismissal, and so ordered the government to produce Ted for an in camera hearing with the district judge. But, Ted proved catastropheprone: When Hardaway tried to serve the putative Ted with a subpoena for the hearing, he was told that the informant had recently fallen off a roof and might not be able to travel due to medical problems. Stymied in its attempt to interview Ted, the court ordered the government to file a declaration stating the identity of [`Ted'], describing his/her connection to defendant Struckman and how the informant came about his/her knowledge concerning [the] defendant. The response, filed by Department of Justice Tax Division trial attorneys Mark Odulio and Larry Wszalek, came in the form of MOIs by Chinn and Hardaway, not declarations from Chinn and Hardaway under penalty of perjury. The so-called MOIs were dated the same day as the government's response was filed in the district court, so were not contemporaneous in any sense. In his MOI, Hardaway represented that he had confirmed the identity of the informant as Gary D. Moritz, who had indeed fallen from a roof and who was the husband of Struckman's first wife, Bonnie Moritz. The government also submitted from Gary Moritz an unsworn statement that he had no recollection of any of the information that the government attributed to him. Concerned that the filing did not include any declarations under penalty of perjury from the agents who knew Ted's identity, the district court issued a second order requiring the government to produce a declaration regarding Ted's identity. This time the government filed a document denominated by attorneys Odulio and Wszalek in their filing as a declaration, signed by Hardaway and Chinn but not under penalty of perjury. In the document, Hardaway and Chinn stated that Ted was Gary Moritz and asserted that they believed Moritz received most of the information from discussions at family gatherings or by listening to conversations between his wife, Bonnie Moritz, and her daughters with her ex-husband David Struckman. In response, Struckman filed declarations under penalty of perjury by Gary Moritz, Bonnie Moritz, and one of Struckman's daughters, Jennifer Wininger. Gary Moritz stated that he did not recall giving information about Struckman to Hardaway and did not remember Struckman. Moritz's wife and Struckman's daughter denied ever knowing much of the information attributed to Moritz. Also, the district court found, Bonnie Moritz contradict[ed] almost every single statement attributed to her husband as [`Ted']. . ., and in addition, state[d] that she and Jennifer discussed over the phone much of the private, family related information attributed to Gary as [`Ted'] and that she believed her `phones were tapped in some manner during this time.'