Opinion ID: 2778648
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: SEC Referral

Text: Defendant insists that “once the SEC has investigated, determined, and referred a [securities] violation, then and only then can the appropriate district empanel a grand jury and investigate” for any criminal prosecution relating to the violation of securities laws. Aplt. Opening Br. at 17. He contends that this unsatisfied prerequisite to criminal prosecution—applicable here, he argues, because the charged conspiracy concerned investments qualifying as securities2—is a limitation on the district court’s subject-matter jurisdiction. This argument is meritless. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3231 the district courts have jurisdiction over “all offenses against the laws of the United States.” Absent an express limitation imposed on that jurisdiction by some other statute, § 3231 is “the beginning and the end of the jurisdictional inquiry” in criminal cases, United States v. Tony, 637 F.3d 1153, 1158 (10th Cir. 2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). The other statute invoked by Defendant imposes no such limitation. All it says is that “the [SEC] may transmit such evidence as may be available concerning [illegal securities] acts or practices to the Attorney General, who may, in his discretion, institute the necessary criminal 2 The basis for our rejection of Defendant’s jurisdictional contention does not require us to delve into the intricacies of what constitutes a “security” implicating the authority of the SEC. -4- proceedings.” 15 U.S.C. § 77t(b). Nothing in this discretionary language suggests that an SEC referral is a prerequisite to criminal prosecution by the Attorney General of offenses relating to securities—much less a prerequisite to the district court’s jurisdiction over such an offense. This court rejected a similar argument in connection with referrals by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for prosecution of campaign-finance crimes in Bialek v. Mukasey, 529 F.3d 1267 (10th Cir. 2008). Our analysis in that case is applicable here. First, we “emphasize[d] that we cannot presume that Congress has divested the Attorney General of his prosecutorial authority absent a clear and unambiguous expression of legislative will.” Id. at 1270 (internal quotation marks omitted). We then examined the language of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) for an expression of such legislative will, and found none: FECA[] speaks only to the power of the FEC. It requires a vote of four commissioners before the FEC may refer a matter for criminal prosecution, but this provision, by its clear terms, restricts only the FEC. Nowhere in FECA do we find a single phrase limiting the Attorney General’s powers. If Congress had wished all campaign finance litigation, both civil and criminal, to originate with the FEC, only a few lines of statutory text would have been required. Instead, Congress explicitly granted the FEC only exclusive jurisdiction with respect to civil enforcement of FECA’s provisions. The obvious implication, uncontroverted by any words in the statute, is that the FEC and Attorney General retain concurrent jurisdiction to investigate criminal matters. Id. at 1271 (citation, footnote, emphasis, and internal quotation marks omitted). -5- Like the FECA provision at issue in Bialek, nothing in § 77t(b) purports to limit the prosecutorial authority of the Attorney General. The Attorney General is mentioned in § 77t(b), but in recognition—not limitation—of his discretionary authority to initiate criminal prosecutions. Intertwined with his SEC-referral objection, Defendant also argues that a securities violation is a necessary predicate for guilt on the conspiracy counts and, he contends, no such violation occurred. This argument is meritless for at least two reasons. First, “[o]ne can be guilty of a conspiracy to commit an offense without committing the substantive offense itself.” Lake, 472 F.3d at 1263. Second, this is really just another version of the argument that he is innocent of the conspiracy counts to which he pleaded guilty—that “[t]here was never any criminal conduct in this case.” Aplt. Opening Br. at 18. Again, his participation in a criminal conspiracy is precisely what his guilty plea established.