Opinion ID: 1435420
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Remaining Liotard Factors

Text: The New York Indictment is geographically broader than the Pennsylvania indictment, but both conspiracies occurred nationwide, and both Indictments focus on the Rigases' homes and Adelphia's corporate headquarters in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Indictment specifically names Coudersport, Pennsylvania; Buffalo, New York; Beaver Creek, Colorado; and New York City as places where acts related to the conspiracy took place. The New York Indictment also involves these locations. While the New York Indictment does not specifically identify Buffalo or Beaver Creek, the Bill of Particulars does include allegations related to those locations. We do not find it significant that the New York Indictment also included misrepresentations to investors across the nation. The allegations related to conversion of Adelphia funds by the Rigases  a subsidiary scheme within the New York Indictment  appear to be the same in both indictments, and thus occurred in the same locations.
Both indictments seem to allege conversion of the same assets, by the same means, in the same transactions. Certainly, each indictment alleges acts not contained in the other. The New York Indictment, which alleges both fraudulent misrepresentations about Adelphia's finances and performance, and fraudulent concealment of the fact that the Rigases were misusing corporate assets for personal purposes, is far broader than the Pennsylvania Indictment. Further, the Pennsylvania Indictment includes allegations related to filing income tax returns, which are not included in the New York Indictment. However, key overt acts in both indictments are transactions in which the Rigases secretly took Adelphia's corporate assets.
The defendants were central figures in both conspiracies. They caused the wrongful transactions, and were personally responsible for hiding those transactions. Putting all of these factors together the Rigases have made out a non-frivolous showing of double jeopardy. The New York conspiracy alleges that the Rigases took Adelphia's corporate assets for their personal use and hid those transactions from investors and regulators. The Pennsylvania conspiracy alleges that one reason the Rigases took those same assets was to avoid publicly receiving large salaries on which they would have been required to pay income tax. Because both indictments concern the same underlying transactions, they relate to the same time and place and involve the same core group of participants. Both indictments have a common goal, and individual overt acts in both indictments were interdependent. Accordingly, the Rigases have established a strong inference that there was a single agreement. On remand, the Government will bear the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that the Rigases entered into two separate agreements.