Pleaded guilty but lied, convicted Arkansas businessman states

In hearing, he faults his 2014 lawyers

James Bolt
James Bolt

FORT SMITH -- A man serving a 100-month federal prison sentence said Wednesday that he did not commit the crimes to which he pleaded guilty more than three years ago.

James Bolt told U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark E. Ford that he was terrified that if he did not take the plea agreement offered by the government and went to trial, he would be convicted and die in prison.

Bolt testified in a hearing Wednesday on his motion to vacate the 100-month prison term, $50,000 fine and $2.5 million in restitution to which he was sentenced on June 23, 2014. He is citing ineffective counsel. His two attorneys in his case were Herbert Southern of Fayetteville and Andrew Miller of Rogers.

Among other things, he said Southern, his trial attorney, forced him to accept the plea agreement because Southern had not taken any steps to prepare for Bolt's scheduled Jan. 29, 2014, trial on a 14-count superseding indictment charging Bolt with wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering.

Under cross-examination by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyra Jenner, Bolt said he was innocent of the crimes that he had said under oath before U.S. District Judge Robert Dawson he committed. He admitted that he may have perjured himself at the hearing but his fear of dying in prison did not permit him to risk Dawson withdrawing his guilty plea and sending the case to trial.

Bolt said he wanted to go to trial but suffered a stroke weeks before and wasn't healthy enough to refuse Southern forcing the plea agreement on him.

In a meeting that Bolt and Southern had with federal prosecutors on Jan. 11, 2014, Bolt said he was forced to make up a story about his crimes that would satisfy the prosecutors and that they could "sell" to Dawson in the plea hearing.

"'That's how guilty pleas work,'" he said Southern told him.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Glen Hines, who led the government's prosecution of Bolt, testified that Bolt was interested in making a plea deal and led the defense's discussions at the Jan. 11, 2014, meeting.

He said Bolt made the suggestion that he be allowed to plead guilty to a separate charge of money laundering along with the wire fraud and mail fraud counts from the indictment.

Among the charges Bolt made in his motion to vacate his sentence was that Miller, his attorney at sentencing, did not preserve for appeal the argument that the government had violated his plea agreement regarding not arguing any sentence that exceeded the federal sentencing guideline range.

The range in the agreement was for Bolt to serve 57-71 months. Bolt testified, though, that during the sentencing hearing before U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks, Hines supported Brooks' notification before the hearing that he was considering sentencing Bolt to 100-105 months.

A passage from the sentencing hearing transcript showed Bolt telling Brooks that he agreed with Hines that a sentence of 57-71 months was fair.

Bolt also charged in his motion that Southern was ineffective because he acted as an informant or cooperating agent to the FBI agent who was leading the investigation on his case.

Southern testified that he knew Special Agent Robert Cessario through his investigation of another company for which Southern was the former attorney. But Southern said that case and the criminal case involving Bolt were not connected, and he did not see a conflict of interest.

Southern testified that he told Bolt about the connection with Cessario at the outset of his representation of Bolt because it could appear to be a conflict of interest. Bolt agreed to sign a statement waiving any conflict of interest between Southern and Cessario.

According to his plea agreement, Bolt used his Rogers nonprofit company, Situs Cancer Research Center, to obtain unclaimed property from California that belonged to Community Medical Group of Corona Inc.

Cessario testified that Bolt falsified donation agreements to gain access to Community Medical Group's assets. He said electronic equipment at Bolt's home and at Situs showed that falsified documents and forms with signatures of fictitious people, and false notary stamps were manufactured to trick officials in California and Nevada to turn over the unclaimed assets to Bolt and Situs.

He testified that investigators examining the computers and thumb drives found in Bolt's home and the Situs office showed several donation agreements in the process of being completed.

Testimony in the case resumes at 9 a.m. today.

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Metro on 09/21/2017

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