Sometimes clients will believe that by hiring attorneys who have just left the government, they can obtain confidential information. While those attorneys have relationships with the other attorneys and agents, they have strict ethical rules where they cannot use information from a case they worked on in private practice.
In an unusual and sad case, former Department of Justice attorney Jeffrey Wertkin was sentenced on March 7. 2018 to 30 months in prison
for obstruction of justice and transportation of stolen property following a guilty plea last November relating to his "theft" of confidential information and documents on cases he personally was not working on and using it to obtain private clients.
According
to his plea agreement, Mr. Wertkin of Washington, D.C., worked for the Civil
Fraud Section of the Department of Justice from October 24, 2010, until April
12, 2016. During that time, he worked on qui tam actions pursuant to
which the government investigated companies suspected of breaking the law.
Federal courts often order qui tam complaints “sealed” and therefore kept
from public view until it is appropriate for the complaints to become public.
In his plea agreement, Mr. Wertkin admitted that during the last month of his
employment as a trial attorney with the Department of Justice, he began
secretly reviewing and collecting sealed qui tam complaints that were not
assigned to him.
Further, Mr. Wertkin has admitted that after he left the
Department of Justice, he used the stolen information improperly to solicit
clients that were the subject of the sealed complaints. Mr. Wertkin
acknowledged that in one instance, he was successful in using the information
from a sealed complaint to convince the company that it was the subject of a
lawsuit and to retain him as an attorney to represent it in the lawsuit. Mr. Wertkin also acknowledged he lied to the Department of Justice in
documents he completed during his exit process regarding whether he stole the
complaints.
The
plea agreement also describes two occasions in which Mr. Wertkin attempted to sell
information to companies that were the subject of government investigations.
On November 30, 2016, Mr. Wertkin offered to sell a complaint to the
corporation named in the lawsuit. Then, between November 30, 2016, and
January 31, 2017, Mr. Wertkin engaged in multiple conversations with a
representative of the corporation to negotiate the sale of the sealed complaint
for $310,000.
Similarly, on January 23, 2017, Wertkin contacted a second
corporation and offered to mail to the representative a copy of the face sheet
of the complaint. Wertkin actually mailed a redacted copy of the face
sheet and promised that, for a fee, he would provide the entire complaint.
Mr. Wertkin
was arrested on January 31, 2017, after traveling from the Washington, D.C.
Area to the San Francisco Bay Area with a copy of a sealed complaint. On
that day, Mr. Wertkin believed he was meeting at a Cupertino hotel with a
representative from a company and that he was exchanging the complaint for a
duffel bag filled with $310,000. In truth, Wertkin was meeting with an
undercover employee of the FBI.
Mr. Wertkin described the meeting in his
sentencing memorandum as follows: “As part of his escapist fantasy, Mr. Wertkin
donned a wig and sunglasses and went to a hotel in Sunnyvale with complaint in
hand, whereupon he was arrested by the FBI.”
Further, Mr. Wertkin admitted that after his arrest, he took steps in an effort to obstruct
the ongoing criminal investigation. Specifically, after being released
from custody, Mr. Wertkin returned to his office, purportedly to retrieve his
personal belongings, and removed and destroyed documents from his office that
he knew could further incriminate him.
Mr. Wertkin also acknowledged he
“placed two complaints in a used FedEx envelope in an attempt to make it appear
that sealed complaints had been accidentally mailed to him by a DOJ employee.” Mr. Wertkin acknowledged he took these and additional other steps in an
effort to corruptly obstruct the ongoing investigation and proceedings against
him.
Mr. Wertkin decided to plea and on November 1, 2017, Mr. Wertkin was charged by information with two counts of
obstruction of justice, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1505, and one count of
interstate transportation of stolen goods, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2314. Pursuant to his plea agreement, Wertkin pleaded guilty to all counts.
