Prosecutors lost a tool to go after illegal bid rigging following the U.S. Supreme Court’s May 11 opinion that overturned the conviction of upstate New York former contractor Louis Ciminelli for allegedly helping to structure requests for proposals for projects under the state’s “Buffalo Billions” economic development program to favor his company as the likely winner.
Justices ruled against federal prosecutors’ use of the “right-to-control” theory in the indictment and later conviction of Ciminelli, former CEO of LP Ciminelli and other defendants for wire fraud, under which they were found guilty of fraud for deliberately withholding important financial information from business customers, even without clear evidence that they benefited from doing so.
