United States v. Kumar, No. 06-5482-cr (2d Cir. August 12, 2010) (Walker, Sacks, Livingston, CJJ)
Sanjay Kumar and Stephen Richards, officers as a company called Computer Associates, engineered a huge accounting fraud that ended in October of 2000. Had that been the end of the story, their sentence would have been calculated under the November 1998 Guideline Manual (for obscure political reasons there is no November 1999 Manual), and their offense level would have been 30. However, the defendants engaged in additional criminal conduct associated with the government’s investigation of the accounting fraud – obstruction of justice, mainly – between 2002 and 2004.
Eventually, they pled guilty to everything and, in 2006, were sentenced under the November 2005 Guideline manual, which was in effect at the time, and under which the offense level for the fraud offenses had increased dramatically – from 30 to 50.
In this opinion, a divided …