Former Expert Witness for Milberg Weiss Gets Plea Deal

Justin Scheck and Sarah Kelley
The Recorder
November 07, 2005

The most conspicuous thing about John Torkelsen's guilty plea Thursday was what it didn't include: an agreement to cooperate in the ongoing probe of the securities plaintiff firm Milberg Weiss and its former lawyers.

...It has long been thought that any plea deal between Torkelsen and prosecutors would hinge on his willingness to provide information to Los Angeles federal prosecutors. They've spent the past five years investigating charges that Milberg Weiss and former top partner William Lerach paid illegal kickbacks to lead plaintiffs in securities class actions. Lerach formed his own firm, San Diego-based Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, last year.

A source familiar with the Torkelsen investigation said prosecutors last year were confident that they could put Torkelsen in jail for 10 to 15 years and that a plea deal for less than 10 could indicate cooperation. But the plea agreement detailed in a letter from D.C. Assistant U.S. Attorney John Griffith does not explicitly say whether Torkelsen is cooperating.

"There's nothing in this plea agreement that suggests cooperation," said Leo Cunningham, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California and a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. "Then again, for those of us who can get crafty about it, it doesn't foreclose cooperation." Preston Burton, a D.C.-based partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and a former D.C. assistant U.S. attorney, agreed. "There is no way to determine from the language in this plea agreement whether he is or isn't," he said.

Cunningham, Burton and other former federal prosecutors said that plea agreements based on cooperation generally make that requirement explicit. But, they agreed, in cases where prosecutors don't want the names of cooperators to become public, they often go to lengths to keep such information under wraps...