Feb. 29, 2008 — Jeffrey Prosser, former CEO and owner of Innovative Telephone, has retained a big-league criminal attorney in connection with the ongoing federal grand jury investigation of his finances.
Lawrence H. Schoenbach, who heads a practice in New York, filed papers last month on Prosser's behalf with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Schoenbach "has tried over 100 state and federal jury trials, and many of the trials in which he was the defense attorney involved highly publicized national and international criminal investigations," according to the lawyer's website.
The site lists several major cases in which Schoenbach has represented the defense, including:
— "the 1985 'Pizza Connection' (a 22-defendant indictment charging a billion and a half dollar narcotics conspiracy between the Sicilian and American mafia)";
— "the 1987 trial of the 'Westies' (alleged to be New York's Irish mafia)";
— "the 1988 'Air America' civil forfeiture prosecution of a reputed former agent of the Central Intelligence Agency"; and
— "in 1998-99, the political corruption/bribery prosecution in St. Thomas of the former commissioner of Public Works for the U. S. Virgin Islands."
The website doesn't name the defendants or give the results of these trials. Schoenbach is further described as a member of the bar in the Virgin Islands and "as compliance counsel for ICC."
Schoenbach's filing with the bankruptcy court was designed to support Prosser's use of the Fifth Amendment to refuse to answer questions about his finances. In the course of the filing, the New York lawyer states:
"… I firmly believe that Mr. Prosser may be a target of the grand jury's investigation … at a minimum he is likely to be a subject of the grand jury's investigation …. Finally, to the extent that it confirms my belief of a pending grand jury criminal investigation, I am informed that the FBI agent who served the subpoenas on the officers of the Virgin Islands Community Bank also appeared at the Section 341 deposition [a meeting of the Prosser creditors] on Jan. 25, 2008. I do not know his purpose or the duration of his stay during the deposition — but his mere presence gives rise to the belief that it was not accidental or coincidental …."
The Jan. 25 proceeding was the one in which Prosser repeatedly refused to answer questions on the grounds that such answers could tend to incriminate him.
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