The most important moment in a white-collar case is when federal prosecutors make the decision on whether or not to indict.

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By counting each e-mail sent by a white-collar wrongdoer as a separate case of wire fraud, prosecutors can threaten him with a gargantuan sentence unless he confesses, or informs on his boss.

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Over 17, 000 people are calling for an investigation into the prosecution of Sholom Rubashkin, which I frankly knew nothing about but seems to have involved a 27-year sentence for a first offense in a case of white-collar crime.

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But the case is instructive to white-collar practitioners.

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This week the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear the case, which could affect a number of other white-collar cases where the government has frozen assets upon issuing an indictment.

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Foreshadowing, perhaps, his later display of constitutional consistency in the Ghailani case, Kaplan stressed that these were not simply privileges due to white-collar defendants.

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The case was brought in the Southern District of Florida (guess there must be a shortage of white-collar crime and drug cases in the Miami area these days).

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