Woman Guilty in Bankruptcy Fraud Case

A jury that was hastily sequestered after a defendant in a $3-million bankruptcy fraud case apparently killed himself returned to federal court Wednesday to convict the dead man’s wife and co-defendant of a handful of conspiracy, fraud and attempted tax evasion counts.

Despite her lawyer’s insistence that defendant Letantia Bussell, 53, was too distraught over her husband’s death and too sedated to leave her hotel bedroom, U.S. District Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler ordered her to appear in federal court in Santa Ana to hear the verdict.

Jurors deliberated four days before declaring Letantia Bussell, a dermatologist from Beverly Hills, guilty on six of nine criminal counts. During their discussions, jurors were not told that her physician husband, John Bussell, 55, apparently leaped to his death Tuesday morning at the Embassy Suites hotel in Santa Ana.

Stotler, after learning of Bussell’s death, ordered jurors to be kept in a hotel for the evening, stripped of cell phones and banned from watching television, reading newspapers or listening to news radio for fear that word of the incident would prejudice their judgment of Letantia Bussell.

On Wednesday, more than a dozen family members and friends of the defendants, many of them in tears, filed into the courtroom to learn the verdict.

As soon as the court clerk read the first count on which Bussell was found guilty, daughter Kelly Bussell, 18, shrieked. A U.S. marshal, who had been instructed by Stotler to remove anyone who caused a disturbance, hissed at the Bussells’ son Todd, 23, and daughter Lisa, 22, to remove her.

The young woman quieted momentarily, then began shrieking again when she heard the decisions on the additional counts. As the court clerk continued to read the counts, marshals grabbed the girl under each arm and dragged her from the courtroom as she screamed, “They killed my father! They killed him. Yes, they did.”

Many jurors watched the spectacle as the young woman was dragged into the hallway to a courthouse nurse.

The trial, which spanned 10 weeks, stemmed from a May 2000 federal grand jury indictment. Federal investigators accused the Bussells, along with two attorney advisors, of scheming to hide millions in assets before a 1995 bankruptcy filing.

During trial, defense lawyers argued that the Bussells had been duped by the advisors, whom they trusted. Never, said defense lawyer Nathan Hochman, had the couple believed that what they were doing was illegal.

Hours after her husband’s death Tuesday, Letantia Bussell insisted to reporters that the government’s prosecution was overzealous. “This prosecution was totally intended to wear us down,” she said. “My husband just snapped.”

But as the verdict was read Wednesday, Bussell registered little emotion. She and her children declined to comment as they left the courtroom.

Prosecutors Paul Stern and Ranee Katzenstein declined to comment on the daughter’s outburst or the jury’s verdict. But defense lawyers said Bussell faced up to seven years’ imprisonment and as much as $1.5million in fines.

Stotler allowed her to remain free on bail for at least a week so she could attend to her family and deal with her husband’s death.

When she returns to court Feb. 14, lawyers will discuss doubling her $400,000 bond and placing her in home detention for some weeks before her sentencing.

A family friend, Nancy Blumenfeld, said the case and John Bussell’s death were tragedies. “You could not find a better mother, and you could not find a better father,” she said. “If anyone had a problem, they were there to help.”

Before the jury’s findings were announced, Bussell’s lawyer had urged the judge to seal them and have Bussell return to court today.

Hochman said it would take Bussell at least that long before she was in any shape to hear the verdict. He bristled at prosecution requests to read it that day.

“It shows an incredible lack of compassion,” Hochman said. But Stotler said a postponement would jeopardize more than two weeks of trial. Jurors could, prosecutors pointed out, change their mind after learning of John Bussell’s death.

Before dismissing the jury Wednesday, Stotler explained the reason for the sequestration.

“It is difficult to inform you, but defendant John Bussell took his life yesterday by jumping from the hotel where he was staying,” Stotler told the seven-woman, five-man panel.

Juror David L. Corkern said he and other jurors were shocked at being sequestered, unable even to call their families.

He said they were given no reason.

“This trial had been going on a long time, and so we got into the habit of going home at 4 at the end of the day,” the 43-year-old Rancho Santa Margarita resident said. “When they told us we had to stay, we were like, ‘What?’”

Corkern declined to discuss jury deliberations, but said it came as a blow to learn afterward that John Bussell had died.

“It would have made it very hard to reach a unanimous decision if we knew that,” Corkern said. “That’s probably why they did what they did. It would be hard not to feel sympathy. It would be hard for anyone.”