Years after George’s trial and conviction, with George’s family devastated and his years spent in jail, he has uncovered an astonishing mountain of evidence kept from him at trial and proof of Waltzer’s lies; even extracting effective confessions from Waltzer during the recent habeas proceedings, confirming that Waltzer had committed misconduct while undercover and having lied at trial.  Yet, the prosecutors and courts refuse to afford George fairness and due process.  

 

First, as to the guilty verdict, it is relevant to appreciate the notion of being judged by a “jury of one’s peers”.  George, a Canadian, was lured to the United States by an American con man, accused by Pennsylvania prosecutors working with representatives of the Pennsylvania FBI and SEC, and before Pennsylvania jurors from Lancaster County, adjudicated before a Pennsylvania judge.  Hardly a setting of George’s peers. 

 

Critically, all of this took place in 2009/2010 immediately on the heels of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, perpetrated by Bernie Madoff, where financial fraud was daily global news during a stock market and real estate crash and economic crisis not seen since the Great Depression. 

          Significantly, this is not a case of George defrauding the little guy.  He was dealing with a handful of Caribbean brokerage firms and very wealthy individuals who had loaned money to buy shares in the biotechnology company George had funded, focused on treatments for neurodegenerative diseases.  Waltzer and the prosecution team alleged these shares were inflated, yet no less than the Global Investment Bank of Rothschilds and the Philadelphia firm Janey Montgomery Scott had deemed the shares “undervalued.”  

 

The prosecutors argued, however, that George’s wrongdoings were not limited to the Caribbean, but also included a “pump and dump” of HYHY shares.  They asserted that George was directly or indirectly involved in mailing a promotional pamphlet to seven million American households.  Yet, at trial, the prosecutors were unable to present a single person who supposedly received the mailing, bought because of the mailing, or lost because of the mailing.  Furthermore, George was forbidden from presenting evidence to the jury showing that at the very same time that HYHY’s share price spiked (in June 2008), many other green energy companies saw their share prices and volumes spike in identical fashion when the price of oil hit $140 per barrel.  

 

There was simply no justification to block George from presenting this evidence.  

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Possibly most incredible, George was not allowed to call witnesses in his own defense. 

This is the supposed bedrock of American due process...but not for George.