Defense: Rubashkin Regrets Postville Outcome
Grant Schulte • Des Moines RegisterCedar Rapids, Ia. — Sholom Rubashkin admitted to “fraudulent behaviors” as a top manager at Agriprocessors, Inc. and conceded that he knew about the plant’s illegal immigrant workforce, according to a psychiatrist who interviewed him in jail.
The former eastern Iowa slaughterhouse manager expressed general regret for the harm he caused himself and others, Dr. Susan Fiester told a federal judge Wednesday at Rubashkin’s sentence hearing. Prosecutors suggested in their cross-examination that Rubashkin was only sorry he got caught.
“I feel he was in over his head,” Fiester testified. “The business was not doing well, and he was trying various means to keep the business afloat.”
Fiester was one of 10 defense witnesses who spoke during Rubashkin’s sentencing hearing in a Cedar Rapids federal courtroom.
Prosecutors called two government investigators: one who outlined the $26.9 million loss to the two banks that loaned Agriprocessors money, and one who described the cattle suppliers who were forced to borrow money because of late payments from Agriprocessors.
Rubashkin faces a possible life sentence for his 86-count conviction in the financial fraud scandal at Postville’s kosher meatpacking plant. His lawyers have asked U.S. District Court Chief Judge Linda Reade to impose a prison term no greater than six years.
Fiester, who was hired by Rubashkin’s lawyers, based her testimony on a 9-1/2 hour interview at the Linn County Jail on Feb. 4.
The Bethesda, Md.-based psychiatrist testified that Rubashkin never wanted to run the family business but was pressured to join by his father, Aaron Rubashkin. The younger Rubashkin had worked as a Jewish missionary in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and wanted to teach, she said.
“That was his love,” Fiester said. “That was his heart. He wanted to teach and do missionary work for his religious group.”
Rubashkin lacked control at the plant and grew so distressed that he sometimes erupted into hours-long crying fits at home, Fiester said. He grew so frustrated with the operation — where, by his view, he was forced fix everyone’s problems at the plant — that he banged his head on the wall, she said.
Rubashkin supporters offered impassioned and sometimes tearful defenses of a man they knew as “extraordinary generous” and welcoming. Aaron Goldsmith, a Rubashkin family friend, described Rubashkin’s home as a “Jewish Holiday Inn” that was open to all guests.
“It’s criminal to call him a criminal,” said Goldsmith, a former Postville City Council member. “He made mistakes . . . but he was not trying to undermine, deceive or cheat.”
Special Agent Randy Van Gent, a prosecution witness, testified that the plant’s former lender, the St. Louis-based First Bank, had lost $26.9 million in debt that the plant was unable to repay.
Rubashkin was convicted in November for his role in a massive fraud scheme that included falsified sales records designed to mislead the bank about the amount of collateral available to back the bank’s loan.
Defense lawyers countered that the total loss was far less, suggesting through their questions that the bank could have sold $11 million in inventoried meat products to recover some of the money. The plant also stands to receive a $1.9 million tax refund from an old return. Prosecutors, however, said bank officials had recovered all of the money that they realistically expected to collect.
Rubashkin lawyer F. Montgomery Brown said that money the bank had loaned before the federal investigation began — about $20 million — was “pristine money” with no evidence that it was tied to the plant’s fake sales records.
The total loss is important because it shapes the potential sentence Rubashkin could face on his 86 financial fraud convictions.
The 50-year-old former meat plant mogul sat through the hearing in orange jail fatigues and sandals, scratched the back of his head, and stroked wisps of his gray-flecked shaggy beard. At one point, he tapped his foot rapidly on the floor. In the public gallery, his father, Aaron Rubashkin, muttered to family members about testimony he disliked.
Agriprocessors was the site of a May 2008 immigration raid that led to the arrest of 389 illegal workers. The Postville kosher meat plant filed for bankruptcy but emerged under new ownership as Agri Star.
The sentence hearing continues today with testimony expected from Rubashkin’s family.
A former executive of a kosher Iowa slaughterhouse who was convicted of financial fraud knew illegal immigrants worked at the plant, an admission that directly contradicts what he said under oath, a psychiatrist testified Wednesday at the executive's sentencing hearing.
The psychiatrist was hired by the defense for former Agriprocessors Inc. manager Sholom Rubashkin. She testified under cross-examination that Rubashkin admitted to her during an interview that he committed bank fraud.
Rubashkin is facing a possible life sentence after being convicted on 86 counts of financial fraud in November. The Postville plant he managed was the site of a massive immigration raid in May 2008.
"Did he admit to the crimes?" Assistant U.S. Attorney C.J. Williams asked Dr. Susan Fiester of Bethesda, Md.
"Yes, essentially," Fiester replied.
Williams further pressed the point, asking if Rubashkin's statement was "inconsistent with trial testimony," to which Fiester said it was. But Fiester wouldn't say whether that meant Rubashkin lied under oath.
"I didn't ask him that," Fiester said.
Rubashkin acknowledged during his trial that he made mistakes as a manager, but he testified that he never intentionally violated immigration or federal fraud laws.…
Funny how Schulte would find Rubashkin's supposed remorse important enough to report, but he would not find Rubashkin's lies under oath – revealed by the same psychiatrist during the same brief period of testimony about the same subject– worthy of reporting.
Because Rubashkin perjured himself over something this important, the judge will have to take that into account when handing down his sentence.
And that means Rubashkin will probably get a longer sentence than he would have before his psychiatrist testified.