Michael Hild, who was found guilty of fraud in a bond pricing scheme, is seeking acquittal or a new trial at a hearing next month. (BizSense file)
Michael Hild’s bid to overturn his criminal conviction continues – and he’ll get his day in court in the coming weeks.
The embattled Richmond businessman, who was found guilty last April on all counts for his role in a bond pricing scheme that toppled his mortgage company Live Well Financial, will argue his case for either an acquittal or new trial at a hearing set for March 8.
That’s according to U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams, whose order on the matter on Feb. 3 ended nearly six months of relative quiet in the case.
Hild has remained free for nearly nine months since a jury found him guilty of securities fraud, mail fraud and bank fraud after a three-week trial in Manhattan federal court.
Hild, who had pleaded not guilty, soon after filed a petition for a post-conviction acquittal, or at the very least a new trial, arguing that his previous legal team was wrongfully ineffective during the trial due in part to allegedly undisclosed conflicts of interest.
He claims his previous attorney, Benjamin Dusing, was secretly litigating multiple custody cases against two mothers of his children back in Kentucky leading up to and during Hild’s trial.
Hild claims the Kentucky cases were a major distraction for Dusing and that Dusing hid the matters from his client for fear of being fired or losing the ability to use the Hild case to delay the cases in Kentucky.
Armed with a new attorney, Hild has argued the right to a conflict-free counsel is part of the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution. The move has also allowed him to delay sentencing in the interim.
Hild and Dusing are childhood friends who grew up together in Kentucky. Hild initially had retained a team from powerhouse law firm Murphy & McGonigle for representation in the criminal case. He eventually made the switch to Dusing, who has his own firm in Fort Wright, Kentucky and is a former federal prosecutor.
Federal prosecutors have said Hild’s attempts for acquittal or a new trial should be denied, while Dusing submitted a lengthy affidavit arguing that his representation of Hild was sound.
Attempting to add fuel to his argument, Hild’s current attorney, Brian Jacobs of New York law firm Morvillo Abramowitz Grand Iason & Anello, alerted the judge in December to an odd episode that landed Dusing in the news in Kentucky and under scrutiny from the Kentucky Bar Association.
News reports in the Bluegrass State discovered a video posted online by Dusing in which he made threats to certain attorneys working his custody cases.
Jacobs, in his letter to Judge Abrams, cited the news reports, stating that Dusing was reprimanded by a judge in the matter and was under inquiry by the state bar association there.
Dusing, undeterred, has since announced publicly that he’s seeking to run as a family court judge.
Should his efforts fail, Hild faces a combined maximum of 115 years in prison, though his sentence will surely be lower. He also faces a maximum fine of $5 million. Judge Abrams will ultimately decide his punishment.
The government claimed Hild helped mastermind a scheme to defraud the company’s lenders by falsely inflating the value of a portfolio of reverse mortgage bonds, in order to induce the lenders into loaning more money to Live Well than they otherwise would have.
He was arrested on the charges in 2019, which coincided with the shuttering of the once-fast-growing Live Well. Former Live Well CFO Eric Rohr and head bond trader Darren Stumberger pleaded guilty to similar charges and cooperated with the government as key witnesses in the Hild trial. They now await sentencing.
Hild also has other legal issues to contend with as part of Live Well’s ongoing bankruptcy case. He and his wife are expected to file their response next month to the bankruptcy trustee’s attempts to recoup $110 million in damages from the couple and their various Richmond-area business entities.
Trustee David Carickhoff is looking to place much of the blame for Live Well’s demise on the Hilds, claiming Michael looted the company and funneled much of the fruits of the fraud to Laura.
Other Live Well insiders also are under similar scrutiny from the Carickhoff. Those cases also are still pending.
Michael Hild, who was found guilty of fraud in a bond pricing scheme, is seeking acquittal or a new trial at a hearing next month. (BizSense file)
Michael Hild’s bid to overturn his criminal conviction continues – and he’ll get his day in court in the coming weeks.
The embattled Richmond businessman, who was found guilty last April on all counts for his role in a bond pricing scheme that toppled his mortgage company Live Well Financial, will argue his case for either an acquittal or new trial at a hearing set for March 8.
That’s according to U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams, whose order on the matter on Feb. 3 ended nearly six months of relative quiet in the case.
Hild has remained free for nearly nine months since a jury found him guilty of securities fraud, mail fraud and bank fraud after a three-week trial in Manhattan federal court.
Hild, who had pleaded not guilty, soon after filed a petition for a post-conviction acquittal, or at the very least a new trial, arguing that his previous legal team was wrongfully ineffective during the trial due in part to allegedly undisclosed conflicts of interest.
He claims his previous attorney, Benjamin Dusing, was secretly litigating multiple custody cases against two mothers of his children back in Kentucky leading up to and during Hild’s trial.
Hild claims the Kentucky cases were a major distraction for Dusing and that Dusing hid the matters from his client for fear of being fired or losing the ability to use the Hild case to delay the cases in Kentucky.
Armed with a new attorney, Hild has argued the right to a conflict-free counsel is part of the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution. The move has also allowed him to delay sentencing in the interim.
Hild and Dusing are childhood friends who grew up together in Kentucky. Hild initially had retained a team from powerhouse law firm Murphy & McGonigle for representation in the criminal case. He eventually made the switch to Dusing, who has his own firm in Fort Wright, Kentucky and is a former federal prosecutor.
Federal prosecutors have said Hild’s attempts for acquittal or a new trial should be denied, while Dusing submitted a lengthy affidavit arguing that his representation of Hild was sound.
Attempting to add fuel to his argument, Hild’s current attorney, Brian Jacobs of New York law firm Morvillo Abramowitz Grand Iason & Anello, alerted the judge in December to an odd episode that landed Dusing in the news in Kentucky and under scrutiny from the Kentucky Bar Association.
News reports in the Bluegrass State discovered a video posted online by Dusing in which he made threats to certain attorneys working his custody cases.
Jacobs, in his letter to Judge Abrams, cited the news reports, stating that Dusing was reprimanded by a judge in the matter and was under inquiry by the state bar association there.
Dusing, undeterred, has since announced publicly that he’s seeking to run as a family court judge.
Should his efforts fail, Hild faces a combined maximum of 115 years in prison, though his sentence will surely be lower. He also faces a maximum fine of $5 million. Judge Abrams will ultimately decide his punishment.
The government claimed Hild helped mastermind a scheme to defraud the company’s lenders by falsely inflating the value of a portfolio of reverse mortgage bonds, in order to induce the lenders into loaning more money to Live Well than they otherwise would have.
He was arrested on the charges in 2019, which coincided with the shuttering of the once-fast-growing Live Well. Former Live Well CFO Eric Rohr and head bond trader Darren Stumberger pleaded guilty to similar charges and cooperated with the government as key witnesses in the Hild trial. They now await sentencing.
Hild also has other legal issues to contend with as part of Live Well’s ongoing bankruptcy case. He and his wife are expected to file their response next month to the bankruptcy trustee’s attempts to recoup $110 million in damages from the couple and their various Richmond-area business entities.
Trustee David Carickhoff is looking to place much of the blame for Live Well’s demise on the Hilds, claiming Michael looted the company and funneled much of the fruits of the fraud to Laura.
Other Live Well insiders also are under similar scrutiny from the Carickhoff. Those cases also are still pending.
All of this around him but nothing is EVER his fault. Some else did it or is out to get him. Talk about a text book con artist.
They should add the cost of the 2nd trial to his bill, no reason the people should have to pay for this idiot to go to court again and be proven GUILTY.
I have to wonder how many people have been in jail for shoplifting food or selling marijuana while this guy has been wondering around free, with plenty of chances to hide assets and otherwise evade justice?
(Since he is convicted we don’t have to presume innocence do we?)
Hild has not been convicted, yet Richmond BizSense continues to push its agenda of trying to smear and print misinformation about him and this case. Do better BizSense. Also ironic there isn’t a single mention of Hild’s Rule 29 motion (motion for acquittal), and the fact that the Second Circuit Court just fully exonerated other falsely accused individuals from Deutsche Bank just last week under nearly identical facts and circumstances as this case. That’s the real story here. It’s not a crime to estimate the value of highly esoteric bonds, especially when doing so in a good faith effort and… Read more »
Maybe the conviction will be overturned but his own testimony admitted Hild described accounting as a “blind spot” for him while building the company. “I frankly didn’t have any interest in accounting and it wasn’t my forte,” Hild said. Dusing (his attorney friend he now blames for his trial error) looked to place blame on Darren Stumberger and Eric Rohr, Live Well’s respective former head bond trader and CFO. They have both pleaded guilty and await their sentencing at the conclusion of Hild’s case. He also placed blame on a company formerly known as Interactive Data Corp., or IDC, which was the… Read more »
Hild doesn’t blame Stumberger or Rohr, or even IDC. Just like the Deutsche Bank case, the government applies pressure, tells cooperating witnesses what they’re going to say, how they’re going to say it, when they’re going to say it, or else. Same thing here. And ironically everything that they said on the stand is completely contrary to everything they said back in time. Zero credibility. Oh, and you clearly didn’t listen to the trial with the bombshell at the end where Eric Rohr admitted to hiding a $30+ Million tax liability from Hild. Rohr is a POS. Can’t trust anything… Read more »
WTF? Do words just have whatever meaning we want them to have now? Hild has quite literally been convicted. Where is the misinformation about him and his case?
As my daddy once told me you shouldn’t argue with stupid….but here goes. You clearly don’t understand how federal courts work. There’s no conviction in federal court unless the Judge agrees with the jury verdict and proceeds to sentencing. Maybe you missed the memo when the judge suspended sentencing indefinitely because of the post trial motion concerns: both Rule 29 (acquittal) and Rule 33 (new trial).
White collar crime is so fascinating. Perhaps the only thing Hild is guilty of is poor hiring decisions for his attorneys and top lieutenants. One thing the guy is certainly guilty of is being a certified POS. There are many character witnesses that will attest to that statement. My daddy told me once that “you reap what you sow”. Sounds like Hild is reaping it now. Added, the fact that you came to a public forum to defend him and refer to others as “stupid” says as much about your character as it does his. Bad people keep bad company.
Typical ignorant lynch mob comment. I all but guarantee you haven’t even met the guy, right? Oh and you heard it from someone who heard it from someone else that he’s a POS. Oh well, then it must be true then. Let’s put him in prison for the rest of his life because Jim who knows Bill, who dated Karen once heard that Andy got into a business disagreement with Hild. What a joke. These keyboard warriors spouting off uninformed, factually incorrect and hate filled statements on the comment section of this site are ridiculous. Michael Dodson & Ed Christina‘s… Read more »
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonyms_of_Donald_Trump#:~:text=Donald%20Trump%2C%20an%20American%20businessman,%22%20and%20%22David%20Dennison%22.
Oh of course Amanda = Hild. Very funny that the guy could’ve given up half his ill-gotten gains and spent a year at the federal farm and instead he is now going to keep doubling down until he spends life in jail.
Already guaranteed to lose all his money through lawyers
When this fails too Hild will find someone else to blame – maybe his new attorney. We’ve seen it before ladies and gents – a man who thinks everyone has always wronged him. This’ll end with him doing something spectacularly violent and stupid. Gonna make his momma proud.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-ceo-live-well-financial-convicted-connection-200-million-bond-fraud-scheme
https://reversemortgagedaily.com/2021/08/03/convicted-former-live-well-ceo-requests-acquittal-or-new-trial/
https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/michael-hild-update
Looks like Richmond Bizsense has a lot of company in thinking Hild is convicted and guilty.
2 out of those 3 sources either directly copy/paste Bizsense articles and reprint it, or have relied on Bizsense as a source on their coverage. The 3rd is the justice department itself, which invariably manufactures a narrative to fit its needs (even when it is false). The fact remains that Hild has not been convicted and BizSense knows better. Even if he is convicted in the future, it will invariably be appealed. You simply can’t have the Deutsche Bank LIBOR folks fully exonerated just a week ago and Hild guilty given the uncanny similarity between the two cases. Excerpted quotes… Read more »
“Amanda;”
We are all looking forward to Mikey’s lawyers calling you as a character witness for him.
Hardly think he’s for lack of character witnesses considering the sheer number of people who have worked for/with him over the years.
But really Ed, take a look in the mirror with all the time you spend commenting over a person I all but guarantee you have never even met. That says way more about you than it does him.
Amanda;
Why would you say you can “all but guarantee” I have never met him?
Have you met him?
Are you saying you can’t be a character witness for him?
Shut up and go to jail.