Jonathan Braun, whose sentence for drug smuggling was commuted in the final hours of the Trump presidency, was fined over separate accusations that he bilked and threatened borrowers.
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A judge, citing Jonathan Braun’s “egregious” behavior, nearly doubled the amount a jury advised Mr. Braun should pay in a case brought by the Federal Trade Commission.
When President Donald J. Trump, in his final hours in the White House in early 2021, commuted a 10-year drug smuggling sentence being served by a New Yorker named Jonathan Braun, he made no mention of Mr. Braun’s many other legal problems.
Months earlier, the Federal Trade Commission and the New York State attorney general had filed suits against Mr. Braun saying he swindled and intimidated borrowers who had taken money from a network of predatory lenders he ran, charging usurious interest rates and making violent threats.
On Tuesday, a federal judge in New York imposed $20 million in fines on Mr. Braun after finding him liable for the accusations made by the trade commission. Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Federal District Court in Manhattan excoriated Mr. Braun in the ruling, depicting him as a hardened, craven man who “gleefully, with little remorse,” boasted about his illegal conduct and treated it as a “laughing matter” as he threatened the business owners he gouged.
“The court finds that it must consider the utter disregard and contempt that Mr. Braun showed for consumers,” Judge Rakoff said in a 35-page ruling. “The evidence showed that Mr. Braun blatantly ignored or disregarded consumer complaints and spewed vile threats and profanities when a consumer was purportedly unable to pay his debts. Mr. Braun’s conduct toward consumers was completely out of bounds and inappropriate.”
The judge cited a video that one of Mr. Braun’s business associates filmed of him threatening a business owner he claimed owed him money.
“Among other things, Mr. Braun threatened to send the consumer to jail and said, using profanity, that he would spit on” the customer’s face on visiting day, the judge said. “Mr. Braun told the consumer to drive his Honda ‘off a cliff’ and that he hoped the consumer’s wife would leave him.” Throughout the call, the judge said, Mr. Braun also called the consumer names including a “loser,” a “degenerate” and a number of obscenities.
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Source: nytimes.com
