Shapiro Arato Bach Wins Second Circuit Wire Fraud Appeal
On July 17, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the denial of client Mark Johnson’s Petition for a writ of coram nobis and remanded the case with instructions that the district court grant the Petition, effectively clearing his name. Our client, the former head of foreign exchange at HSBC, was wrongly convicted at trial in 2017 of wire fraud for his involvement in a $3.5 billion foreign exchange transaction that was carried out pursuant to standard industry practices. At trial, the government had charged him with two theories of wire fraud—right to control and misappropriation—and we argued on appeal that both theories were invalid as applied to our client’s conduct. However, the conviction was initially affirmed by the Second Circuit on the right-to-control theory alone. Several years later, however, that theory was subsequently invalidated by the Supreme Court in another case in which our firm’s position prevailed, Ciminelli v. United States, 598 U.S. 306 (2023). At that point, we filed a petition for a writ of coram nobis for Mr. Johnson. Such petitions are rarely granted, but the Second Circuit held that Ciminelli rendered the right-to-control theory legally invalid, and that the government’s misappropriation case was unlikely to have provided an independent basis for Johnson’s conviction.
Partner Alexandra Shapiro argued the appeal and authored the briefs along with Jason Driscoll. C. Eric Hintz also worked on the original petition before the district court. The Court’s opinion can be found here, and the Second Circuit briefs and oral argument audio can be found here, here, and here.
Media coverage of the decision can be found here, here, here, and here.