United States v. Lake

HARTZ, Circuit Judge.

The defendants, David C. Wittig and Douglas T. Lake, came to Kansas from Wall Street investment banks to run the state’s largest public utility, now known as Westar Energy, Inc. The government convinced the jury in this case that the two men had conducted a far-reaching scheme to milk the company for all they could through a pattern of fraud and deceit. But the prosecution hung by a thin legal thread. Despite the scope of the alleged fraudulent scheme, all the counts of the indictment depended on proving the ef forts of the defendants to conceal from the United States…