US ends a mail fraud case, 32 years late

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) -In an apparent example of better-late-than-never, a federal judge in Manhattan on Tuesday dismissed a mail fraud criminal case after the U.S. Department of Justice realized it should have ended in 1993.

Yousef Elyaho was charged in October 1991 with one count of mail fraud conspiracy, according to his case docket in Manhattan federal court.

Elyaho entered a deferred prosecution agreement in January 1993, and his $25,000 bond was exonerated. If Elyaho lived up to the agreement, the case should have been dropped.

It wasn't. Nothing happened until March 1999, when the case was "reassigned to Judge Unassigned," according to the docket.

Twenty-six years passed until Tuesday, when the case was reassigned to U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams. "Judge Unassigned no longer assigned to the case," the docket said.

In a court filing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Balsamello said that based on the docket and a review of its own files, "the government believes that the case against Elyaho was to be dismissed sometime in or about February 1993."

Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, ordered the case's dismissal with the judge's approval, which she granted.

A lawyer who represented Elyaho in 1993 did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

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