SALT LAKE CITY — Fraudster Rick Koerber has renewed his claim that he should be released from prison because he’s vulnerable to COVID-19.
Koerber argues in court papers that when he filed his initial motion last month, no inmates at Terminal Island, a low-security federal prison in San Pedro, California, where he is incarcerated, had the virus. But now 570 inmates or 48% of the its population have the disease and two have died.
“Rick’s risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19 is an extraordinary and compelling reason to order his home confinement in light of BOP’s (Bureau of Prisons) complete failure to contain the outbreak at Terminal Island,” his attorneys wrote.
Federal prosecutors oppose Koerber’s latest motion for compassionate release, saying while COVID-19 is serious, the large number of positive results at Terminal Island resulted from testing of all inmates and the prison’s effort to protect them from the disease.
“This is hardly the sort of apocalyptic explosion of cases that Koerber tried to paint for the court as part of his continuing efforts to be released from prison,” according to court documents.
A federal judge last month ruled that Koerber did not present extraordinary and compelling reasons for release and rejected his motion.
Koerber, a Utah real estate investor, ran a Ponzi scheme that federal authorities say caused more than $45 million in losses. A jury convicted him of 15 counts of wire fraud, fraud in the offer and sale of securities, and money laundering in September 2018.