An unusual thing happened after prominent Placerville businessman Joseph Stancil Jr. and one of his employees were charged in Sacramento federal court with conspiring to keep customers' bank deposits under $10,000 to avoid government scrutiny.
Stancil, 63, and his employee, 69-year-old salesman Daniel Mathis, accepted deferred prosecutions, something rarely agreed to by prosecutors. It means that if the men keep their noses clean for a year the charges will be dropped.
Yet, federal prosecutors state unequivocally in court papers that Stancil knew he was supplying airplanes to drug dealers. In fact, he appears to have admitted as much in court proceedings and in a surreptitiously recorded conversation with an undercover Internal Revenue Service agent.
Stancil Enterprises Inc., wholly owned by Stancil, was also charged in the conspiracy to conduct financial transactions that would not require a report to the government – a practice called "structuring." Stancil pleaded guilty on behalf of the company, and monetary penalties of nearly $1 million were imposed.
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Stancil and his company and Mathis had top-notch lawyers. High-profile defense attorney Donald Heller, a former state and federal prosecutor, represented Stancil and the company. Mathis was represented by Mark Reichel, a fiery veteran of trench warfare in the courts.
Boiled down, the arguments of Heller and Reichel are that Stancil and Mathis were not making the deposits so they were not doing the structuring.
Nevertheless, "all of the individuals have expressed remorse and have fully accepted responsibility for their conduct," Heller wrote Friday in an email. "Mr. Stancil and Mr. Mathis agree that mistakes and serious errors in judgment were made."
In an interview, Reichel said the case against Mathis was "weak, if there was one at all. He was just a salesman. He had no idea how money was going into the bank accounts of the company."