Intermountain Jewish News

WITH the sharp finality of his gavel strike last Friday, Nov. 6, US District Judge John Kane passed sentence on Arnold Zaler, the former Denver kosher meat entrepreneur and restaurateur who pled guilty in July to a long list of fraud charges: Fifteen years in federal prison.

Despite Zaler’s apologies to his victims and pleas for understanding from his attorney — who quoted a psychological evaluation suggesting that Zaler might be bipolar — a stern Kane would have none of it.

In elaborating on his ruling, he called Zaler’s actions in defrauding his victims “the very tissue of lies and deceit,” and called Zaler “a hardcore recidivist” from whom the public needed prolonged protection.

Kane’s sentence — which was coupled with the order that Zaler pay some $2.5 million in restitution and comply with a long list of restrictions that will follow it — exceeded federal guidelines for such cases and ignored the six to eight-year sentence which the prosecution and defense had agreed to as part of Zaler’s plea agreement.

The longer sentence clearly came as a surprise to Zaler’s attorney Mitchell Baker, who argued eloquently on his client’s behalf before the sentence was handed down.

“A sentence more than twice the recommended guidelines was not a sentence that I was expecting,” Baker told the Intermountain Jewish News after a handcuffed Zaler was removed from the courtroom by federal marshals.

Baker added that it’s “very likely” that Zaler will file for an appeal of the sentence.

There was little audible or visible reaction from Zaler himself or from the assorted people who gathered in Denver District Court to witness last week’s sentencing, but the air was thick with drama and anticipation.

Among those who sat in the spectator’s section of the courtroom were individuals who were listed in the indictment against Zaler as victims of his misrepresentations, as well as people not listed but who say they, too, were victimized — those who loaned, and lost, significant amounts of money to the man locally nicknamed the “hot dog king.”

Zaler was indicted in March, 2008 on 30 counts of wire, bank and mail fraud, after an FBI investigation. The indictment listed more than $3 million lost by his victims, lured into investing in Zaler’s businesses under what the court alleged, and the defendant confessed, were false pretenses.

As harsh as Zaler’s sentence last week might seem, he actually could have served far more time — as many as 30 years — under those charges. Instead, Kane ordered three 15-year sentences for Zaler’s convictions to be served concurrently.

According to legal experts, most criminals convicted of federal crimes serve some 85% of their sentences before being considered for parole. Based on that formula, it will likely be at least 2022 before Zaler regains his freedom.

ATTORNEY Baker portrayed his client as not only a victimizer, but as a victim himself.?

“In today’s world,” he told Kane, “we try to paint people a certain way. It’s easy to look at Arnie Zaler and say he’s a bad guy and he does bad things.”

The truth, he insisted, is not so simple. Zaler, Baker argued, found himself rapidly going under in the highly competitive restaurant business. Not originally intending to defraud anyone, he sought financial assistance to save his business but soon found himself paying exorbitant interest rates on his initial loans.

His subsequent fraudulent actions were intended to keep his business afloat, Baker argued, and were “doomed” from the beginning — “a scheme developed by somebody who wasn’t thinking clearly.”

Zaler’s resulting failures in judgment, the attorney contended, were the actions of a man suffering from “significant mental health issues,” and not the scheming “Bernard Madoff of Denver,” which is how the Jerusalem Post characterized him in its coverage.

“Mr. Zaler had a scheme that had absolutely no chance of success,” Baker said, “and absolutely no chance that it would not be discovered in a brief period of time.”

Zaler was driven, Baker added, not by uncontrolled greed but by an uncontrolled ego, basing that contention on the aforementioned psychological evaluation.

“This had no chance of success. It was simply a guy who couldn’t look people in the eye and say, ‘I failed,’” Baker argued.

When his turn came, Zaler —  speaking just above a whisper, dressed in a khaki jumpsuit and with his graying hair cut in a near-buzz — essentially agreed with everything his attorney had just said.

He apologized to several of his victims by name, to his family and friends, and to the Denver rabbis and cantors — mentioning Rabbis Selwyn Franklin and Bruce Dollin and Cantors Martin Goldstein and Joel Lichterman by name — who had helped him in the early days of his business.

Saying that “self-recrimination is never easy for anyone,” Zaler acknowledged that “there is something wrong with me,” and agreed that he was driven by ego in refusing to accept the failure of his business enterprises.