Matthew Simpson

Charges as bargaining chips, not descriptions

• 2 December 2021 — The sentencing judge writes that Michael Faulkner's plea agreement "capped his sentence at 360 months," that absent it he faced 480, and that "a codefendant who went to trial — and who had a less extensive criminal record than does Faulkner — did receive a prison sentence of 480 months." Affirmed by the Fifth Circuit in 2022 and repeated verbatim by the same court on 6 August 2026.
• Faulkner had a prior federal felony conviction and a supervised release violation. Matthew was Criminal History Category I with no convictions of any kind. The man with the record signed and got thirty years. The man without one asked for a jury and got forty.
• Twelve co-defendants pleaded guilty. Not one received more than ten years. Two who went to trial and were convicted received nine years and forty. Two who went to trial were acquitted outright.
• Three defendants carried restitution figures at or above Matthew's — $18.2m, $17.3m, $16.9m. They received five years, four years, and five years three months. Every one of them pleaded.
• Faulkner's release date is September 4, 2035. Matthew's is 2043. The government's lead defendant goes home eight years ahead of the first offender.

The sentencing judge has written down what the plea was worth. One hundred twenty months, and the man with the cleaner record paid it.

A private party aims the state at a rival

• AT&T supplied the loss figures that built the restitution number. AT&T employees testified for the prosecution. A co-defendant's filing states that the lead agents worked in conjunction with fraud investigators for the complainants.
• 21 March 2011 — Asked to extend disclosure obligations to those investigators, the Department told the court its prosecution team was the FBI, the North Texas Regional Computer Forensics Lab and the U.S. Attorney's Office, and that "at no time were AT&T, Verizon, or their fraud investigators government agents." The court agreed. Nothing AT&T knew had to be disclosed.
• 22 March 2012 — The same Justice Department sues AT&T under the False Claims Act, alleging it knowingly billed a federal fund for IP Relay calls placed by Nigerian scammers, and that up to 95 percent of that revenue line was fraudulent. AT&T pays $21.75 million and is never prosecuted.
• 24 May 2012 — Matthew's request to postpone sentencing until his motion about that suit is decided is denied the same day it is filed. Sentencing goes forward on 29 May. The motion is not ruled on until 10 July.
• The investigation was assisted by the FBI, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and various state public utility commissions — the same regulators before whom Core IP had contested billing with the carriers.

The company whose numbers built the case was placed outside the case, so that nothing it knew had to be handed over.

The cost arrives before any verdict, and no outcome returns it

• 9 September 2009 — Ordered detained. He remains in custody for twenty-five months before trial. He opposes the complexity designation in October 2009 and opposes a sixth continuance in September 2011. The delay was requested by the government and by co-defendants, not by him.
• 3 December 2010 — He moves for release of restrained assets to pay his attorneys. 20 January 2011 — denied in a seventeen-page order.
• The government represented that discovery involved computer data "said to exceed 200 terabytes" from more than 300 devices plus 10,000 pages of paper. That volume was a load-bearing part of the complexity finding that cost him his detention review. March 2011 — the amount actually produced is stated in open court as 1.5 terabytes.
• 1 June 2010 — The court appoints a single coordinating discovery attorney for the entire defense group, budgeted at $20,000 and 160 hours, shared across nineteen defendants.
• Judgment: $17,674,704.35 restitution, a forfeiture money judgment in the same amount, plus precious-metal certificates worth roughly $3 million and cash and equipment worth roughly $2 million.
• Seventeen years served. No disciplinary infraction. Twenty-three years remaining.

Two hundred terabytes going in. Twenty thousand dollars and one lawyer to read them.

The conviction is worth something. The acquittal is worth nothing.

• 1 September 2009 — The original indictment charges nine defendants with one offense: conspiracy to exceed authorized access to a protected computer. Loss stated at approximately $12 million. That is the case Matthew was arrested and held on.
• 29 September 2009 — In the same motion that produced the complexity finding, the Department states it "foresees seeking a superseding indictment that, inter alia, expands the charges and perhaps adds defendants." It does so four times. Nine defendants become nineteen. Twelve million dollars becomes a finding above twenty million.
• The Department told the court its case-in-chief would take approximately fifteen days. The trial ran ten weeks — a thirty-eighth day of trial is recorded on 21 December 2011.
• 15 July 2011 — Matthew wins two motions to dismiss; counts four and six of the third superseding indictment are dismissed as to him. Four days later the grand jury returns a fourth superseding indictment.
• 24 January 2012 — After the verdict the court finds he committed perjury and adds two levels. The Fifth Circuit affirms the finding and then notes that the two levels changed his guidelines range by nothing at all — his offense level was already past the ceiling. The finding altered no number in the case. It altered only how he could be described.

He was arrested on a nine-defendant computer charge and sentenced on a nineteen-defendant fraud conspiracy that did not exist when the cell door closed.