BRUNSWICK - Camden County businessman Fairley Cisco wants to stand trial alone and somewhere other than Southeast Georgia on federal charges accusing him and four others of a multimillion-dollar fuel fraud and conspiring to bribe state officials.
Cisco, 67, is also asking a federal judge to ban the government from using evidence discovered when Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents and other state authorities searched his St. Marys home on March 4, 2008. He also wants the government barred from using any statements he made during the search.
Free on $100,000 bail, Cisco has pleaded not guilty. He, his nephew and three others are charged in a 17-count indictment with cheating customers out of millions of dollars by deliberately tampering with fuel pump measuring devices at Cisco's three gas stations along Interstate 95 in Camden County from 1995 through March 2008.
The scheme included a conspiracy to bribe inspectors with the Georgia Department of Agriculture who checked the pumps' accuracy, the indictment says. The indictment identifies none of the inspectors, which also charges the defendants with conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud and criminal trademark infringement.
The federal criminal case is concurrent with a similar but separate state civil racketeering case against Cisco. Meanwhile, Cisco also faces a separate civil class action lawsuit in federal court with similar accusations.
Cisco's criminal defense lawyers Alex Zipperer and Eric Gotwalt are attempting to prevent federal prosecutors in the criminal case from using his personal and business financial records and other items from the two civil cases.
SEPARATION OF EVIDENCE
Federal prosecutors must respond by Nov. 27 to a series of motions from Cisco's lawyers, including requests to suppress evidence, change the venue of his trial and try him separately from his co-defendants.
U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood is presiding, but pretrial motions are being heard by U.S. Magistrate James Graham.
Zipperer and Gotwalt assert that the March 2008 search was illegal and unconstitutional and that any evidence from the search cannot be used.
It was unconstitutional, they said, because it resulted from a separate civil racketeering case filed against Cisco by District Attorney Stephen Kelley of the Brunswick Judicial Circuit. Cisco's lawyers contend that the state case is unconstitutional and the related search illegal because Cisco was not given a court hearing to contest the search and seizure before it was carried out.
GBI agents said they found $12,000 cash inside a home safe, numerous firearms and ammunition, according to GBI affidavits and other court documents the defense filed.
Agents reported overhearing a conversation during the search between Cisco and his nephew, Winston "Eric" Cisco, purportedly about hiding money if they had known ahead of time that authorities were coming to search the home.
Eric Cisco told his uncle "that he should have gotten some money out of the bank and put it in containers and buried it on the property so he would always have money in case this ever happened," Special Agent Mike McDaniel, who supervises the GBI's Kingsland office, wrote in his report following the search.
"A pause occurred and the only reply from Fairley Cisco to Eric was, 'They have to prove it first,' " McDaniel wrote.
Fairley Cisco told agents the guns belonged to him and were for hunting, documents show.
LOOKING FOR A FAIR TRIAL
After agents discovered the guns, Camden County Magistrate Jennifer Lewis signed a warrant authorizing them to seize the weapons because Cisco was a felon and not allowed to have firearms
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