Frank Parlato
US Attorney Unfolds Conspiracy Without Substantive Crime
In April 2023, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of NY filed an indictment charging two San Francisco women, Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz, with a single count of forced labor conspiracy. Both women were associated with OneTaste Inc., a sexual wellness company.
US District Judge Diane Gujarati has scheduled the trial to begin in the Brooklyn federal courthouse on January 13, 2025.
To be clear, Daedone and Cherwitz are not on trial for forced labor. The only charge in their one-count indictment is conspiracy to commit forced labor.
Conspiracy to commit forced labor is not the same as forced labor. The legal words that distinguish the charges are “Substantive” and “Non-Substantive.” Forced labor is a substantive crime, because it causes harm.
Forced labor conspiracy is the planning of the substantive crime, the conspiracy to commit the crime. Conspiracy is considered a non-substantive crime. You cannot be a victim of a non substantive crime.
Conspiracy vs. Crime: Planning is Not Doing
The distinction between substantive and non substantive lies in harm. Forced labor causes harm. Forced labor conspiracy by itself is not harmful.
Conspiracy occurs when you agree with someone to commit a substantive crime, and then take some action. For example, you buy gloves so you don’t leave fingerprints or stake out the bank you are planning to rob. No one is hurt until you rob the bank. Robbing the bank is the substantive action.
If you think about a crime, talk to someone, plan it, even buy rope to tie someone down on the railroad track until they agree to labor – that’s conspiracy – a non substantive crime. If you never actually tied them down, you didn’t harm them.
But once you grabbed the damsel and tied her to the tracks, you have committed a substantive crime.
No Forced Labor? Charge the Conspiracy Anyway
The US Attorney in Brooklyn charged Daedone and Cherwitz with conspiracy to commit forced labor.
The US Attorney alleges these two conspired, planned, and agreed to force people to labor. The indictment reads that Daedone and Cherwitz conspired for 12 years, from 2006 to May 2018, to force students and employees to labor.
The FBI investigation started around August 2018 – three months after the women allegedly stopped conspiring.
Their case is not like the bank robber on his way to the bank with a gun and mask, who the feds arrest outside the bank. According to the indictment, these two women conspired for a dozen years, then gave up.
The FBI, led by that intrepid and special agent, Elliot McGinnis, started investigating after the alleged conspiracy had ended.
Despite a five year investigation, he could not find forced labor. We know this because the feds did not charge Daedone and Cherwitz with forced labor but only conspiracy to commit forced labor.
Certainly, if you’re a prosecutor and have evidence of forced labor, you charge it. You would never charge only the non substantive conspiracy crime if you had evidence of the substantive forced labor crime.
Indicting Imagination
Forced labor conspiracy without forced labor likely cannot be proven. Nobody ever has proven anyone can only conspire to commit forced labor and not a substantive crime.
A search of LexisNexis shows the US Justice Department charged forced labor conspiracy about two dozen times. In nearly every case, as one would expect, the defendants were charged with forced labor conspiracy because they were charged with forced labor. Forced labor was proof of the conspiracy, and vice versa. However, there are two cases – both in EDNY, where the feds charged forced labor conspiracy without forced labor.
Raniere Set a Precedent
The first was USA v Raniere. The US Attorney for the EDNY charged Keith Raniere, co-founder of NXIVM in 2018. Prosecutors convicted him in 2019 following a six-week trial on forced labor conspiracy and racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, attempted sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy.
Raniere was the first forced labor conspiracy without forced labor. It set a precedent. The feds can charge one without the other. But the feds did charge him with the substantive crimes of sex trafficking and racketeering.
The only other case of forced labor conspiracy without forced labor is Daedone and Cherwitz. Unlike Raniere, unlike every other case of forced labor conspiracy, there is no substantive crime. Their indictment has only one charge – the non substantive charge of forced labor conspiracy.
The Indictment Is Clearly Shady
From the indictment:
FORCED LABOR CONSPIRACY
In or about and between 2006 and May 2018, both dates being approximate and inclusive, within the Eastern District of New York and elsewhere, the defendants NICOLE DAEDONE and RACHEL CHERWITZ, together with others, did knowingly and intentionally conspire to: (a) provide and obtain the labor and services of one or more persons by means of, and by a combination of means of: (i) force, threats of force, physical restraint and threats of physical restraint to a person; (ii) serious harm and threats of serious harm to a person; (iii) the abuse and threatened abuse of law and legal process; and (iv) one or more schemes, plans, and patterns intended to cause a person to believe that, if he or she did not perform such labor and services, a person would suffer serious harm and physical restraint,
Between 2006 and 2018? They allegedly conspired for 12 years to use force, threats, physical restraint, and scary things to force people into believing they would experience serious harm if they did not do labor.
And the US Attorney did not charge forced labor?
They allegedly schemed, planned, but forced no one to labor.
Beyond Silly
It is a stupid idea to charge forced labor conspiracy without forced labor and take it to court. Why?
Because juries don’t live on carbon dioxide.
Because you don’t want to get laughed out of court. Because forced labor conspiracy without forced labor is like a diaper that leaks. There is nothing to absorb the things that come out of your mouth.
It’s like a moon made of blue cheese. Or a birthday cake nobody eats, and it’s not your birthday anyway. But if it was, nobody would come, except if it was also your funeral.
Forced labor conspiracy is like using a carrot for a stick. Or listing your occupation as ass clown. Or you’re broke and pretend you’re rich, showing off your new suit, and you’re in your birthday suit.
It’s like you spent five years trying to make someone you didn’t like look bad and made yourself look bad.
Forced labor conspiracy without forced labor is delusional. It’s the attractive man with the mustache who eyes you up and down every morning on the bus, who is actually a cannibal. And offers you donuts.
Forced labor conspiracy without forced labor is like when your toupee blows off in the wind. Everyone knew you wore one, but now they see why. It’s like the person who passed gas loudly then began to rub her shoe on the floor as if that sound was making the odor.
The forced labor conspiracy case of the prosecution is delusion and bluff. Your business is 85 percent bluff, but this is 100 percent bluff, and your underwear is showing.
Early next year, the US Attorney will embark on a fruitless journey, a foray into a murky, fetid, legal quagmire. There is no map to this madness. It is a plan so ingenious – a standalone forced labor conspiracy – that it appears stupid for precisely all the right reasons. Such as it is stupid.
It boils down to one fact: There is no forced labor charge. That’s what you tell the jury. No substantive crime. No harm done. Without forced labor, there can be no victims. That’s all the jury needs to know. A 12-year conspiracy with the object of forcing people to labor and no charge of forced labor. No one, not one single person was forced to labor.
Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.
Please leave a comment: Your opinion is important to us!
Nicole is extremely assertive and persists to get what she wants. These qualities would be revered if she were a man leading the company. As a female, it’ll be twisted to being coercive control, which in itself is a slippery slope and one that legally does more harm than good.
Staff & Contractors could leave Onetaste at any point from any position. Many did. As such there’s no case of forced labor. don’t wanna do it? Leave. Case Closed. FBI here are your legal fees, plus damages.
The shocking reveal of this entire website: Frank is actually Chat GPT
This is crazy, OneTaste never attempted to keep anyone working for them. It was closer to the opposite. People would want to work for them and they would discourage them. Look closely at the evidence. It will all point to disgruntled employees who got their feelings hurt that OneTaste did not want them working for them. If it is a forced labor conspiracy case, then what evidence do they have that they actually wanted these people to work for them?
I agree that actual substantive crime is important in this case because in a bank robbery the conspiracy would include maps of a bank and weapons and get away plans and even how to launder the money. In this case it seems like the fed is basing just on what some people said. Have you ever turned to a friend and said something like “If he doesn’t shut up I’m going to kill him” and have a friend maybe play along with “You want a rope or a pistol?” Right there it could be considered a conspiracy, but we all know there was no intention to go through with it. OneTaste just needs to be ready to prove they never intended, nor ever attempted, to go through with any “evidence” the fed may have. Venting and being frustrated with someone is not a crime. It can’t be, or we would all be screwed. There needs to be another step between venting, and doing, in order for it to be an attempt.
I like the idea of eliminating trials. It’s just bulkshit. Let us get to what counts. The sentencing
It’s time to eliminate trials. The indictment means the government has done its due diligence.
It’s stupid to have a grand jury and a grand jury.
Do away with both
United States v. Raniere, 1:18-cr-00204, (E.D.N.Y)
Document Number: 1269
Date Filed: Oct 24, 2024
Extension of Time to File Document
RE: Extension of Time to Amend Pro Se Motion to Vacate Under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 & Update on BOP
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nyed.416187/gov.uscourts.nyed.416187.1268.0.pdf
You keep saying this lame narrative. News flash! Nicole & Rachel are LUCKY they didn’t charge forced labor. Then they would be facing WAY more time. The feds charge what they know they can convict. It doesn’t mean there wasn’t evidence of forced labor. It means the Feds didn’t think they could convict with what they had. There are also unindicted co-conspirators. This wasn’t just these 2. Conspiracy is critical to cults, gangs, the mafia, and equally as serious. (Hence the 20 year potential sentence). “ A conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to commit a crime in the future. The crime of conspiracy was created to address the dangers of people joining together to commit criminal acts.” I can plan a crime and it’s not conspiracy. The law recognizes when organizations plan to commit crimes, it’s a different level of threat and harm.
Wake up. This is not going well at all for them. And there could be more or cooperating co-conspirators.
Wake up. Every single article on this website is about hopelessly guilty monsters. If Frankreport is writing about you it’s because you are either in prison or headed there.
Are you one of those people who thinks the onion is supposed to be real, too?
I like the blue nail varnish on the pretty dark-haired woman.
#believe prosecutors
I totally support the OneTaste defendants in this case. They will probably win their case at trial. This is a weak case brought by the government.
However, having said that… I don’t think Frank’s theory holds much legal weight.
Frank’s main argument is that ‘conspiracies’ aren’t a real crime (unless there’s a separate conviction for the crime itself).
That’s a weak argument though.
For example, if a group of men get together and ‘plan’ a particular bank robbery — but it never gets committed because one of the men gets cold feet and goes to the FBI with a video recording of the planned robbery — that would not exonerate the men who planned the bank robbery.
When multiple people ‘plan’ a federal crime together — that’s an illegal ‘conspiracy’ (regardless of whether the crime was carried out or not).
I don’t even think the defense lawyers would be permitted to argue what Frank is arguing here (since it would probably contradict the jury instructions).
The government is arguing that the defendants made a ‘plan’ which allegedly involved the use of ‘coercion’ in order to get students to perform some type of labor for the organization.
Whether or not the actual labor ever took place is not pertinent to the conspiracy charge. It’s the ‘intent’ to commit a crime that matters.
Conspiracy laws exist to discourage law breakers from teaming up together.
Planning out a crime in your head (or even on paper) is not a conspiracy unless you begin planning it with a 2nd person. Once you bring in that 2nd person, a conspiracy is born.
But… I totally support the OneTaste defendants in this case. I don’t think they’re guilty of anything here. I believe that the government’s witnesses are all liars.
But… That doesn’t mean I’m gonna kiss Frank’s ass.
I am holding Frank to the highest standards of journalism.
Have a good day. 🙂
The prosecutors have yet to define the conspiracy. They don’t name what labor. In your analogy you said the crime was to conspire to commit a bank robbery – that’s defined.
This is conspiracy to force labor – without defining the act itself – what is the labor? This is what I find most troubling- that these women can have their company and lives turned upside down without identifying the act(s) they allegedly conspired unnamed person(s) to do.
Polar opposites: highest standards and parlato. [redacted] birds of a feather
Onetaste: where people who were too dumb to just stroke a clit would pay for sex lessons from women who were too stupid to cover up their plans for forced labor.