Judge fed up with GOP megadonor who spent $60 million on yachts and jets

U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn is losing patience with a billionaire Republican donor as he delays his 12-year sentence, according to the Charlotte Observer.

“A federal judge warned Durham billionaire Greg Lindberg during a heated Monday morning hearing that he was ‘overestimating his intelligence’ by continuing to shuffle through lawyers and fight about how much restitution he must pay for bribing a North Carolina official and orchestrating a $2 billion scheme to defraud insurance companies.”

Lindberg, founder and CEO of the private equity firm Eli Global LLC — renamed Global Growth — was recently sentenced to more than a decade in prison. But that was a “lighter sentence” option made possible by Lindberg’s proactive payments to his victims, U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn pointed out.

A special master in charge of determining Lindberg’s restitution said he still owes more than $1.6 billion, but Lindberg says he doesn’t and has pulled in a new attorney to argue that the special master should be disqualified and is acting unconstitutionally.

The Observer reports Lindberg “siphoned more than $2 billion” from his insurance companies and used “more than $60 million of money on yachts, jets and women.” Lindberg’s attorneys said Lindberg had already paid victims $1 billion before the court ordered him. That, says the Observer, was the largest restitution ever paid in the state.

Lindberg was once the biggest political donor to the North Carolina Republican Party before pleading guilty last year to leading a $2 billion fraud and money laundering scheme that profited off of thousands of people insured through his Durham-based companies. In a separate trial, Lindberg was convicted of attempting to bribe NC Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey, a Republican, who wore a wire for the Federal Bureau of Investigations to record Lindberg.

A special master in charge of determining Lindberg’s restitution said he still owes more than $1.6 billion, but Lindberg says he doesn’t and has pulled in a new attorney to argue that the special master should be disqualified and is acting unconstitutionally.

Judge Cogburn wasn’t having Lindberg's stalling.

“The defendant, and possibly strategically, wanted to show he was going to pay restitution for a lighter sentence,” Cogburn said, and now that Lindberg’s been sentenced, “he wants that money back.”

Lindberg’s original attorneys had withdrawn from the case, and other attorneys had started filing motions without any signed paper designating them as Lindberg’s new counsel.

In the minutes before the hearing began, Cogburn said that Lindberg’s new attorney, Vivek Ramachandran, and another attorney, Kenneth Barnes, had filed 10 motions in Lindberg’s docket: “What’s the deal? We’re not playing games,” said Cogburn. “This court has given a fair sentence. This sounds like a delay!”

The judge also cautioned: “We’re not dummies here. We know fraud when we see it,” according to the Observer.

Nevertheless, the judge appears weary of Lindberg's tactic, said the Observer.

“It’s been a long case,” said Cogburn, who has presided over the case since 2019 and is expected to rule on the restitution by Aug. 24. “And apparently, it’s going to be longer.”