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Case 22-1426, Document 78, 06/29/2023, 3536039, Page41 of 217
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Case 1:20-cr-00330-AJN Document 204-3 Filed 04/16/21 Page 295 of 348

B. Acosta Exercised Poor Judgment When He Failed to Ensure That Victims Identified in the Federal Investigation Were Informed of the State Plea Hearing

Although Acosta (or the USAO) was not required by law or policy to notify victims of the state’s plea hearing, he also was not prohibited by law or policy from notifying the victims that the federal investigation had been resolved through an agreement that included pleas to state charges. As the contemporary records indicate, Acosta consistently expressed hesitancy to interfere in the state’s processes or to “dictate” actions to the State Attorney. His decision that the USAO refrain from notifying victims about the state plea hearing and defer to the State Attorney’s judgment regarding whether and whom to notify was consistent with this view. However, OPR found no evidence that Acosta’s decision to defer victim notification “to the discretion of the State Attorney” was ever actually communicated to any state authorities or that Acosta recognized that the state, absent significant coordination with federal authorities, was unlikely to contact all of the victims identified in the state and federal investigations or that the state would inform the victims that it did notify that the state plea hearing was part of an agreement that resolved the federal investigation into their own cases.423

Even taking into account Acosta’s views on principles of federalism and his reluctance to interfere in the state processes, Acosta should have recognized the problems that would likely stem from passing the task of notifying victims to the State Attorney’s Office and made appropriate efforts to ensure that those problems were minimized. Appropriate notification would have included advising victims identified in the federal investigation that the USAO had declined to bring charges and that the matter was being handled by the State Attorney, and, at a minimum, provided the victims with Belohlavek’s contact information. Acosta could have interacted with the State Attorney, or instructed Villafaña or others to do so, to ensure the state intended to make notifications in a way that reached the most possible victims and that it had the information necessary to accomplish the task. Instead, Acosta deferred the responsibility for victim notification entirely to the State Attorney’s discretion without providing that office with the names of individuals the USAO believed were victims and, apparently, without even informing the state prosecutors that he was deferring to them to make the notifications, if they chose to do so.

Epstein was required by the NPA to plead to only two state charges, and even assuming that each charge was premised on a crime against a different victim, and the solicitation charge involved three separate victims, there were thus only at most four victims of the charged state offenses. Without at least inquiring into the state’s intentions, Acosta had no way of determining whether the state intended to notify more than those few victims. Moreover, the federal investigation had resulted in the identification of several victims who had not been identified by

inform the victim and to the extent that it will not interfere with the investigation.” See 42 U.S.C. §§ 10607(c)(1)(B) and (c)(3)(A).

423 Through counsel, Acosta argued that OPR’s criticism of him for “electing to ‘defer’ the notification obligation to the state” was inappropriate and “a non sequitur” because “where no federal notification obligation exists, it cannot be deferred.” OPR’s criticism, as explained further below, is not with the decision itself, but rather with the fact that although Acosta intended for the federal victims to be notified of the state plea hearing, and believed that they should receive such notification, he nonetheless left responsibility for such notification to the state without ensuring that it had the information needed to do so and without determining the state’s intended course of action.

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