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The central figure in the University of Hawaii Stevie Wonder concert fraud is finally getting sentenced, nearly a year and a half after pleading guilty.
Marc Hubbard is scheduled to be sentenced
March 28. U.S. District Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi scheduled the sentencing after
denying Monday Hubbard’s request to withdraw his guilty plea.
Hubbard, 50, a former North Carolina nightclub owner and self-styled concert promoter, had delayed his sentencing numerous times since pleading guilty
to wire fraud in October 2016.
He was previously scheduled to get sentenced last month, but filed papers one day before asking to withdraw his guilty plea. He claimed that he didn’t commit any crime and that his guilty plea was coerced.
Hubbard claimed that the federal prosecutor in Pennsylvania, where he had already pleaded guilty to ripping off $2.1 million from investors in a similar concert promotion scam, threatened to reveal his cooperation with the FBI against alleged mobsters in Boston if he didn’t also plead guilty in Hawaii.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Wallenstein said Hubbard went to the FBI and state law enforcement officials in North Carolina on his own and that his “gratuitous” cooperation against the alleged mobsters and in a cold-case murder didn’t result in anything useful.
Kobayashi also read in court the transcript from Hubbard’s change-of-plea hearing in which Hubbard admitted that he intentionally lied to his co-defendant Sean Barriero in 2012 about his ability to book Wonder for a concert and that Barriero relied on his lies to persuade a UH supporter and the school to turn over $250,000, which they never got back.
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