A True Story of Going to Prison for Debt; The IRP6 Story

This is a federal court case that you may not have heard about, but it is a situation that can happen to anyone from any walk of life. This is the nightmare story of Gary Walker – CEO, David Banks – COO, Kendrick Barnes – CIO, Clinton Stewart – Bus Dev, Demetrius Harper – CEO/DKH and David Zirpolo, now being referred to, as the IRP6. These six men are IT professionals, who are currently incarcerated in a federal prison in Florence Colorado, accused and convicted for 7-11 years for conspiracy to commit mail/wire-fraud. The IRP6 were business executives of a software development start-up company, called IRP (Investigative Resource Planning) Solutions Corporation that was started in February 2003. The company was marketing its flagship Case Investigative Life Cycle (CILC®) software solution to major federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. Prospective clients included the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the New York City Police Department (NYPD). IRP executives were convinced that they were on the verge of closing business with one of these major governmental agencies, until the FBI raided its business in February 2005 for allegedly scamming staffing companies out of millions of dollars for temporary staffing services.

What really happened in this situation is that the company was responding to ongoing requests from the prospective clients to further customize the CILC software. This caused IRP to get behind in paying invoices. In order to fulfil the additional software requirements for prospective clients, IRP had to use staffing companies that specialized in vetting qualified IT professionals to bring “temps” on board to work on the customization of software for client. When IRP didn’t close business, as quickly as it thought, is when invoices went delinquent and allegations of wrongdoing surfaced. This is primarily a story about how vague the federal fraud laws are and how federal prosecutors can use the vagueness of the law to indict, try, convict, and sentence people, who are conducting normal business practices to prison wrongfully.

The IRP6 case is a corporate debt collection case that got criminalized, by an over-zealous FBI agent and an over-empowered Assistant U.S. Attorney. When FBI Special Agent John Smith, orchestrated the raid on IRP, he got a search warrant stating, in so many words, that IRP was a front company. Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Kirsch, then prosecuted the case although there was evidence and expert witnesses that would substantiate the legitimacy of IRP Solutions, as a business. And then Federal Judge Christine Arguello, who presided over the case, didn’t give the IRP6 any reasonable consideration or benefit of the doubt during the trial. In fact, transcripts are missing that would show critical rights violations that occurred during the trial.

The prosecution argued, that IRP misrepresented their business position and that IRP never had a viable product. The jury didn’t get a chance to hear a solid defense, but rather, they heard a prosecution narrative that was crafted to show crimes where there were no crimes. The prosecution, again used the vagueness of federal fraud laws to achieve the wrongful convictions of the IRP6. Done solely by convincing the jury that they were running a scam.

For complete insights into the IRP6 story, please visit www.freetheirp6.org