Start of prison term not end of story

The federal income tax fraud case of Columbus businessman Sawan “Sunny” Shah, we wrote in an editorial in this space not quite six weeks ago, “was strange from the start. And it just keeps on getting stranger. What it doesn’t ever seem to get is over.”

The occasion for that editorial was a story by Ledger-Enquirer senior writer Chuck Williams noting that Shah, who had been sentenced more than a year earlier for his role in an income tax refund checks scam that had amassed more than $24 million from the federal government, was still not behind bars.

The mystery factor at the time was, and still is, a series of post-trial filings by Shah’s defense team that U.S. District Judge Clay Land of Columbus had ordered sealed. The request that the documents be kept secret came not from the defense but from the government, specifically the Justice Department. Between March 7 of last year and March 9 of this, at least five separate filings have been ordered withheld from public access, at the request of the prosecution. Nobody involved in the case, from the prosecution, the defense or the bench, would comment either on the nature of the documents or on any reason(s) for the delay in Shah’s beginning his incarceration.

Given that those documents remain sealed, the case itself is still not over. But as of Monday, Sunny Shah’s freedom, at least for the time being, is. The owner of several Columbus convenience stores reported to the federal prison at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery to begin serving the 21-month term to which he was sentenced … 16-plus months ago.

Shah’s proverbial “debt to society” (in his case literal as well as metaphorical) includes $1.375 million in restitution and three years of probation in addition to the almost two years he is supposed to serve.

Maybe by then we’ll know at least some of the reasons why a man convicted in an 8-figure federal crime was given so long to start doing the time.

No spoilers

A new movie in the works is set in Georgia. Whether Georgia’s booming film industry will be part of the process or the product isn’t yet known — at least not in Georgia. (Or at least not here.) But the story is a familiar one, and we all know the ending.

It’s the Atlanta Public Schools test cheating story of 2009, a scandal that would ultimately involve the GBI, 44 Atlanta schools and the criminal convictions of 11 teachers. According to a Hollywood Reporter item cited in the Atlanta Business Chronicle, the film “Wrong Answer” is adapted from an extensive 2014 New Yorker story on the unraveling of a major urban school system whose leadership, under academic and political pressure, completely lost its ethical bearings.

It’s a story that begs be told on film — fairly, and thoroughly, and well.

This story was originally published June 13, 2017 at 5:34 PM with the headline "Start of prison term not end of story."