Nathan Hardwick enters the federal courthouse in Atlanta in his trial on charges of embezzlement. (Photo: John Disney/ALM)

As Atlanta lawyer Nathan Hardwick IV's federal trial continues, an ex-girlfriend and an FBI fraud investigator testified Friday about Hardwick's lavish expenditures, which prosecutors allege were fueled by money he embezzled from his now-defunct firm, Morris Hardwick Schneider.

Prosecutors claim Hardwick stole $26 million from his residential real estate firm and spent $18.47 million of it on gambling, private jet travel and women from 2011 through August 2014, when escrow account shortfalls came to light.

Hardwick spent $4.39 million of the allegedly stolen money on women, according to the government, which submitted as evidence two binders of documentation on Hardwick's expenditures for “female social companions” that together measured roughly 8 inches thick.

U.S. Northern District of Georgia prosecutors indicted Hardwick, 53, in February, 2016 along with the former controller for MHS's residential real estate closing side, Asha Maurya, as a co-conspirator.

Maurya pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud last year and is cooperating with the government. Hardwick's defense team, led by Ed Garland of Garland Samuel & Loeb, has maintained that Maurya was the culprit, not Hardwick. She has admitted to stealing $900,000 from MHS.

Hardwick owned 55.5 percent of MHS, and brothers Mark and Gerard Wittstadt owned 22.2 percent apiece. Hardwick ran the closing operation from Atlanta while the Wittstadts ran the default operation from Baltimore.

Girlfriend Expenditures

Katrena Corcoran, Hardwick's on-and-off girlfriend during the charged conspiracy period, told the jury that she met Hardwick online in 2008 via SugarDaddy.com, which she described as “a website where you can meet people who can help you out with money.”

Corcoran, who lived in Lincoln, Nebraska, said she met Hardwick in person a few months later, and they had a “on-and-off” relationship through 2014. It ended, she said, because “he was seeing someone else.”

She and two other girlfriends received more than 90 percent of the $4.39 million Hardwick spent on women, according to prosecutors. A girlfriend, Julia Olivares, received the most, followed by now-ex-fiancée Heather Inman, and then Corcoran.

Hardwick covered all the expenses for her visits, Corcoran said, generally buying her first-class plane tickets on Delta Air Lines, but arranging private jet charters for trips to Disney World and the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. He also gave her a credit card to use and gifts including a car, clothes, shoes and makeup.

The last time Corcoran saw Hardwick, she said, was in 2014 in New Orleans. He was in a work meeting when she arrived, so he left her about $1,500 in cash at the hotel desk and gave her another $10,000 in cash before she left.

“And you traveled as boyfriend and girlfriend?” defense attorney Kristen Novay asked on cross-examination.

“I thought,” Corcoran replied.

Corcoran was not paid to be in a relationship with Hardwick, she told Novay, but he was generous, also paying for her pet's surgery and at times covering her rent.

Hardwick spent a total of $199,100 on Corcoran, according to the government's next witness, FBI agent Kimberly Johnson, the fraud investigator for the case.

Big Spending on MHS's Dime

The government must convince jurors that Hardwick knowingly received money from MHS's escrow accounts. Johnson spent almost three hours testifying that Hardwick took in millions more from MHS than his legitimate share of income from profit disbursements, salary and business expenses—much of it from the firm's IOLTA wire account—as prosecutor J. Russell Phillips showed them pages of wire transfer records, bank and credit card statements and emails from the hundreds of documents introduced into evidence.

From 2011 to August 2014, Johnson testified, Hardwick and his personal holding company, Divot Holdings, received $19.57 million from MHS's escrow accounts and $6.9 million from its operating accounts, totaling almost $26.5 million.

Hardwick paid $273,500 from his Divot account for an 8.35 carat diamond ring for his ex-fiancee, Inman, in 2014, plus millions for casinos, bookies and stock purchases.

In addition to the $4.39 million spent on women, Johnson testified that Hardwick spent $7.15 million from MHS on casinos, $3.33 million on bookies and $3.68 million on private jet travel for trips—totaling $18.47 million for the charged conspiracy period.

Hardwick in 2013 asked Maurya to wire $350,000 directly from MHS to the Cosmopolitan, a Las Vegas casino, then two months later for her to wire another $500,000 from MHS to his Divot account, which then went to the Cosmopolitan.

He asked Maurya to wire another $300,000 from MHS to Divot for the Beau Rivage Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. But in June 2014, the Venetian casino in Las Vegas rejected a $400,000 wire transfer that Harwick asked Maurya to send from MHS because it came from an IOLTA account.

Golf Trip of a Lifetime

In one expensive trip, Hardwick spent $635,000 to charter a modified Boeing 737 to fly himself and 11 friends, including his bookie, Bryan Carrol, to the United Kingdom for the British Open on July 18, 2014—just after an initial altered bank statement for $670,000 was discovered in a routine audit, triggering an internal investigation by Alyce Ritchie and other MHS personnel.

The “Second Trip of a Lifetime,” as Hardwick billed it to his guests, started with the British Open and included golfing at St. Andrews in Scotland. He footed the bill for the 10-day excursion, according to government documents.

Hardwick paid for the jet, configured like a mini-hotel with a dining area, lounge, master bedroom and bath, with four separate wire transfers from MHS ranging from $100,000 to $236,000, the government claims.

Disparities in Hardwick's MHS Income

Based on MHS's audited financial statements, the firm made just over $10 million in net income from 2011 to 2013, Johnson said, and MHS's profit distributions to the equity partners totaled $11.47 million. However, Hardwick actually took $20.68 million from the firm during those three years, she said—$11.8 million in 2013 alone.

MHS commissioned the audit in late 2011 from accounting firm Warren Averett for its equity partners' income-tax reporting.

On his personal tax returns, Hardwick reported only $185,000 in 2010, $426,000 in 2011 and $1.4 million in 2012, according to the IRS's Kristy Morgan in separate testimony. He has not filed returns for 2013 and 2014, the government said.

Limiting Statement

Hardwick's defense lawyers in pretrial motions tried to keep their client's “lavish spending” from being presented to the jury, arguing that it was irrelevant and could create “class bias.”

Judge Eleanor Ross allowed it but made a limiting instruction to the jury at the start of testimony. She made another one after Johnson's testimony, at the defense's request, instructing the jury that evidence of Hardwick's spending was admissible–but they should only consider its relevance as to “motive, knowledge and intent.”

On cross-examination, Garland determined that Johnson's investigative focus was on MHS's payments to Hardwick, and she did not examine financial transfers from MHS to other equity partners or analyze the totality of the firm's escrow accounts.

After Johnson's testimony on Hardwick's spending, the government called MHS's former IT staffer, followed by Alyce Ritchie, the MHS partner who oversaw the closing operation's departments. Garland's lengthy cross-examination of Ritchie extended into Monday afternoon.

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