Press Release
Press Release
Press Contacts: Erik Cummins, Matt Hyams, Taina Rosa, Olivia Meyer
07.02.26
On June 30, a U.S. district court judge in San Diego issued an order dismissing all charges in a long-running federal case against Pillsbury clients Cask Technologies and Mark Larsen, a former Cask executive. The indictment that has now been dismissed had falsely alleged that a U.S. Navy official, who had previously pled guilty to taking bribes from two unrelated government contractors in return for steering contracts to them, had also accepted bribes from Cask and Larsen.
A multi-disciplinary Pillsbury team led by Aaron Dyer, a former federal prosecutor and the co-leader of the firm’s Corporate Investigations and White Collar Defense practice, represented Cask Technologies and Larsen in the rare dismissal of a federal criminal case.
Following the filing of the order for dismissal, Dyer stated: “We are very pleased that the government has decided to dismiss all charges against Cask Technologies and Mark Larsen, and that we have finally been able to clear their names. It is incredibly rare in a federal white-collar prosecution for the government to voluntarily dismiss a criminal indictment by a grand jury and even more rare for the government to admit a failure of proof even before trial or pretrial motions. We are grateful to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for following up on the evidence we provided and confirming that the former Cask employees identified in the indictment had provided false information implicating Mr. Larsen. Their additional investigation confirmed that those employees had falsely denied working for and receiving payments from Cask’s competitors while employed by Cask; had concealed their own dealings with government employees who pleaded guilty to taking bribes; and had falsely claimed that Mr. Larsen and Cask knew about their misconduct. For nearly seven years, our clients lived under the cloud of false accusations by government witnesses. The dismissal of these charges is the culmination of years of strategic effort by our team, and the only just outcome.”
This case began in 2019 when federal agents served search warrants and subpoenas on Cask’s offices in San Diego and Virginia based on now disproved allegations that Cask had bribed two government contracting officers to get them to award contracts from the Navy and other government entities.
In addition to Dyer, the Pillsbury team was led by Ronald Cheng, Adam Goldberg and Jeffrey Izant of the Corporate Investigations and White Collar Defense practice; and Richard Oliver of the Government Contracts practice.
The case was United States v. Cask Technologies LLC and Mark Larsen, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, 3:24-cr-02111.
To read more, see here.