White-collar defendants are routinely told that choosing trial guarantees a brutal “trial penalty.” In a new New York Law Journal article, Fred Hafetz and SentencingStats’ Mark Allenbaugh test that dogma with fresh sentencing data.

Mining 32,000 federal fraud convictions from 2015-2024, and focusing on first-offender §2B1.1 cases without cooperation deals, they found that 80% of defendants risked a mere eight-and-a-half extra months or less by going to verdict—even after plea discounts.

Bottom line: the trial penalty, for most fraud defendants, is measured in months, not years. If you advise white-collar clients, read the full article below.