U.S. Department
of Justice
United States v. Gary Michael Opper
Closed Criminal Division Cases
United States v. Gary Michael Opper
Court Docket Number: 2:09-CR-00365-PHX-SRB
This case is assigned to the Honorable Susan R. Bolton, United States District Court Judge for the District of Arizona, Sandra Day O'Connor United States Courthouse, 401 West Washington Street, Phoenix, Arizona.
Gary Michael Opper, a former director of credits and receivables at CSK Auto Corporation (CSK), pleaded guilty to a criminal information, filed under seal on March 19, 2009, and unsealed on April 7, 2009, charging him with one count of obstruction of proceedings before agencies (18 U.S.C. § 1505) stemming from an attempt to thwart a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation into CSK's accounting practices. On November 7, 2011, Opper was sentenced to 3 years of probation and ordered to pay a $2,500.
According to the criminal information, Opper made material false statements during an internal investigation of CSK's accounting practices knowing that the information would be passed on to the SEC, which was conducting an investigation into misstatements of CSK's expenses and income from 2001-2004 with regard to certain vendor allowances in CSK's books and records.
In related cases, in April 2009, Edward William O'Brien III, former CSK controller, pleaded guilty to a criminal information, filed in March 2009, charging him with one count of obstruction of proceedings before an agency, and was sentenced. In May 2011, Don W. Watson, former CSK chief financial officer, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities and mail fraud charged in an April 2009 indictment, and he was sentenced in September 2011. Watson's co-defendant and former CSK president and chief operating officer Martin Gregory Fraser died and the charges against him were dismissed in June 2010. In another related action, in March 2009, the SEC filed a civil enforcement action against Fraser, Watson, O'Brien and Opper.