Ex-prosecutor drove woman to suicide, suit says

A federal prosecutor drove a woman to suicide by threatening to indict her to get her to incriminate her husband in a massive investigation of a Norcross dietary supplement company, according to a lawsuit.

The Fulton County Superior Court lawsuit filed last week contends Aaron Danzig kept Jessica Holda “in a state of terror and dread.”

Two years ago, Holda took a .40-caliber Ruger pistol and shot herself in the head.

The lawsuit contends she killed herself after Danzig threatened to prosecute her for selling a luxury car that the government had targeted for seizure if she didn’t assist in the federal investigation.

“I hope Aaron Danzig feels some kind of remorse,” Holda wrote in her suicide note. “I blame him for my struggles with wanting to live.”

The wrongful-death lawsuit was filed against Danzig on behalf of Holda’s 3-year-old daughter, Amber, by her guardian, Jeffrey Alan Jones. The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages.

Danzig, who left the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta after the suicide, defended the federal investigation against Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Holda’s husband, Tomasz Holda, and denounced the lawsuit.

“It is always tragic when someone takes their own life but that does not change the fact that the allegations set out in this civil lawsuit are false and unfounded,” Danzig said.

“It also bears emphasizing that the civil complaint stems from a larger criminal case in which the investigation by the U.S. Attorney Office, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration was conducted with professionalism and integrity.”

Steve Murrin, who represented Jessica Holda, said she had an abusive childhood in which her grandmother locked her in a closet. He described her as a beautiful but frail woman.

The 27-year-old mother was terrified of jail and asked to be allowed to surrender if indicted so she could get an immediate bond.

Danzig repeatedly refused the request, Murrin said.

Murrin said Holda had traded in a 2003 Mercedes G55 for a 2006 Mecedes ML 350 because it had repeated repair problems. In federal cases, the government often seizes assets of defendants on the basis they’re bought with illegal gains. Murrin said Danzig used the sale to pressure Holda into digging up documents that could incriminate her husband in its case targeting off-shore manufacture of pharmaceuticals.

“I basically got on my knees with Aaron and begged him to let this girl self-surrender,” Murrin said. “She was just a simple country girl who traded in a car and got wrapped up in her husband’s whatever.

“The government was just squeezing her to make her flip on her husband. Harder than I have ever seen anyone be squeezed.”

The lawsuit is the most recent litigation arising out of High-Tech Pharmaceuticals in Gwinnett County, which has been the target of various federal investigations and lawsuits.

Tomasz Holda owned 20 percent of the company and was vice president. Jared Wheat, the chief executive officer, owned 80 percent of the company that became a multi-million dollar enterprise in the largely unregulated dietary supplement business. The two men were indicted in 2006 on charges they also used Hi-Tech money to manufacture knock-offs of pharmaceuticals, such as Viagra and Ambien, in Belize and conspired to illegally ship them to the United States.

Danzig also indicted Wheat for running a continuing criminal enterprise — a racketeering law carrying a 20-year minimum sentence — instead of simply as a patent law case.

The government said Wheat, who was convicted at 19 of selling Ecstasy, was a lifelong drug dealer.

When he was indicted, Holda, convicted of illegally selling steroids, was serving a federal prison sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm. Federal authorities contended the business partners were considering killing a U.S. Food and Drug Administration official after the agency sued Hi-Tech in 2002, but never pursed the charges.

After Danzig left the case, Wheat, 37, and Holda, 45, ended up getting 50 months and 16 months respectively in plea deals.

The judge also ordered Hi-Tech and the defendants to forfeit $3 million and also fined Wheat $50,000.

In an interview Wednesday with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Wheat contended that he manufactured the drugs legally but one of his distributors sold them illegally in the United States.

He said investigators for a pharmaceutical company had bought the product off a distributor’s Web site and pushed for an aggressive indictment to make an example of offshore and online pharmacies, which are difficult to police.

He reports to federal prison next month.

“They treated us like Columbian drug lords,” Wheat said. “Jessica’s biggest fear was that they would arrest her in the middle of the night, there would be no bond for her and she would never see her daughter again.”

In a plea bargain, they admitted to manufacturing generic versions of such pharmaceuticals as Xanax, Zoloft, and Cialis and selling them over the Internet without requiring prescriptions. This month, when announcing the plea, U.S. Attorney David Nahmias said the men had violated U.S. patents and risked consumers’ health by making drugs in an unsanitary warehouse.

Nahmias declined this week to comment on the allegations raised in the lawsuit except to vouch for Danzig.

“Aaron Danzig was a very good federal prosecutor,” said Nahmias in a prepared statement. “Mr. Danzig left in 2007 to better provide for his family. We were sorry to see him go.”