By Hannah Albarazi

Law360 (October 6, 2020, 10:19 PM EDT ) A California federal judge ruled Tuesday that Autonomy's asthmatic former chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain had shown no "extraordinary and compelling" reasons for the court to shorten his five-year sentence for lying about the software company's financials ahead of its 2011 acquisition by Hewlett-Packard.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer denied 56-year-old Hussain's request for a reduced sentence in light of COVID-19 and ordered him to report to prison by Oct. 28 to serve his five-year prison term for lying about the British software company's financials before Hewlett-Packard Co.'s $11.7 billion acquisition in 2011.

"Even if the court were authorized to reduce sentences based on a finding that a previously imposed sentence is too severe, it would not do so here," Judge Breyer wrote in a footnote to his order.

"And nothing about life in prison, exile from home, or separation from family meaningfully sets Mr. Hussain apart from any other defendant," the judge wrote in the footnote.

Hussain, who lost an appeal in the Ninth Circuit in August, told Judge Breyer last month that COVID-19 drastically changed what 60 months in prison means since he was sentenced in 2019. He argued that his asthma and high cholesterol puts him at a high risk should he contract the virus.

A British citizen, Hussain said that he had been restricted to the Northern District of California since January 2018, when he entered the country to prepare for his trial, and that because the pandemic shut down most international travel, he had been unable to see his family.

After a three-month trial, a 12-member jury convicted the former executive in April 2018 on all 16 counts of wire and securities fraud against him.

During his trial, prosecutors argued that Hussain had cooked Autonomy's books, made dozens of "garbage" quid pro quo deals, and hid the company's substantial hardware sales between 2009 and 2011, falsely touting the business as a "pure software company" and misrepresenting its sustainability.

Prosecutors said Hussain's lies snowballed and ballooned the company's revenue as the global economy tanked, defying common sense. As a result, the government, said HP purchased Autonomy at an inflated price and was forced to write off $8.8 billion months after the deal closed in October 2011.

Hussain was later sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay $4 million in fines.

The Ninth Circuit in August rejected various arguments in favor of throwing out Hussain's conviction, including that the U.S. Department of Justice can't bring wire fraud charges extraterritorially because the deal was governed by English securities laws and accounting rules and was conducted in the British pound.

Hussain has not yet begun serving his sentence, but he is expected to serve his time at FCI Allenwood Low, a low-security prison in Pennsylvania. He filed his motion for a reduced sentence after the Bureau of Prisons told him that it would not consider his request.

But Judge Breyer said that Hussain's medical conditions "are not serious enough" and that his arguments are not individualized enough to warrant a trimmed sentence.

"Mr. Hussain has not shown that extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant reducing his sentence," Judge Breyer wrote in his order Tuesday.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California declined to comment on the litigation Tuesday.

Counsel for Hussain did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday afternoon.

The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Robert S. Leach, William Frentzen and Adam A. Reeves.

Hussain is represented by John W. Keker, Jan Nielsen Little, Brook Dooley, Nicholas D. Marias and Cody Gray of Keker Van Nest & Peters LLP.

The case is U.S. v. Hussain, case number 3:16-cr-00462, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

--Additional reporting by Craig Clough. Editing  by Peter Rozovsky.

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