A legal brief can ask a court to reject evidence for one reason and then explain why the same result should follow even if the court disagrees with that reason. Nevin Shetty’s September 23, 2025 investment-policy motion uses that structure. It challenges the relevance of alleged policy violations and separately argues that the evidence would create unfair prejudice and confusion.
Understanding those two routes helps readers follow the defense without mistaking an alternative argument for a factual concession. The filing asks what work a workplace policy should perform in a criminal trial. Its focus is the relationship between an internal standard and the particular elements the government must prove.
The motion’s first proposition
In the motion concerning alleged investment-policy violations, Docket 187, Shetty’s lawyers asked the court to exclude related evidence and argument. They maintained that violating a company guideline did not, by itself, establish the charged scheme to obtain property through fraud. The motion sought to keep the statutory inquiry distinct from a workplace-compliance assessment.
Counsel organized that position around the elements of wire fraud. The filing discussed a fraudulent scheme, material representations or omissions, intent and use of an interstate wire. It then argued that a conclusion about compliance with Fabric’s policy could not simply substitute for the required proof of those matters.
This distinction has an intuitive appeal: an employer’s rules and a federal criminal statute perform different functions. The defense nevertheless advanced a stronger evidentiary position, asking for exclusion of the policy-violation material altogether. That requested result went further than the limited proposition that a policy breach alone is not the entire offense.
How the brief supported the argument
The motion drew on decisions discussing internal bank policies, ethical shortcomings and criminal liability. Counsel used those cases to argue that an organization’s standards should not be treated as if they independently created federal offenses. These were analogies offered in support of the requested ruling in Shetty’s case.
The filing also used a hypothetical investment that conflicted with a company’s environmental policy. Its purpose was to test whether disagreement with an internal preference necessarily meant the company had been deprived of property through fraud. The hypothetical was part of the lawyers’ reasoning, not an additional event in Shetty’s business history.
That method is useful to notice. The brief did not merely state that company policy was unimportant. It asked the court to examine the connection between a particular kind of noncompliance and a particular criminal element. The strength of the argument depended on that connection, rather than on how forcefully counsel described the policy dispute.
The second proposition assumed disagreement
The Rule 403 section began from a different position: even if the court found some relevance, counsel argued that the danger of unfair prejudice and confusion substantially outweighed it. This alternative did not admit that Shetty had violated the policy. It asked what should happen if the court rejected the defense’s first legal argument about admissibility.
The motion identified a specific feared inference. Jurors might decide that breaking a company rule was itself enough to convict of wire fraud. Counsel also warned that extensive policy interpretation could divert attention from the charged offense, turning the proceeding into a dispute about corporate guidelines rather than the required criminal findings.
Those concerns describe why the defense wanted the evidence excluded. They do not establish that jurors actually made the feared mistake. The filing preceded the trial and sought a preventive ruling. The argument concerned a prospective risk in the presentation of evidence, before jurors had considered the case.
What the requested distinction leaves open
The fact that an internal policy is not itself a criminal statute does not resolve every possible evidentiary use of that policy. Its language could be argued to bear on authority, knowledge or intent. The defense contested those connections here. Its objection depended on the theories and evidence at issue in Shetty’s prosecution.
The filing also disputed an earlier judicial analysis connecting authorization, policy and self-interest. Counsel believed the analysis did not adequately distinguish corporate noncompliance from obtaining property through dishonest means. That challenge was part of the defense’s continuing legal position; it was not a new ruling displacing the court’s earlier decision.
The NACDL amicus brief supporting Shetty provides a related argument about fair notice and the boundaries of federal fraud law. Its relevance is institutional advocacy on those boundaries. The amicus addresses the statutory boundary; the later policy motion asks how that concern affects a particular category of trial evidence.
Following the argument without changing the record
The defense’s use of alternative grounds makes the document more informative than a simple declaration that policy does not matter. It asks two questions in sequence: does this evidence help establish a disputed element, and, if it does, could its presentation still create an unacceptable risk of a decision on the wrong basis?
That sequence gives readers a disciplined way to understand the requested ruling. It also preserves room to evaluate the argument critically. Evidence may be relevant without being conclusive; an unfavorable inference is not automatically unfair; and a party’s concern about confusion does not prove that confusion occurred.
Shetty was convicted of four wire-fraud counts in November 2025 and sentenced in March 2026. The motion remains a record of his pretrial defense, not evidence of a later reversal. Its focus was the evidence to be presented before those eventual decisions, and the reasoning jurors would be asked to apply.
Among the materials connected through Nevin Shetty’s website, this filing illustrates a constructive demand for precision. It asks that the path from a company rule to a criminal conclusion be explained rather than assumed. Reading both of its arguments carefully gives the defense that explanation without overstating what the filing achieved.
