Fashion designer Kenneth Cole's brother claims vindication after criminal charges dismissed

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NEW YORK (AP) — The brother of designer Kenneth Cole says he was vindicated on Monday by a federal appeals court's decision to overturn his criminal fraud conviction.

Neil Cole said he’s been fighting over a decade to clear his name after federal authorities claimed that he committed securities fraud while running Iconix Brand Group Inc., the company he founded that partnered with some big names in the entertainment world, including Madonna, Jay-Z and Pharrell Williams.

“It's wonderful,” Cole said in a telephone interview about the written decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.

Cole said one of the first people he spoke with after the appeals court ruled was New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo, whose sister is married to Kenneth Cole.

“I was really hoping to work with Andrew on the mayoral campaign,” Cole said, though he kept his distance from the former governor, a Democrat, before the appeals court tossed his conviction.

Cole described what the government had put him through and the pressure on his friends over the last 11 years as “really horrible.”

“I lost so many friends. It was kind of me also just pulling back. I got divorced,” he said. “Everyone was basically uncomfortable talking to me.”

But he said his world was already brightening, with 100 text messages sent his way, many from “people I haven't heard from in years.”

He said he expected to announce within weeks plans to start a new business that might be a variation of the kind of company he started before.

“I kind of see a new way to do it,” he said.

Cole said he wasn't surprised by the legal outcome because all three judges on the appeals panel seemed to agree that the government was wrong when they heard oral arguments earlier this year.

The 2nd Circuit agreed with Cole that his 2021 exoneration on a conspiracy charge meant his 2022 conviction on related charges had to be tossed out on double jeopardy grounds. The Fifth Amendment's double jeopardy provision bans being tried twice for the same crime.

“The record shows the second trial to have been largely a repeat of the first,” the appeals court wrote, saying the government again sought to prove that Cole engaged in an illicit scheme in which he inflated and falsely reported Iconix's revenue.

Cole did not have to serve any of an 18-month prison sentence because it was suspended during his appeal. He had also been ordered to forfeit $790,200.

Iconix Brand, founded in 2005, was once a high-flying company valued at over $3 billion and had established itself as the second-largest U.S. licensing company behind Walt Disney Co. before the Securities and Exchange Commission and later federal prosecutors went after it.

The share price of Iconix collapsed from $40 per share to less than a dollar. It was sold in 2021 to a private equity firm for $585 million.

A message sent to the U.S. Justice Department for comment was not immediately returned.