United States v. Rishi Shah

In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. RISHI SHAH and SHRADHA AGARWAL, Defendants-Appellants. ____________________ Appeals from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 1:19-cr-00864 — Thomas M. Durkin, Judge. ____________________ ARGUED FEBRUARY 10, 2026 — DECIDED AUGUST 6, 2026 ____________________ Before EASTERBROOK, SCUDDER, and KIRSCH, Circuit Judges. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge. In 2019, the federal government in- dicted Rishi Shah and Shradha Agarwal for orchestrating a multi-year, multi-million-dollar fraud scheme through their company, Outcome Health. Over three years later, and 2 Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 following an 11-week trial, a jury convicted both Shah and Agarwal on multiple mail, wire, and bank fraud counts, and Shah on money laundering counts. Shah and Agarwal now appeal their convictions. Their main challenge focuses on an expansive, pretrial protective order that froze assets purportedly traceable to Outcome’s fraud. They contend that the order was overbroad and vio- lated their Sixth Amendment right to counsel of choice by im- properly restraining assets—so much so that they lacked the resources to continue paying the firms and lawyers they had hired to represent them in the case. Shah and Agarwal also allege that the government violated their Fifth Amendment due process rights when an FBI accountant knowingly made a false statement (related to the pretrial asset restraint) to the grand jury and the government failed to correct it. Finally, they argue that the district court abused its discretion by ad- mitting certain evidence at trial and in its instructions to the jury. While what transpired with the pretrial asset freeze is complicated and troubling, we see no error in the district court’s finding that Shah and Agarwal received sufficient in- formation during discovery to identify and challenge the over-restraint well before trial. Nor do we see any merit to Shah and Agarwal’s remaining challenges. All of this leads us to affirm. I A. Outcome Health In 2006, Rishi Shah founded Outcome Health, a healthcare technology company that provided television screens and tablets displaying ads and educational content in doctors’ Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 3 offices. Shah served as Outcome’s CEO. Shradha Agarwal, Shah’s college classmate, joined the company in 2008 as its Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Strategy Officer before transitioning to President and Co-Founder in 2013. Outcome generated revenue by selling ad space on screens to pharmaceutical companies and advertising agencies. To contract with Outcome, a company would provide a list of doctors’ offices it wanted an ad campaign to target. Outcome would then perform a “list match” of offices where its screens were installed to find the overlap. Ad campaign contracts of- ten promised the client a return on their investment, meas- ured by the amount of money earned in prescriptions or other revenue for every dollar spent on ads. By 2017, Outcome expanded from a 20-person startup to a company of over 500 employees with multiple offices. Tur- moil ensued in October 2017, when the Wall Street Journal re- ported that Outcome had been defrauding its clients by over- selling ad space and inflating performance metrics. Federal criminal charges followed, with the indictment alleging that Outcome’s multi-million-dollar fraud scheme ran from at least 2011 to 2017, and targeted both clients and investors. Outcome still operates today, rebranded as PatientPoint. 1. Fraud on Clients Outcome defrauded its clients to solve challenges associ- ated with its business model. To evolve from a startup to a nationwide enterprise, the company required enough screens to run ads and thereby attract advertisers. At the same time, it needed more ad revenue to purchase more screens. To bridge the gap between inventory and revenue needs, Out- come told clients it had more screens than it did to induce 4 Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 them to enter larger advertising contracts. When a client sent Outcome a list of doctors to target, the company inflated its list match using what was really a projected (and not actual) inventory figure. At least some clients did not know the list matches they received overstated Outcome’s current inven- tory. So they signed contracts believing their ads would run on screens that Outcome did not in fact have. And while some clients agreed to “weighted” contracts that promised growth over a certain period to reach an average projected figure, most contracted for current inventory. Outcome executives si- loed information about the list manipulation from sales em- ployees interfacing with clients. Outcome consistently overstated its inventory and under- delivered on ads, thereby also failing to generate promised returns, while all along billing clients for full service. The company referred to these performance gaps as “deltas.” It then hid the deltas from clients by manipulating information used to conduct ad campaign performance studies. Evidence at trial demonstrated that Shah, and to a lesser extent, Agarwal, knew of these problems but ignored or silenced em- ployees who tried to sound an alarm. 2. Fraud on Lenders and Investors Outcome defrauded its lenders and investors too. By 2016, the company began seeking outside investment. To help se- cure capital, Outcome hired Deloitte to audit its 2015 and 2016 financial statements. But in the process, the company hid its fraud by making misrepresentations to the auditors within misstated financial statements. Outcome nonetheless used those financial statements, and Deloitte’s resulting clean audit opinions, to secure $485 million in loans from JPMorgan and other lenders in April and December 2016, and over $487 Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 5 million from equity investors from March to July 2017. From the proceeds of the financing, Outcome paid a $225 million dividend to Gravitas Holdings, LLC, an entity controlled by Shah and Agarwal. B. Civil Settlement After Outcome’s fraud scheme became public in October 2017, its lenders and investors sued. The parties settled in Jan- uary 2018. Shah and Agarwal agreed to resign, surrender their controlling interest in Outcome, and pay about $190 mil- lion from Gravitas to the company and investors. The settle- ment allowed them to keep $31 million from Gravitas. In an- ticipation of a federal indictment, Shah and Agarwal paid $10.3 million of the $31 million to their attorneys as a retainer fee. C. Indictment and Forfeiture Allegations In November 2019, a grand jury indicted Shah and Agarwal on multiple counts of mail, wire, and bank fraud. Shah also faced a separate money laundering charge. Federal law allows the government to seek a pretrial pro- tective order freezing a defendant’s assets traceable to crimi- nal activity alleged in the indictment. See 21 U.S.C. § 853(e)(1)(A). The indictment against Shah and Agarwal in- cluded forfeiture allegations stating that “[a]ll right, title, and interest … including but not limited to” certain funds in cer- tain assets held by two of Shah and Agarwal’s companies (Gravitas Holdings and Jumpstart Ventures II) were traceable to the fraud and therefore forfeitable upon conviction. To arrive at the indictment’s forfeiture allegations prior to the grand jury, the government assembled a multi-agency team to identify Shah and Agarwal’s forfeitable assets. For her 6 Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 part, FBI forensic accountant Megan Poelking traced the as- sets. Given the complexity of the case, Poelking received as- sistance from the DOJ’s Money Laundering and Asset Recov- ery Section and the U.S. Marshals Service Complex Asset Unit. DOJ attorney Daniel Olinghouse drafted the forfeiture allegations and protective order that would follow. Poelking testified before the grand jury as the govern- ment’s tracing expert about the criminal proceeds the govern- ment sought to freeze. After the grand jury returned the in- dictment and forfeiture allegations, the district court entered a protective order restraining assets pending trial. The frozen assets totaled in the tens of millions of liquid dollars, includ- ing the $10.3 million Gravitas dividend Shah and Agarwal re- tained through the settlement agreement (the “Settlement Funds”), which they had set aside for legal fees. It also in- cluded other mainly illiquid assets of unknown value (the “Other Assets”). Meanwhile, Shah and Agarwal took steps to retain coun- sel for trial. As early as 2017, two years before the indictment, Shah and Agarwal had paid a retainer to Quinn Emanuel Ur- quhart & Sullivan, LLP to represent them in potential investi- gations and lawsuits. After the indictment, William Burck and Jonathan Bunge of Quinn Emanuel entered a limited appear- ance for Shah, and Christina Egan of McGuireWoods for Agarwal. These are the lawyers and firms Shah and Agarwal wanted to represent them through trial. But the broad asset restraint presented a challenge, as both firms required pay- ment up front. So access to cash or other liquid assets became very important for Shah and Agarwal. Their focus naturally turned to the protective order. Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 7 In January 2020, with Quinn Emanuel and McGuire- Woods still retained, Shah and Agarwal challenged the scope of the protective order by focusing on the frozen $10.3 million in Settlement Funds. They maintained that the funds were both essential to continue retaining their counsel of choice and not subject to forfeiture. The district court disagreed and denied Shah and Agarwal’s motion, finding that the settle- ment did not somehow cleanse the funds of their allegedly fraudulent origin. The court gave Shah and Agarwal until June 30, 2020, to find new trial counsel. In June 2020, Quinn Emanuel and McGuireWoods with- drew from the case due to Shah and Agarwal’s inability to pay. Shah proceeded to trial with Hueston Hennigan LLP and Agarwal with Larson LLP and Blegen & Associates. D. Trial and Sentencing Trial began on January 30, 2023, and ran for 11 weeks, with the jury hearing from Outcome employees, pharmaceutical clients and ad agency representatives, lenders and investors, a Deloitte auditor, FBI forensic accountant Poelking, and var- ious experts. Several former Outcome employees involved in the fraud who testified at trial are relevant to this appeal: Da- vid Ma, a Senior Sales Analyst from mid-2014 until late 2015; Jason Ketchum, a Member Services Executive who assisted with sales, inventory projections, and list matches from 2012 to 2013; and Ashik Desai, Vice President of Research and An- alytics, who took over Ketchum’s sales role around 2013. Ma and Ketchum received immunity before trial while Desai pleaded guilty and agreed to testify as a government witness. During the trial, Shah and Agarwal challenged the gov- ernment’s motions to admit statements that Ma, Ketchum, 8 Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 and Desai made while testifying before the grand jury. The district court admitted the testimony as prior consistent state- ments under Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(1)(B) and the government introduced them during its redirect examina- tions of the witnesses. In the end, the jury convicted Shah on five counts of mail fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1341), 10 counts of wire fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1343), two counts of bank fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1344), and two counts of money laundering (18 U.S.C. § 1957). It convicted Agarwal of five counts of mail fraud, eight counts of wire fraud, and two counts of bank fraud. The district court sentenced Shah to 90 months’ imprison- ment and Agarwal to one day, with both defendants also re- ceiving three years of supervised release. The court further imposed a criminal fine of $1,900 on Shah and ordered him to forfeit $55 million. It fined Agarwal $1,500 and ordered her to forfeit $13.7 million. The district court has yet to set restitu- tion. E. Post-Trial Litigation A flurry of post-trial litigation related to Shah and Agarwal’s ability to retain counsel occupies much of this ap- peal. In March 2023, midway through trial, the government produced tracing spreadsheets and internal emails that Shah and Agarwal claim first revealed the over-restraint of their Other Assets. The protective order, informed by the forfeiture allegations, covered “all right, title, and interest” in certain as- sets held by Gravitas and Jumpstart II, “including but not lim- ited to” amounts identified in the order’s text. Dkt. 27 (empha- sis added). But as the documents produced at trial made clear, Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 9 the government had intended only to restrain, and thus only traced, the specific amounts listed within each asset. Therein lies the over-restraint: the protective order’s “including but not limited to” language resulted in more assets being frozen than those it traced. More specifically, as shown by docu- ments produced before trial and explained by the govern- ment, it sought to restrain only discrete amounts linked to the financing fraud that occurred in 2016 and 2017. How did this happen? Through carelessness on the gov- ernment’s part. DOJ attorney Daniel Olinghouse drafted the protective order and both he and everyone else involved in preparing the indictment and overseeing the protective order failed to catch the disconnect between its overbroad language and Poelking’s tracing analysis. As best we can tell, and as the district court found, the par- ties first recognized the over-restraint after trial. Following Shah and Agarwal’s convictions, the government moved to seize Shah’s forfeitable assets. During a hearing in July 2023, the government recounted its intent with the asset restraint— to freeze assets directly linked to the financing fraud—and de- scribed Poelking’s tracing method. In doing so, the govern- ment observed that some private equity entities targeted by the protective order held assets Poelking had not traced to any fraud. Shah’s counsel seized on that clarification to explain that the government must have over-restrained funds be- cause the “including but not limited to” language in the pro- tective order covered everything within a targeted entity or investment asset. Shah and Agarwal then filed motions for ac- quittal or for a new trial raising two claims related to the asset restraint. 10 Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 First, they claimed that the government violated their Sixth Amendment right to counsel of choice by over-restrain- ing their Other Assets. Second, they contended that the gov- ernment violated their Fifth Amendment due process rights when FBI forensic accountant Poelking expressly but incor- rectly represented to the grand jury that there was probable cause to believe all assets listed in the protective order were traceable to fraud. The government’s failure to correct the misstatement, Shah and Agarwal asserted, contributed to the Sixth Amendment violation. Extensive post-trial proceedings ensued. The district court invested substantial effort into getting to the bottom of what happened and, more specifically, whether the over-restraint of assets precluded Shah and Agarwal from going to trial with Quinn Emanuel and McGuireWoods. The court ordered dis- covery and held evidentiary hearings on the issue over the course of four months and, in the end, denied the post-trial motions. The district court determined that Shah and Agarwal for- feited their Sixth Amendment claim by raising it after trial when they could have identified the over-restraint years ear- lier based on the government’s pretrial disclosures. It then concluded in the alternative that Shah and Agarwal failed to show that they could have liquidated the improperly re- strained Other Assets for enough to afford their counsel of choice. The over-restraint therefore did not violate their Sixth Amendment rights. The district court also denied the defend- ants’ Fifth Amendment claim, concluding that it too was un- timely and, in any case, Poelking did not knowingly provide false testimony to the grand jury, nor did the government knowingly fail to correct her misstatement. Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 11 Shah and Agarwal then appealed. II We begin with Shah and Agarwal’s Sixth Amendment claims. By way of framing, keep in mind that Shah and Agarwal allege the government restrained two sets of assets resulting in a violation of their right to counsel of choice and raise sep- arate challenges to the district court’s handling of those assets. First, they challenge the district court’s denial of their pretrial motion to unfreeze $10.3 million in Settlement Funds. Second, they contest the court’s post-trial determination that they failed to preserve their challenge to the government’s admit- tedly improper restraint of their Other Assets and its finding that the restraint did not prevent them from hiring their coun- sel of choice. By any measure, the facts here raise complex questions about the effect of a pretrial asset restraint on a defendant’s right to counsel of choice. We approach the issue by first lay- ing the legal groundwork and then applying it to both chal- lenges. Ultimately, we see no Sixth Amendment violation. A. Legal Background on the Right to Counsel of Choice and Pretrial Asset Restraints The right to counsel of choice is a bedrock feature of the Sixth Amendment. “Given the necessarily close working rela- tionship between lawyer and client, the need for confidence, and the critical importance of trust, … ‘a fair opportunity to secure’” counsel of choice is essential. Luis v. United States, 578 U.S. 5, 11 (2016) (plurality opinion) (quoting Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 53 (1932)); see also United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, 12 Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 548 U.S. 140, 147–48 (2006) (recognizing that the right to coun- sel of choice is the “root meaning” of the Sixth Amendment). A defendant’s selection of counsel is of major conse- quence. The trust and confidence essential to the client-coun- sel relationship will inform key strategic decisions at every step. So, too, is it common for a defendant to seek and retain counsel with particular experience and skill. The Sixth Amendment protects this right to choose and affords it great significance. See Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. at 150. Indeed, when a defendant is wrongfully denied their counsel of choice, we consider the error structural, as “[i]t is impossible to know what different choices the rejected counsel would have made, and then to quantify the impact of those different choices on the outcome of the proceedings.” Id. Put another way, the er- ror defies harmless-error analysis and is deemed to affect the “framework within which the trial proceeds.” Id. at 148, 150– 51 (cleaned up). Structural errors are “subject to automatic re- versal.” Greer v. United States, 593 U.S. 503, 513 (2021) (cleaned up). But the right to counsel of choice is not without limits. Rel- evant here, “[t]he Sixth Amendment guarantees a defendant the right to be represented by an otherwise qualified attorney whom that defendant can afford to hire.” Luis, 578 U.S. at 12 (emphasis added) (cleaned up). Shah and Agarwal’s contention—that the government’s improper asset restraint prevented them from affording their counsel of choice—focuses us on the interaction between the right to counsel of choice and federal forfeiture law. Under 21 U.S.C. § 853, property derived from or used in the commis- sion of certain crimes is forfeitable to the federal government upon conviction. See United States v. Monsanto, 491 U.S. 600, Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 13 606 (1989) (“[T]he language of § 853 is plain and unambigu- ous: all assets falling within its scope are to be forfeited upon conviction ….”). But the government does not have to wait for a conviction to freeze assets subject to forfeiture. Indeed, as the government did here, it may include forfeiture allegations in an indictment identifying certain property as forfeitable. See 21 U.S.C. § 853(e)(1)(A). Upon indictment, a district court may then enter a protective order restraining those assets to ensure they are available after conviction. Id. To secure a pre- trial asset restraint, the government must show a grand jury that there is “probable cause to think (1) that the defendant has committed an offense permitting forfeiture, and (2) that the property at issue has the requisite connection to that crime.” Kaley v. United States, 571 U.S. 320, 323–24 (2014). The Sixth Amendment moderates the government’s pre- trial forfeiture authority. On the one hand, the government may restrain assets directly traceable to the crime alleged without running afoul of the Sixth Amendment, even if the defendant needs those funds to retain counsel. See Luis, 578 U.S. at 13–14 (discussing Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered v. United States, 491 U.S. 617 (1989) and Monsanto, 491 U.S. 600). That is so because § 853(c) grants the government a superior interest in the traceable assets upon commission of the crime. See id. at 13–15. We consider those assets “tainted” by the criminal act. Id. at 13. On the other hand, the government may not restrain a de- fendant’s “untainted” assets under § 853, even to substitute for tainted assets the defendant has already spent. See id. at 15–16. And “insofar as innocent (i.e., untainted) funds are needed to obtain counsel of choice … the Sixth Amendment prohibits” an asset restraint. Id. at 18. 14 Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 The Supreme Court’s decision in Luis illustrates these points. Sila Luis faced federal charges for allegedly reaping about $45 million through fraud. See id. at 9. By the time of indictment, she had spent most of the money. See id. The gov- ernment nevertheless obtained a protective order restraining all of her assets up to the $45 million she realized through the alleged fraud. See id. The order left Luis without money to retain counsel. See id. at 9–10. A plurality of the Supreme Court held the government’s pretrial restraint improper be- cause it targeted untainted, substitute assets. See id. at 23. The over-restraint, the Court further determined, violated Luis’s right to the counsel of choice she could otherwise afford be- cause it left her no funds to retain any attorney. See id. This appeal presents a more complicated fact pattern. No restraint, proper or improper, left Shah or Agarwal indigent. Not even close. Instead, they had sufficient resources to hire some of the most able trial lawyers in the country. But those lawyers were not Shah and Agarwal’s first pick. So we must determine whether the government’s pretrial over-restraint of assets was substantial enough to have prevented Shah or Agarwal from hiring their counsel of choice. Relying on Luis, the defendants urge us to reach the broader conclusion that any improper asset restraint that comes to light post-trial, no matter its dollar amount, is a per se Sixth Amendment violation. That is so, they continue, be- cause any restriction on a defendant’s assets reduces the range of attorneys available to hire and thereby denies him a “fair opportunity” to retain counsel of choice. Powell, 287 U.S. at 53. But Supreme Court precedent does not extend that far. This is not a Luis situation in which the over-restraint Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 15 necessarily prevented the defendant from exploring or ob- taining counsel. And the Court has never held that any over- restraint automatically violates the Sixth Amendment by vir- tue of shrinking a defendant’s budget. The question presented here, then, as we see it, is not whether the over-restraint pre- vented Shah and Agarwal from retaining more expensive counsel, but whether it prevented them from being able to af- ford the counsel they expressly desired. Nobody disputes that Shah and Agarwal wanted to go to trial represented by specific attorneys at Quinn Emanuel and McGuireWoods. They revealed that preference when they freely selected those firms pre-indictment with all funds (tainted and untainted) at their disposal. And at no point did either defendant identify a second, backup choice more pre- ferred than the counsel they ultimately retained or show that the overbroad asset restraint dissuaded them from shopping for alternative firms. The essential question, then, is whether the government’s over-restraint precluded the retention of those firms’ attorneys for trial. By the time both firms withdrew from the case, Shah and Agarwal required an additional $8.5–9.5 million ($5–6 million for Quinn Emanuel and $3.5 million for McGuireWoods) to retain them through the trial. The district court credited their representations that they had paid counsel all they had avail- able at that time. Shah’s counsel, Bill Burck, later told the dis- trict court that $7.8 million would have sufficed for both firms. We too accept that representation and assume that Shah and Agarwal collectively needed $7.8 million for their counsel of choice. The remaining question is whether the gov- ernment’s pretrial over-restraint met or exceeded that amount. We tackle that question by focusing on the two 16 Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 categories of restrained assets—the Settlement Funds and Shah and Agarwal’s Other Assets. B. Merits of Settlement Funds Challenge Recall that Shah and Agarwal challenged the restraint of $10.3 million they were allowed to keep as part of the civil settlement and attempted to use for attorneys’ fees. They do not dispute that the government traced these funds to the broader pool of $487 million that Outcome fraudulently raised from investors in 2017. As a result of this equity financ- ing, Outcome paid a $225 million dividend to Shah and Agarwal’s entity, Gravitas Holdings. Shah and Agarwal then retained $31 million of the $225 million in Gravitas equity through the civil settlement and set $10.3 million of it aside for legal fees. In the district court, and again on appeal, Shah and Agarwal insist that Outcome’s civil settlement washed or cleansed the $31 million, including the $10.3 million they sought to unfreeze, of all criminal taint. In their view, the fact that Outcome, its investors, and its lenders involved in the settlement knew the funds came from fraud and still agreed to let Shah and Agarwal keep those funds in return for the surrender of their indemnification rights and other things of value left the money free and clear to be used to retain crimi- nal defense counsel. The district court considered this argument attenuated in the extreme, as do we. First, and most obviously, the civil set- tlement was a negotiated agreement between private parties. The United States was not involved. So the agreement in no way affected the criminal proceeding against Shah and Agarwal. Put more directly, the civil settlement had no Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 17 bearing on the nexus the government established before the grand jury between Shah and Agarwal’s fraud and Out- come’s financing in 2017. Second, under 21 U.S.C. § 853(c), “all right, title, and inter- est” in forfeitable property “vests in the United States upon the commission of the act giving rise to forfeiture.” That means that once the criminal offense is complete, a defendant no longer holds “good title” to forfeitable property. Luis, 578 U.S. at 14 (quoting Caplin & Drysdale, 491 U.S. at 627). Nor does a defendant have a right to “give [the government’s] property to a third party.” See id. (quoting Caplin & Drysdale, 491 U.S. at 628). Shah and Agarwal therefore had no right to use any part of the allegedly tainted Gravitas dividend to pay their attorneys’ fees. And a private party’s assent to the use of forfeitable funds cannot override what the law tells us: the funds may be restrained. The district court committed no error in finding that the $10.3 million in Settlement Funds deriving from the Gravitas dividend remained tainted by their illicit origin. C. Shah and Agarwal’s Other Assets Shah and Agarwal also contend that the government’s im- proper restraint of their Other Assets prevented them from continuing with Quinn Emanuel and McGuireWoods through trial. Remember that the defendants first lodged this challenge in their post-trial motions. By then the government had conceded that the protective order was overbroad. So the focus in the district court was on whether the over-restraint was at least $7.8 million and thereby large enough to have prevented Shah and Agarwal from staying with Quinn Eman- uel and McGuireWoods. 18 Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 The Other Assets the government restrained were mostly illiquid—mainly investment interests Shah and Agarwal held in private equity entities and companies. The district court therefore assessed whether the defendants, if they had access to those assets from the outset, could have liquidated at least $7.8 million of the investments and then used the cash pro- ceeds to retain their counsel of choice for trial. In 2023, the district court devoted nearly four months of post-trial discovery and evidentiary hearings to the issue. In the final analysis, the district court concluded that Shah and Agarwal raised an untimely Sixth Amendment challenge be- cause they could have identified the over-restraint years be- fore trial, as early as January or February 2020, when they re- ceived the grand jury transcript, exhibits, indictment, protec- tive order, and bank records revealing the over-restraint. In the alternative, the district court addressed the merits and assessed whether the over-restraint of the Other Assets met or exceeded the $7.8 million needed to retain the firms. On this front, the court required Shah and Agarwal to show by a preponderance that they could have liquidated or other- wise realized enough money from the illiquid assets to pay Quinn Emanuel and McGuireWoods within a reasonable time before the scheduled trial. After extensive proceedings, the district court found Shah and Agarwal’s liquidity estimate in- flated and speculative. This left the court to conclude that Shah and Agarwal failed to establish a Sixth Amendment vi- olation. 1. Forfeiture “If a litigant believes that an error has occurred (to his det- riment) during a federal judicial proceeding, he must object Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 19 in order to preserve the issue.” Puckett v. United States, 556 U.S. 129, 134 (2009). When a defendant preserves a claim of error, the burden rests on the government to show the error was harmless. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 52; Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24 (1967) (holding in the context of a preserved constitutional error that the beneficiary of the error must prove harmlessness). Conversely, “if [a defendant] fails to [object] in a timely manner, his claim for relief from the error is forfeited.” Puckett, 556 U.S. at 134. We review forfeited claims for plain error. See United States v. Jones, 844 F.3d 636, 640 (7th Cir. 2016). Under the plain error standard, “the tables are turned” and the defendant bears the burden of showing reversible er- ror. United States v. Vonn, 535 U.S. 55, 62–63 (2002). To do so, he must demonstrate (1) an error, (2) the error is plain, and (3) the error affects the defendant’s “substantial rights.” Greer, 593 U.S. at 507–08. If a defendant meets these threshold re- quirements, we may grant relief if the error “had a serious ef- fect on the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.” Id. at 508 (cleaned up); see also United States v. Page, 123 F.4th 851, 864 (7th Cir. 2024) (reiterating the same standard for plain error review). Few courts have addressed the point at which a challenge to a pretrial asset restraint becomes forfeited. But all signs in- dicate that after trial is too late, at least when a defendant had the information necessary to challenge the restraint earlier. See United States v. Newton, 76 F.4th 662, 669 (7th Cir. 2023) (“[I]ssues that should have been brought at trial and are raised for the first time in a post-trial motion are forfeited.”). That view aligns with Rule 51(b), which instructs parties to object “when the court ruling or order is made.” Fed. R. Crim. 20 Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 P. 51(b); see also Puckett, 556 U.S. at 135 (“Failure to abide by this contemporaneous-objection rule ordinarily precludes the raising on appeal of the unpreserved claim of trial error.”). All for good reason, as the contemporaneous-objection rule en- sures a district court has an opportunity to correct any error. Just so here, a defendant who objects to a pretrial asset re- straint is entitled to an immediate hearing to challenge a pro- tective order “if the pretrial seizure of his assets would pre- vent him from hiring the counsel of his choice.” United States v. Kielar, 791 F.3d 733, 739 (7th Cir. 2015) (citing United States v. Moya-Gomez, 860 F.2d 706, 730 (7th Cir. 1988)); see also Ka- ley, 571 U.S. at 324 (observing that lower courts “have uni- formly allowed the defendant to litigate … whether probable cause exists to believe that the assets in dispute are traceable … to the crime charged in the indictment”). If the district court declines to modify the restraint, the defendant may ap- peal immediately. See United States v. Kirschenbaum, 156 F.3d 784, 788 (7th Cir. 1998). But if the court finds error, it may or- der a release of the funds the defendant needs for counsel, continue the trial, or declare a mistrial and start over. Any one of these options is less costly and time consuming than dis- missing the indictment or ordering a new trial on appeal. For these reasons, a defendant must challenge a pretrial asset restraint within a reasonable period after discovering or obtaining the means to discover the restraint may be im- proper. See, e.g., Jones, 844 F.3d at 639–41 (deeming pretrial asset restraint challenge raised for the first time on appeal for- feited and applying plain error review). Shah and Agarwal challenged the restraint of their Other Assets three months after their trial concluded. They claim, as they did in the district court, that they had no basis to do so Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 21 earlier because, until the government produced revealing in- ternal documents mid-trial, they reasonably believed it in- tended to restrain all assets traceable to Outcome on the the- ory that the “entire business” was a fraud. The district court examined this contention in great depth and found it unsup- ported by the record. We do too. No doubt the indictment advanced a broad theory of fraud by Outcome Health. Some counts charged Shah and Agarwal with mail and wire fraud based on payments clients made to Outcome pursuant to a misleading revenue model grounded in the manipulation of advertising data. Other counts charged them with wire and bank fraud based on transfers from investors or loans issued by banks to the com- pany in 2016 and 2017. Under § 853, the government could move to restrain assets traceable to any of these forms of fraud. And indeed, one forfeiture allegation included in the indictment expressly references counts related to both the fraud on Outcome’s clients and the fraud on its lenders and investors. But there is more, and the more is critical. Shortly after the indictment and the district court’s issuance of the protective order, the government made a discovery production. The pro- duction, which occurred in January 2020, included the tran- script of the grand jury proceedings and the exhibits the gov- ernment presented to the grand jury. The government also produced by February 2020 bank records and documents from private equity firms and other companies—all of which reflected the assets affected by the protective order. These documents together belied a view that the govern- ment sought to restrain anything beyond proceeds the of Out- come’s fraudulent financing in 2016 and 2017. Put more 22 Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 directly, the documents showed that the government, despite the over-broad language in the protective order (the “includ- ing but not limited to” formulation), did not intend to restrain all of Shah and Agarwal’s assets bearing any connection to Outcome. Allow us to unpack these points. In her grand jury testi- mony, the government’s tracing expert, FBI forensic account- ant Megan Poelking, identified the assets the government sought to restrain and explained how it traced those assets to the crimes alleged. A grand juror directly asked Poelking what the “criminal proceeds” included in this case—in other words, what fraudulent funds the government sought to re- strain. And she responded in no uncertain terms: “[i]n this in- dictment, we’re alleging that the capital raise [and] the loans that they received will be criminal proceeds.” Dkt. 512-1 at 18 (em- phasis added). At no point did Poelking mention or trace funds from the fraud on Outcome’s healthcare clients or more broadly state that the government considered all of Out- come’s operations and assets the fruit of the fraud. Even more, Poelking itemized the amounts sought to be restrained in exhibits—spreadsheets that became part of the grand jury record. The spreadsheets tracked the flow of funds from Outcome’s 2016 loans and 2017 equity financing from investors and bore corresponding titles—“Assets Subject to Forfeiture Attributable to the Loans Obtained in 2016,” “As- sets Subject to Forfeiture Attributable to the Capital Raise in 2017,” and “Assets Subject to Forfeiture Attributable to the Loans Obtained in 2016 and the Capital Raise in 2017.” Every amount listed in each forfeiture allegation, which the protec- tive order mirrors, aligns with the traceable amounts itemized in the spreadsheets shown to the grand jury. So while one Nos. 24-2230 & 24-2236 23 forfeiture allegation within the indictment referenced counts related to the client fraud, no amount listed within the forfei- ture allegations or on Poelking’s spreadsheets traced to that fraud. What all of this means is that Shah and Agarwal, having received not only the indictment and protective order, but also Poelking’s testimony and exhibits (the tracing spread- sheets), as well as bank and private equity records, had eve- rything they needed to detect the over-restraint. All they had to do was realize that the government had frozen more assets and larger dollar amounts than Poelking indicated that the prosecution intended to target during her grand jury testi- mony, inclu