On July 14, 2026, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the convictions for attempted extortion under the Hobbs Act and violations of the Travel Act. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1951(b), 1952(a)(3), 1952(b)(2) against former Baltimore medical malpractice lawyer Stephen Snyder, who “insisted on representing himself at trial. His performance was so poor and his relationship with the judge so contentious that he served a night in jail for contempt of court during the trial. The jury found him guilty.”
Snyder asked the federal appellate court to overturn his conviction because his cognitive decline affected his performance as his own attorney. The federal appellate court held: “his concession that he was competent to stand trial precludes this argument, and his other arguments on appeal also lack merit. Accordingly, we affirm.”
The Alleged Facts
Snyder allegedly developed a scheme in which he threatened to run a targeted advertising campaign against
the transplant center of the University of Maryland Medical System (“the Hospital”) unless it agreed to pay him, personally, $25 million.
In 2017 and 2018, Snyder represented patients who had received allegedly substandard care when receiving transplants at the Hospital. At the settlement conference for one of those cases in January 2018, Snyder met with the Hospital officials, including attorneys Natalie Magdeburger and Sue Kinter and Dr. Stephen Bartlett, then the Hospital’s chief medical officer. Snyder took Barlett aside and privately told him that he had other clients with medical malpractice claims. He asked for Bartlett’s personal cell phone number, which Bartlett gave him.
At some point after his transplant, Jeffrey Sanders passed away. Snyder represented his wife, Michele Sanders (“Sanders”), as the representative for Jeffrey’s estate and met with the Hospital on three separate occasions. In April 2018, Snyder and his associate Kevin Stern met with Kinter, Magdeburger, and Dr. DePriest Whye, who represented the hospital. There, Snyder threatened the Hospital again: with a press conference, a front-page story in The Baltimore Sun, a television commercial, and a targeted digital campaign that would direct anyone searching for the Hospital’s transplant services online to an advertisement for Snyder’s law firm. However, as relayed in his prepared remarks for the meeting, he also told the Hospital that it could “silence” Sanders and “bury what [his] investigation has uncovered” if the Hospital would “pay a $25 million premium.”
In June 2018, Snyder and Stern met again with Kinter, Magdeburger, and another Hospital attorney, Alicia Reynolds. Unlike in the first meeting, this time Snyder “changed course” by separating the settlement of the Sanders case, which he thought could settle for up to $5 million, from the $25 million he wanted the Hospital to pay him personally. However, he told the Hospital that it “had to do both and if [it] didn’t do both, he would go on this media campaign and destroy the hospital and destroy the transplant program and destroy Dr. Bartlett’s . . . career.” He also told Kinter that if the Hospital did not agree to the deal, it “would blow up in [her] face,” and that “the University would fire [her].” To accentuate his point, he played a video he had created that compared the fallout the Hospital would experience to a similar downfall by the transplant program at Baylor University in Texas.
To avoid those outcomes, he proposed that the Hospital hire him as a consultant for $25 million to conflict him out of any further cases he might otherwise bring against it. As to what the proposed consultancy would look like, Snyder seemed unconcerned with the details. At one point, he suggested the payment could be broken up over ten years, if necessary. And as for what he would do in return, he suggested “he could be a janitor, [he and the Hospital] could have lunch once a month, catch up, or [the Hospital] didn’t have to see him for ten years.”
Kinter left the June 2018 meeting “absolutely stunned.” Feeling that she was being extorted, she contacted both a criminal-law attorney and law enforcement to seek advice on how to respond. From that point on, she worked with the FBI to record conversations she had with Snyder.
In September 2018, the Hospital settled the Sanders case for $5 million. However, in recorded phone calls with Kinter, Snyder continued to push for the separate $25 million consultancy. The Hospital never agreed to the $25 million consultancy arrangement.
Source United States of America v. Stephen L. Snyder, No. 25-4218.
If you or a loved one may have been injured (or worse) as a result of medical negligence in Maryland, you should promptly find the best Maryland medical malpractice lawyer for you, who may investigate your medical malpractice claim for you and represent you or your loved one in a Maryland medical malpractice case, if appropriate.
Click here to visit our website or call us toll-free at 800-295-3959 to find experienced Maryland medical malpractice attorneys who may assist you.
Turn to us when you don’t know where to turn.
