According to his lawyer, Ring has been cooperating with the Justice Department. The cooperation apparently ended when the Justice Department "insisted that Mr. Ring plead guilty to various fraud and corruption-related offenses and to implicate others as the price of leniency." Leniency does have its price, and criminal convictions are apparently a greater price than Ring, who feels he did not commit those crimes, was willing to pay.

"While Mr. Ring had been cooperating with officials for over two years, he simply could not plead guilty to crimes he did not commit," lawyer Richard A. Hibey said in a statement. "From that point, he was deemed uncooperative."

That's always the risk of cooperating. If you don't say what the government wants you to say or do everything the government wants you to do, you're no longer cooperative and you find yourself indicted.

Of course, since this is a high profile case, Ring was made to endure the perp walk instead of being allowed to surrender.

Hibey said that he and others tried to arrange a way for Ring to turn himself in but that authorities ignored the request. They arrested Ring at his home in Kensington yesterday morning. Hibey said the arrest "is a harbinger of the overreaching that will characterize the government's prosecution of him."