- Marc Dreier
- Associated Press
Imprisoned ex-lawyer Marc Dreier is back to writing legal pleas, this time on his own behalf.
Mr. Dreier, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to cheating investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars, faces a demand to testify in person in connection with a bankruptcy trial involving one of his former investors and his eponymous law firm.
But the one-time owner of multiple homes, an Aston Martin and 123-foot yacht doesn’t want to leave the confines of the low-security federal prison in Minnesota where he’s doing time to testify in the New York-based trial.
In a typewritten letter dated Sept. 15, Mr. Dreier shows he hasn’t lost his legal training several years after he was disbarred, citing case law to argue that courts should consider cheaper and more efficient means of taking a prisoner’s testimony, such as by phone or video.
Besides the practical concerns of cost and time, Mr. Dreier, 64, cited the personal hardships he’d face.
Finally, while I do not expect the parties or the court to be especially sympathetic to my own hardship, I point out that if I am compelled to be in New York I face an ordeal that entails several weeks of travel in each direction, handcuffed and shackled the whole time, with layovers in county courts and a stay of indefinite direction in the [New York prison he’d be held], both before and after my court appearance, all of which is likely to take several if not many months. During this time I would have very limited communication with my family. All of that could be avoided with a deposition or trial testimony by either telephone or videoconference.
The three-page letter, however, appears to have been for naught. Days before Mr. Dreier wrote the letter, admitting he wasn’t aware of the latest developments in the case, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein approved the request for Mr. Dreier to testify in person and directed Mr. Dreier’s prison warden to make him available.
Tuesday, the same day Mr. Dreier’s letter was made public, the judge cited his ruling in a handwritten note on the letter and found that Mr. Dreier’s letter didn’t provide “sufficient ground” for the judge to reconsider his decision.
As a result, it looks like Mr. Dreier could end up in New York as soon as next month, when the trial is currently scheduled to begin.
Brought in 2010 by the attorney winding down Mr. Dreier’s former law firm, Dreier LLP, the lawsuit seeks to recover more than $138 million that investment firm Westford Asset Management LLC received from Dreier LLP. In 2009, Mr. Dreier admitted to using his law firm’s funds to pay investors who purchased $700 million worth of what ultimately turned out to be bogus promissory notes.
Mr. Dreier is expected to be asked to testify as to whether the note fraud scheme was a Ponzi scheme, when the fraud took place and whether the money Westford received was tied to the scheme. He has already publicly conceded that the fraud was a Ponzi scheme, which he pointed out in his letter. Still, the bankruptcy court that will be overseeing the trial hasn’t defined the fraud as such, making it a central issue in the case.
Westford, which has previously moved to dismiss the litigation, has argued it received the funds in good faith and without knowledge of Mr. Dreier’s fraud.
-Sara Randazzo contributed to this article.
Write to Jacqueline Palank at jacqueline.palank@wsj.com. Follow her on Twitter at @PalankJ.
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