They may be defense lawyers, but they say the people who stole their U.S. Treasury-issued paychecks, and their identities, should now spend time behind bars.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn are asking for a 21-month sentence for Markel Washington, 29, a Bronx crook who along with others targeted defense lawyers who represent indigent clients.
To bolster their argument, the feds have given the sentencing judge letters from two criminal defense attorneys who were victims of Washington, his co-conspirators and other check thieves.
“Why is incarceration necessary?” wrote one of the defense lawyers, whose name does not appear on the letter. “First, to gain empathy, a person must often lose something dear to them. Time is such an item. I’m sure the defendants value it. And, of course, there is the symmetry here. These defendants stole our time, so now they should pay that debt.”
Washington was one of eight defendants indicted in check-stealing schemes in Brooklyn Federal Court in February and April. He pleaded guilty to bank fraud and is slated to be sentenced by Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Anne Donnelly Tuesday morning.
He and two accomplices, Tyquan Robinson and Ada Tavarez, were charged with stealing one defense attorney’s $125,386.81 check.
Tavarez, who impersonated the attorney to cash the check, has also pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.
The other defendants are accused of stealing checks worth $22,687.72 and $14,856.
In a letter to Donnelly, the defense attorney impersonated by Tavarez described how it took her six months of dealing with her bank and Treasury officials to finally get her $125,386.61 check.
“The financial strain and psychological toll the theft of this check caused cannot be overstated. The theft not only deprived me of timely access to my rightful earnings but also imposed a lingering sense of vulnerability,” she wrote, calling for a “sentence of imprisonment” for the thieves. Her name also does not appear on the letter.
“There is no consequence for these thieves, and therefore no deterrence, so the free-loaders like these defendants, who steal hard-working people’s money, are brazen enough to steal my identity without any regard for how my life is impacted by their selfish and aggressive criminal behavior,” she added.
After the arrests, several lawyers who are appointed to indigent federal defendants through the Criminal Justice Act (CJA) Panel, told The News that several of their checks had also gone missing or been stolen.
Washington and his accomplices took advantage of a legal technicality. Up until recently, the government-appointed lawyers whose identities were stolen could only get their U.S. Treasury Department checks physically sent to them in the mail.
The agency that pays the checks, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, was bound by a badly phrased bit of federal law that says payments to Criminal Justice Act-appointed lawyers must go directly to the attorneys, not to their law firms, the Daily News reported in February.
Congress changed the law in March to allow direct deposits.
One of the defense lawyers said the check-stealers should be punished more harshly than drug-dealers, describing a client who grew up in poverty and a broken family, then joined a crack-dealing conspiracy.
“He sold crack cocaine, not a good choice, but a choice that showed less culpability than these defendants because his crime possesses some level of moral ambiguity, given the mixed messages our society sends about drugs and alcohol,” the lawyer wrote.
“The same cannot be said about these defendants. There is no ambiguity about their conduct. This was not a mistake or a victimless crime. They knew this was an invasion. Each check they stole had a name upon it whose signature was forged. They pretended to be me and others out of greed.”
Washington’s lawyer, Elena Fast — appointed through the CJA panel —pleaded for leniency in a Nov. 19 letter to the judge, pointing out that he too grew up amid hardship and violence.
His 2-year-old brother was killed by his babysitter in 2007 and his 15-year-old brother was gunned down in 2019.
She also asked the judge to consider that he’s spent nearly 10 months locked up at the notoriously violent MDC Brooklyn, as a man with no gang affiliations held in a housing unit colloquially nicknamed “Gangland.”
In his own letter to Donnelly, Washington says he’s been in lockdown in his cell for 147 days of his incarceration, let out only twice a week to shower.
Washington described himself as “profoundly sorry” for his crime, and praised Fast’s efforts on his behalf as a court-appointed lawyer.
“She has the patience of a saint,” Washington wrote. “I admire her very much and I have a great appreciation for how hard CJA attorneys have to work.”