Queens Lawyer Lied In Plot To Reduce Client's Sentence: Feds

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS -- A Forest Hills lawyer is facing legal troubles of his own for allegedly fudging his drug-trafficking client's addictive past to prison officials in a scheme shave time off his prison sentence, federal prosecutors said.

Scott "Mighty Whitey" Brettschneider, 61, his 56-year-old client Richard Marshall and two others were charged with lying to the United States Bureau of Prisons in a federal indictment unsealed Monday.

"The defendants, including a practicing attorney, participated in a scheme to gain a narcotics trafficker early release from prison by falsely informing the Bureau of Prisons that he was a candidate for a drug rehab program," said U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue.

Brettschneider, a Forest Hills-based attorney, Marshall, of North Carolina, and two other Queens men allegedly lied about Marshall's history - claiming he had a past of drug abuse and alcohol dependance - to get him into the BOP's Residential Drug Abuse Program, which can shave a year off an inmate's sentence if successfully completed, according to the indictment.

One of the Queens' men was Brettschneider's 62-year-old assistant, Reginald Shabazz-Mahummad, who allegedly posed as Marshall's treatment provider, court records state. The other was his 56-year-old associate, Charles Gallman, who also helped write the letter, prosecutors said.

"Petitioning to send a known drug dealer back onto our streets before his sentence is served, and providing false documentation to prove he's eligible for early release, is a reckless prospect that risks the well-being of society as a whole," said William Sweeney Jr., assistant director-in-charge of the FBI's New York office.

"Drug addiction is a serious issue that deserves the appropriate response from all those involved."

The four defendants thought otherwise, prosecutors said.

Gallman allegedly told Marshall the program would "knock a year off his sentence" and doubted the BOP wood be "scrutinizing it that much," according to a wiretapped conversation between the two over a cell phone Marshall smuggled into prison.

But the BOP did scrutinize the letter and requested Marshall submit progress reports of his past treatment, according to the indictment.

Gallman and Marshall were arrested on March 22, and Brettschneider on Monday, on charges of conspiring to make false statements and making false statements to the BOP. Shabazz-Muhammad is still at large.

"No one can be allowed to 'fix' any part of a case," said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

Lead photo via Shutterstock.