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Bankruptcy Law

Judge nixes ex-lawyer's plea to avoid weeks of handcuffed travel, says he must attend law firm trial

Remember Marc Dreier? Convicted in 2009 of a running a $400 million fraud from his now-defunct New York City law firm, the former attorney is serving a 20-year sentence at a federal prison in Minnesota.

But a bankruptcy case concerning the Dreier firm is ongoing and, despite Dreier’s objection, he is going to have to appear in person at the Manhattan trial, reports Bloomberg.

“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,” Dreier wrote in his unsuccessful petition to be permitted to testify by telephone or video.

Dreier also argued that he will be asked to testify that he operated a Ponzi scheme, which he has already admitted. It primarily involved phony promissory notes that he sold to sophisticated investors, but Dreier also misappropriated some client funds. The money subsidized his law firm and paid for his own lavish lifestyle.

An article published earlier this month on the Bankruptcy Beat page of the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) provides details about what liquidator Sheila Gowan hopes to prove at the scheduled October trial. She is seeking to claw back $138 million from one of Dreier’s former investors.

Related coverage:

ABAJournal.com: “Attorney Marc Dreier Says Midlife Crisis, Sense of Failure Drove Massive Fraud”