Six charged in scheme to defraud defense attorneys in Brooklyn

February 7, 2024 Robert Abruzzese, Courthouse Editor

A surveillance still captures the moment of a daylight shooting in East New York, where defendant Tyquan Robinson can allegedly be seen firing across traffic.
Photo courtesy of U.S. Justice Dept.

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Six people were charged with orchestrating a sophisticated fraud targeting court-appointed criminal defense attorneys, prosecutors from the Eastern District announced on Wednesday.

The charges, unveiled in two separate indictments at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, accuse the defendants of depositing checks stolen from attorneys appointed to represent indigent defendants in federal cases.

The operation, which marks the commencement of a broader investigation into theft within the federal criminal justice system, has unveiled more than $1 million in stolen funds since 2021. The stolen checks were intended for various participants in the judicial process, ranging from defense attorneys to jurors, issued by the Department of the Treasury on behalf of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.

Three of the accused allegedly went as far as to steal an attorney’s identity, opening bank accounts to facilitate their scheme. Five of the six defendants faced arraignment before U.S. Magistrate Judge Taryn Merkl, while one remains at large.

The indictments detail a complex fraud where reimbursement checks, sometimes exceeding $100,000 for complex cases, were redirected into unauthorized accounts. This not only deprived attorneys of their due compensation but also imposed significant delays in the issuance of replacement checks.

Tyquan Robinson, a 29-year-old from East Orange, New Jersey, along with co-defendants, engaged in an alleged scheme to impersonate a court-appointed attorney from the Criminal Justice Act (“CJA”) Panel. To facilitate this impersonation, Robinson allegedly saved sensitive personal information of the CJA attorney in his iCloud account, including notes containing the attorney’s personal data. Additionally, Robinson appears to have created a fraudulent email account that incorporated the CJA attorney’s first and last names.

Using this stolen identity, co-defendant Ada Tavarez, a 58-year-old from the Bronx, then impersonated the CJA attorney at a bank, where she presented fraudulent identification documents, including a driver’s license bearing her photo but with the CJA attorney’s name and birthdate.

On the account opening paperwork, Tavarez listed the fraudulent email account that Robinson had created in the CJA attorney’s name. Once the bank accounts were fraudulently opened under the attorney’s name, Tavarez attempted to deposit a stolen check worth $125,386.81, intended as reimbursement for the attorney’s work on behalf of indigent defendants. This check had been forged to appear as if endorsed by the CJA attorney.

The others charged on Wednesday include Nicholas Barton, a 27-year-old from Brooklyn; Markel Washington, a 28-year-old from the Bronx; and Richard Reid, a 26-year-old from Manhattan.

United States Attorney Breon Peace, alongside officials from the United States Postal Inspection Service and the United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General, announced the charges.

The accused face multiple charges including bank fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.