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March 27, 2018 By Tara Law
A longtime Forest Hills attorney has been indicted for taking part in a conspiracy to get a narcotics trafficker released from prison.
Scott “Mighty Whitey” Brettschneider, 61, a criminal defense attorney who worked from a Queens Boulevard office, was arrested Monday and charged with making false statements and conspiring to make false statements to the United States Bureau of Prisons, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York.
His assistant, Reginald Shabazz-Muhammad, 62; Richard Marshall, 56, and Charles Gallman, a 56-year-old private investigator with a criminal record, were also charged.
The Queens District Attorney’s office discovered the scheme while investigating Gallman for a separate bribery and criminal conspiracy case.
The office intercepted a phone call between Marshall, who was using a contraband cellphone in federal prison, and the other three defendants.
The men allegedly discussed a plot to get Marshall out of prison a year early by falsely informing the Bureau of Prisons that he was a candidate for the Residential Drug Abuse Program.
Gallman was recorded saying that the plan would “knock a year off his sentence,” and that he doubted that the BOP would be “scrutinizing it that much.”
The three men sent a letter to the Bureau of Prisons describing Marshall’s history of drug and alcohol dependence. The letter was signed by Shabazz-Muhammad, who claimed to be Marshall’s treatment provider.
United States Attorney Richard Donoghue spoke of the importance of defending the integrity of drug rehabilitation programs.
“This office and our law enforcement partners are committed to ensuring that the resources to fight drug addiction go to the people who need them, not the drug dealers who put poison on our streets and who deserve to serve the entirety of their prison sentences,” Donoghue said.
FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney described the men’s efforts to release a drug dealer as “reckless.”
“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 Sweeney. “Drug addiction is a serious issue that deserves the appropriate response from all those involved. We won’t stand for anything less.”
Gallman and Marshall were arrested on March 22, and Shabazz-Muhammad is still at large.
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