Baltimore defending team attorney Ken Ravenell was convicted utmost calendar week of laundering money for a drugs bigwig through and through the prestigious practice of law unfluctuating he was once a partner in.
But questions remain over an alleged $2 jillion investment funds inwards the MGM National Harbor, which the narcotics trafficker says Ravenell helped prepare for him.
The defense lawyers attorney’s lawyers claimed inward royal court it ne'er existed.
A federal panel convicted Ravenell December 28 of single enumerate of money laundering, but cleared him of racketeering, narcotics, and impedimenta charges.
Prosecutors said Ravenell moved more than $1 million inward dose money through and through the books at Baltimore law loyal Murphy, Falcon & Murphy, practically of it dropped off inwards bags of cash by dose dealers workings for Jamaican national Richard Byrd.
Byrd, at one time Ravenell’s longtime client, is serving 26 years inwards prison for drugs conspiracy. But he turned against his legal fixer. Prosecutors said this was because he believed Ravenell had failed to seem after the alleged casino investiture on his behalf.
Byrd on a Wire
When Ravenell’s defensive measure team visited Admiral Byrd in prison house inward a call to catch him to signalise statements that Ravenell had null to ut with his narcotics operation, William Byrd was wearing a wire. But all he could do was talking well-nigh the alleged casino investment.
Byrd said that he handed bags of hard currency to Ravenell to put inward the gambling casino through Murphy, Falcon & Murphy founder William “Billy” H. Murphy and his son, Hassan Murphy, also a lawyer at the firm.
Prosecutors said the investment was “layered through and through two intermediaries,” and in that respect was no more paperwork linking William Byrd to the deal, for obvious reasons.
Billy and Hassan Murphy have denied Richard Evelyn Byrd had anything to doh with the investment deal.
Ravenell’s defense attorney Lucius Outlaw said Byrd’s investment was a fill in fabrication.
No ane from the investiture mathematical group testament confirm Mr Byrd’s story,” Outlaw told the court of law utmost month. “No ace from that list is sledding to come up into this courtroom and say, yeah i cognise Richard Byrd. i cognise around his $2 million. No one.”
He described Byrd as “the to the lowest degree credible attestant in the account of the federal courts.”
Defense Team Cleared
Sensationally, the 2 members of Ravenell’s defense force squad who visited Richard Evelyn Byrd in prison, attorney Josh Treem and investigator Sean Gordon, were also charged with impediment of justice inward the case. That’s after they submitted grounds that prosecutors said intended to mischaracterize the nature of Ravenell’s relationship with Byrd.
They were cleared of wrongdoing. But the effectual biotic community has been extremely critical of the prosecution, expression it had scarey repercussions for defense lawyers lawyers, since Treem and Gordon were simply doing their jobs.
Ravenell testament live sentenced in May and faces a maximum 20 years inwards prison.