Attorney’s client was a fellow lawyer, charged with money laundering
By Steve Lash
BridgeTower Media Newswires
BALTIMORE, MD — Prominent Baltimore criminal defense attorney Joshua R. Treem faces charges of falsifying records in a federal investigation, obstructing an official proceeding and conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States related to his representation of fellow lawyer Kenneth W. Ravenell, who has been charged with racketeering, drug and money laundering conspiracies.
As alleged in a federal grand jury indictment handed down last week, Treem helped prepare a false statement for a potential witness to sign exculpating Ravenell from wrongdoing. Treem then included that false statement in a letter he signed to a federal judge with the intent to impede, obstruct or influence the federal investigation and prosecution of Ravenell, the indictment alleges.
Treem, 73, faces a maximum sentence of 45 years in prison if convicted of the obstruction, falsification and conspiracy charges, Maryland U.S. Attorney Robert K. Hur’s office stated.
“Attorneys are officers of the court,” Hur said in a statement Friday announcing the indictment. “They are not above the law. The U.S. attorney’s office will investigate and prosecute attorneys who violate the trust placed in them by breaking the law and obstructing justice.”
Treem, a partner at Brown, Goldstein & Levy, did not immediately respond Friday to a message seeking comment on the indictment.
The Baltimore law firm issued a statement of support Friday.
“We’ve worked closely with Josh Treem for many years and know him to be both an exceptional lawyer and a man of the highest integrity, honesty, and professionalism,” the statement read. “He remains a valued and trusted partner at Brown, Goldstein & Levy.”
The indictment also included an additional conspiracy charge against Ravenell, 61, for his alleged role in securing the witness’s false statement.
In addition, the indictment charges private investigator Sean Francis Gordon, 45, with participating in the alleged conspiracy to create false records and documents and to obstruct an official proceeding. Gordon worked for both Treem and Ravenell.
Gordon did not immediately respond Friday to a message seeking comment on the indictment.
Treem represented Ravenell from January 2016 to June 2019 amid an investigation and subsequent charges that he received payments from a drug trafficker client and his associates in exchange for instructing them about how to evade police and continue their operations.
As alleged in Thursday’s indictment, Treem and Gordon – at Ravenell’s direction -- traveled to a Phoenix, Ariz., jail in September 2017, to meet with a detainee who was a potential witness in the federal investigation of Ravenell and have him sign a false document Ravenell prepared as an alibi. Treem and Gordon knew the document was bogus but urged the witness – identified as R.B. — to sign it, which he did, the indictment alleged.
“Ravenell, Treem and Gordon prepared false documents, including an affidavit on behalf of Gordon that referenced, as an exhibit, the document containing false exculpatory statements that Treem and Gordon had urged R.B. to sign, and letter to a United States District Court judge on behalf of Treem, relating to their interview of R.B.,” the indictment stated.
“These documents were fraudulently prepared to undermine and impeach R.B.’s credibility in the event he were called by the government to testify in a criminal trial of Ravenell and to provide false evidence of a prior consistent statement by Gordon or Treem in the event either one were to be questioned as part of an investigation being conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice of Ravenell or called to testify in an official proceeding, including before the grand jury investigating Ravenell or a trial of Ravenell if he were indicted by a federal grand jury,” the indictment added.
Ravanell was subsequently indicted.
Prosecutors allege Ravenell received substantial cash payments in exchange for laundering money and protecting co-conspirators. Ravenell allegedly advised his clients to use pay phones and burner phones and to hold in-person meetings to discuss drug operations, as well as to remove batteries from cellphones and to leave the phones outside the room during meetings to prevent the proceedings from being recorded.
Ravenell, who has pleaded not guilty, faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for racketeering conspiracy, 20 years for money laundering conspiracy and life in prison for narcotics conspiracy.
U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady of Eastern Virginia has been assigned to preside over the criminal cases in federal district court in Baltimore, Hur’s office stated.
The case is docketed at the U.S. District Court in Baltimore as United States of America v. Kenneth W. Ravenell, Joshua R. Treem and Sean Francis Gordon, No. 1:19-cr-00449-LO.
