An Upper Marlboro criminal defense lawyer who pleaded guilty in a money-laundering scheme designed to cover up a client's drug profits has been disbarred.
The Maryland Court of Appeals has ruled that 40-year-old Brian W. Young should be disbarred in the state.
Young pleaded guilty in April in federal court in Alexandria to conspiracy to commit money laundering. An indictment filed in February accused him of helping drug traffickers make their profits appear to be legitimate.
Young accepted tens of thousands of dollars from a client's marijuana sales and invested the cash in real estate to hide the funds, according to court records. He also helped create a fraudulent will to protect drug assets and paid other attorneys to defend clients using drug-trafficking funds that had been deposited into an escrow account for his own law firm.
Young is serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence at federal prison in central Pennsylvania, records show. He is expected to be released in February 2013.
Phone numbers listed for his former firm were disconnected.
Court documents say that when federal drug charges were filed in 2008 against William Cornman -- a friend of Young's who sought legal advice from and referred other drug associates to him -- Young paid for his defense using drug proceeds, concealing the ownership of the funds to protect them from government seizure.
Young also told another drug dealer, Nicholas Poliansky, to collect outstanding debts owed to Cornman, court documents say. When Young received the money, he deposited it in his law firm's escrow account. He then wrote checks of up to $20,000 to Cornman's and another dealers' attorneys from the escrow account, court records say.
"As an officer of the court, the defendant has a duty and obligation to follow the law," prosecutors wrote in a memorandum filed before Young's sentencing. "The defendant has a pattern of deceitful, fraudulent and dishonest conduct culminating in his conviction for money laundering in this case."
In court papers, Young's attorney has described him as a devoted father, church-goer and successful lawyer, despite struggles with heroin addiction.
"We know Brian to be a person of integrity and high moral character," his parents, William and Joan Young, wrote in a letter to the court. "Brian is a good person, who temporarily lost his way. He is deeply ashamed and humiliated, and determined to regain his honor and good reputation.
