Thomas Lagan, ex-judge crony who bilked elderly, denied release from prison

Former business partner of disgraced Guildlerland town justice Richard Sherwood asked out amid coronavirus worries

By Robert Gavin

Thomas Lagan is brought into City Court by police officers after being arrested on Friday, Feb. 23, 2018 in Albany, N.Y. (Brendan Lyons/Times Union)

ALBANY – Last September, disgraced ex-attorney and financial advisor Thomas Lagan maneuvered his way into serving his prison sentence in federal as opposed to state prison.

On Monday, the 62-year-old former Slingerlands man was far less successful in his bid to serve some or all of  his prison time at home to avoid the risk of COVID-19.

Senior U.S. District Judge Lawrence Kahn rejected Lagan’s request for home confinement and ankle monitoring. Lagan, the former business partner and co-defendant of disbarred Guilderland Town Justice Richard Sherwood, will continue to serve his 6½-year sentence in federal prison for ripping off nearly $12 million from elderly clients.

Lagan had hoped to serve his time where he most recently lived in Cooperstown.

“The court is sympathetic to Lagan’s situation, and does not wish him — or anybody else — to get sick while in prison, but it cannot release Lagan merely upon his own assertion that he is at high risk,” Kahn stated in his decision.

Lagan, who stole from clients and laundered the money, pleaded guilty in 2019 in both Albany County Court and U.S. District Court in Albany for his crime. Lagan targeted elderly clients, including Capital Region philanthropists Warren and Pauline Bruggeman, as well as beneficiaries of his former clients, and churches and charities.

In August, he pleaded guilty in federal court to federal money laundering conspiracy and filing false tax returns. In September — one day before his sentencing in state court on charges of first-degree grand larceny — Lagan surrendered himself to the U.S. Marshal Service. By doing that, Lagan assured himself that he would do his time (or at least a large portion of it) in the federal system and not state prison. His lawyer, Kevin Luibrand, told the Times Union “state prison is a much easier venue to get oneself seriously injured or worse, and so we try to avoid that if and when we can."

In December, Lagan was sentenced to his prison term, which he was serving in the Metroplitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. It would go alongside the 4-to-12 year sentence he received in state court from state Supreme Court Justice Thomas Breslin.

On April 15, Lagan's Boston-based attorney John J.E. Markham II filed a request with Kahn for compassionate release. He asked for either interim release to his home until a more suitable facility was available, full home confinement or full home confinement unless the U.S. Bureau of Prisons allows a furlough.

"He never would have self-surrendered had he known he would end up in New York City and the MDC, particularly not when New York is the epicenter of the killer virus that now threatens him in the cramped, over-crowded conditions in which he is now imprisoned," the motion stated. "Had he not self-surrendered, this Court would almost surely have allowed him to self-surrender to the facility once it was designated as is the practice for non-violent, non-risk-of flight defendant."

He argued he had "medical conditions that are chronic and make him more vulnerable to COVID-19 than healthy individuals." He noted his age, weight, family history of heart disease, sleep apnea and that he was a heavy smoker and drinker.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Barnett noted in a filing that none of the reasons mentioned by Lagan are on the list of high-risk conditions listed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Lagan, in fact, is a healthy person without any particularized vulnerability," Barnett stated.

He argued that if the motion was granted, Lagan should have been sent to state custody.

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Thomas Lagan, ex-judge crony who bilked elderly, denied release from prison