Lawrence attorney sentenced in extortion scheme

A lawyer from Lawrence was sentenced Wednesday to four years probation and ordered to pay a $45,000 fine for taking part in a scheme to extort $7 million from a man to prevent incriminating information about the would be victim to be passed on to law enforcement, according to officials.

Mark Weissman was also sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dora Irizarry in Brooklyn to 300 hours of community service, involving lecturing law students on professional ethics.

Weissman had pleaded guilty in June to a charge of conspiracy to obstruct an official investigation for serving as an intermediary in the scheme to interfere with a court-ordered securities fraud restitution payment involving two other men.

Prosecutors said two men in an unrelated security fraud case jointly owed $12.7 million in restitution based on guilty pleas in 2011 and 2012. Weissman was accused of passing along a threat from one of the men to disclose incriminating information unless the other paid him $7 million.

Weissman admitted at his plea in June that he believed the payment of the extortion money would impede the payment of the restitution, officials have said.

At the time, Eastern District United States Attorney Richard Donoghue said in a statement that the scheme, if successful, would have interfered with restitution “that was to be paid to victims of a massive fraud.”

Weissman’s attorneys could not be immediately reached for comment.

By Robert E. Kessler

Robert.Kessler@newsday.com

Bob Kessler covers federal law, including law enforcement agencies such as the FBI, DEA, IRS and ATF, as well as the federal courts.