Connecticut Attorney Claims He Was Duped In Multimillion Dollar Fraud

April 04--In a confessional plea for leniency, Hartford lawyer and former city councilman Corey Brinson blamed his naivete for bad decisions that allowed stock manipulators to use his law office in a scheme that swindled millions of dollars from investors.

Brinson lawyer Thomas Murphy of Hartford called his client -- among other things -- "guileless," "unsophisticated" and "inexperienced" in a long legal memo that asks a federal judge to reduce Brinson's sentence on a money laundering charge from as much as five years in prison to less than one.

But while making the case for leniency, Murphy began filling gaps in an emerging story of how Brinson, struggling to start a law practice, came to allow a disbarred securities trader to use his name, office and law firm bank account to collect and conceal millions of dollars obtained from unwitting investors around the country.

A variety of records, some compiled by state regulators and others on file in federal court, show that Brinson, a Hartford native, was recruited by Christian Meissenn, a 44-year old Bulgarian immigrant living in Suffield. Meissenn is barred by state and federal regulators from securities sales.

Meissenn is charged in a related case and his prosecution has been postponed indefinitely while FBI and IRS agents continue what could be months more investigation of securities frauds around the country. Meissenn, Brinson and others not yet charged have been linked to sophisticated frauds called pump-and-dump schemes.

Typically in such schemes, unscrupulous brokers acquire blocks of stock in essentially worthless companies and use bogus trades, phony announcements and other fraudulent means to inflate, or pump up, the share price. After persuading unwitting investors to buy on what is pitched as a continuing rise in value, the manipulators sell, or dump, their holdings, at a profit. The stock price collapses and the unwitting investors lose everything.

Federal prosecutors said -- and Brinson does not dispute -- that he allowed Meissenn to use his law firm trust account to launder about $4.4 million and that he knew that at least $3.04 million of that had been stolen from unsophisticated investors. In addition, Brinson signed -- or allowed others to affix his signature to -- official "attorney letters" certifying the legitimacy of what turned out to be valueless stock offerings.

"The rise and fall of Corey Brinson is the stuff of a modern-day Greek tragedy," Murphy wrote in the memo. "Corey Brinson is in many respects guileless."

Murphy portrays Brinson as, until recently, a modern-day Hartford success story -- a young man who avoided drugs and jail while being raised by a single mother in a violent, impoverished, north Hartford neighborhood. Brinson's mother was 21 when he was born. His father, a Jamaican house painter, was electrocuted not long after Brinson was born when his ladder fell against a electric cable.

Brinson's mother scrimped and saved to educate him, Murphy wrote. Brinson completed college after enlisting in the Air Force and receiving tuition assistance. He arrived at a U.S. airbase in Saudi Arabia on Sept. 11, 2001. After college and law school, he worked in succession for two large firms. He struck out on his own not long before meeting Meissenn.

Meissenn wanted Brinson to handle a zoning matter in Bloomfield. Brinson agreed and billed $500. Murphy said Meissenn paid $2,500 and instructed Brinson to put the balance on account and to expect more work.

"All too quickly, Corey, at the time unaware of any improprieties related to Meissenn, began to be drawn into Meissenn's web of deceit," Murphy wrote in the memo.

Murphy said that Meissenn told Brinson that he had financial judgments against him in New York and, as a consequence, he could not open a bank account in Connecticut. Meissenn suggested he needed a bank because he had a book of investors interested in penny stocks and a group of associates working with him on the sales, Murphy said.

In conclusion, Murphy said, Meissenn offered Brinson 5 percent of what he collected from investors if Meissenn got use of the law firm trust account.

Meissenn told Brinson that he had the same arrangement with another Hartford-area lawyer, but that lawyer died of a heart attack. Brinson later learned that, in reality, the other lawyer committed suicide, according to Murphy.

Brinson learned later that Meissenn had been barred from the securities industry in connection with judgments against him in New York. But Meissenn told Brinson that he had licensed associates handling the securities sales, according to Murphy.

"Corey was a complete securities neophyte," Murphy said in the memo. "Like everyone he knew growing up, he had never owned stock, nor had he ever studied the operation of the stock market or the laws that govern those markets."

Meissenn has ignored repeated requests to discuss the case. State banking and securities regulators investigated Meissenn at length about seven years ago, but refuse to discuss the case or release uncensored records.

From what is known of the inquiry, Meissenn and at least one associate were barred from securities trading in Connecticut. But records released Meissenn's federal case suggest he remained involved in the business.

Other government records show that Meissenn, through relatives, is associated with multiple pieces of real estate and a variety of businesses in Connecticut.

Meissenn has been charged with hiding millions of dollars stolen from stock victims and failing to pay taxes on it. He pleaded guilty late last year to tax evasion and participating in a fraud conspiracy. He faces prison, as well as payments of millions of dollars in back taxes, penalties, fines and restitution to victims across the country.

Brinson is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer on April 13

"In addition to whatever punishment the Court imposes, Corey has lost his cherished, hard-earned law license and his thriving, growing law practice, very possibly permanently," Murphy wrote in his memo. "He is now left deeply in debt, without a means of earning a living any time soon."

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