Lawyer gets prison time after guilty plea in FBI money laundering sting
A former shareholder at Becker & Poliakoff in Florida was sentenced on Thursday to a year and a day in prison for taking $8,500 to launder money in what turned out to be an FBI sting.
The lawyer, Alan Koslow, was also ordered to pay a $7,500 fine and $8,500 in restitution, the Sun Sentinel reports. He had faced up to five years in prison.
“In the five months since Alan Koslow was charged with money-laundering conspiracy,” the article reports, “he has lost almost everything: his marriage, his law license and his reputation as one of the most effective attorneys and lobbyists in Florida. And on Thursday afternoon, he lost his freedom.”
Koslow had pleaded guilty to a federal charge of money laundering in August. The charge had no connection to Becker & Poliakoff.
Koslow’s lawyer, Michael Orenstein, told the Sun Sentinel he thought the “very lenient” sentence stemmed from Koslow’s significant charitable work. But court records indicate he secretly cooperated with the feds in at least one undercover investigation after FBI agents confronted him in August 2013, according to the article.
Koslow was taken into custody immediately after his sentencing in Fort Lauderdale.
