ALBANY COUNTY — The first of two lawyers charged in February 2018 with stealing over $9 million from elderly clients was sentenced on Tuesday.

Thomas Lagan, who had worked the scam with Richard Sherwood, a Guilderland town judge at the time, was sentenced in Albany County Supreme Court to 4 to 12 years in prison on charges of first-degree grand larceny, a felony. 

Lagan is scheduled to be sentenced by Senior United States District Judge Lawrence Kahn at 11 a.m. on Dec. 12 in federal court, where in August he pleaded guilty to filing a false income-tax return and conspiracy to launder money. 

Also on Dec. 12, at 9 a.m., Sherwood is scheduled to be sentenced in Albany County Supreme Court before Judge Peter Lynch, on charges of second-degree grand larceny. Sherwood is scheduled for sentencing in federal court on charges of money laundering and filing false income-tax returns, also before Judge Kahn, on Dec. 19 at 10:30 a.m.

For months, Lagan had prepared to fight the charges against him. He changed his plea in April, after it became known that Sherwood planned to testify against him.

In May, Lagan’s attorney at the time, E. Stewart Jones of E. Stewart Jones Hacker Murphy, told The Enterprise of Sherwood’s plan to testify, “Obviously, that was not helpful.” 

In June, Jones wrote a letter to Judge Kahn, asking for a delay in a scheduled appearance by Lagan in federal court, stating that “irreconcilable and irresolvable conflicts have developed in my representation of Mr. Lagan which by mutual agreement and controlling standards prevent us from continuing in a lawyer/client relationship and prevent me from continued representation.

Jones also called their lawyer/client relationship “irreparably fractured.” 

Lagan is now represented by attorney Kevin Luibrand.  

A lawyer and financial advisor, Lagan lived in Slingerlands and in Cooperstown when he and attorney Sherwood worked together in private practice, since at least 2006, to divert funds from the estates of Capital Region philanthropists Warren and Pauline Bruggeman and Pauline Bruggeman’s sister, Anne Urban.

As detailed in the complaint, the Bruggemans had created revocable trusts containing sub-trusts designed to provide for Anne Urban and Pauline’s other sister, Julia Rentz. Other funds were to be awarded to Urban and Rentz outright upon the Bruggemans’ deaths. None of the three sisters had children.

Sherwood and Lagan took monies that were intended to go from the various family trusts to six charities and instead funneled them into accounts that they had set up to benefit themselves.

Lagan worked for Goldman Sachs during this time, according to one court document, a signed statement from witness Theodore Hargrove. Hargrove, owner of a restaurant in Cooperstown, said Lagan had confided in him that he had been loaning money from the estates of three sisters and that his company, Goldman Sachs, had told him several times that it was illegal to do so and had told him to stop.

Hargrove also said Lagan told him that Goldman Sachs took Lagan’s “book” away from him because of the loans, and demoted him to selling insurance as punishment. His guilty plea in federal court notes hat he “was employed for many years as an investment advisor with an Albany-based financial planning company.”

Lagan pleaded guilty before Albany County Supreme Court Judge tThomas Breslin to first-degree grand larceny, a felony, in May.

To date, law enforcement has recovered $5.5 million in criminal proceeds from the $9.8 larceny, according to a press release issued on Oct. 8 by the New York State Attorney General’s Office. The Attorney General’s Office investigated the cases against Sherwood and Lagan and is prosecuting the cases in county court.

Sherwood’s attorney, William Dreyer of Dreyer Boyajian, requested of Kahn in September that Sherwood be sentenced after Lagan, “after the courts have been given an opportunity to evaluate the cooperation rendered by Mr. Sherwood against Mr. Lagan.”

Lagan was already in custody before his sentencing. Through his lawyer, Luibrand, he advised the federal court on Sept. 23 that he wanted to surrender prior to his sentencing date of Dec. 12 and was ordered to self-surrender by that afternoon. Luibrand did not return Enterprise calls asking for comment. Assistant United States Attorney Michael Barnett told The Enterprise on Oct. 1 that Lagan was in Rensselaer County’s jail. 

Sherwood continues to live at his home on Legion Drive in Guilderland, near Pinehaven Country Club.