By Mike Donoghue
Vermont News First

A version of this story appeared in the Caledonian Record today 

BURLINGTON — A federal judge has rejected a request to delay a court hearing about a criminal defendant who tried to secretly hire about a half dozen non-English speaking actors to serve as witnesses for her in a $1.6 million bank fraud case in Southern Vermont.

Chief Federal Judge Christina Reiss told Alison Gu, also known as Alison Ling, to be prepared to go forward with the hearing in U.S. District Court in Burlington next week to consider her claim of ineffective assistance of legal counsel.

Gu, who owned homes in Dorset and Winhall, maintains that all her defense lawyers before, during and after trial, including on appeals were lacking in some way, court records show.  She wants her three criminal convictions overturned and to strike a $107,117 restitution order to the Bank of Bennington, one of the five financial institutions she and a co-defendant targeted in the case.

Reiss said the court hearing was set on March 7 and Gu’s petition has been pending since February 2023. 

“It has taken considerable effort to find a date and time when all parties are available,” Reiss wrote in rejecting the delay.

The judge directed the government to file its opposition by Monday and will permit Gu to file a supplemental brief after the hearing if she wishes.

Gu, 49, now from Cheshire, Conn., is especially unhappy with defense lawyer Lisa Shelkrot, who refused to use the seven Chinese-speaking actors that the defendant recruited and were provided scripts about what to say during the jury trial, according to court records.

The scheme to provide fake witnesses was made public when Judge Reiss directed Shelkrot to report on her efforts to defend Gu.  Shelkrot would normally be blocked under attorney-client privilege from disclosing defensive efforts, but the judge said she wanted an affidavit from the veteran defense lawyer about her work.

Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Drescher noted Gu’s petition “contains a 13-page single-spaced litany of alleged errors and omissions by each of her attorneys.”

He asked for affidavits from at least four of the lawyers so the government could adequately respond.

Gu, who has at least nine listed aliases, was convicted for bilking five banks out of $1.6 million.  She was sentenced in December 2018 to 3 years in federal prison followed by 3 years of supervised release for bank fraud between 2013 and 2015, falsifying information on a U.S. Passport application in St. Albans in March 2015 and aggravated identity theft also in March 2015.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City affirmed her three convictions.  She tried to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the justices rejected hearing the case.

Judge Reiss added another 10 months of prison time onto Gu’s sentence when the court determined she had violated the terms of her supervised release by facing new criminal charges in Connecticut and New Hampshire.  Another 12 months of supervised release also was added.

The idea of importing actors and providing scripts appears to be a novel idea in Vermont, according to a quick survey of some lawyers and judges by Vermont News First.

Shelkrot has said she determined the bogus witnesses were actors after they arrived in Burlington midway through the trial in November 2017. Shelkrot, in her recent court affidavit, said as she prepared three of them to testify at trial, one happened to remark, “It’s for the movie.”

Shelkrot said she asked about what movie. The witness responded, “Are you a real lawyer?”

Shelkrot wrote, “I answered that I was a real lawyer with a real case and a real client, and that we were going to real court on Monday, where the witness would be expected to take a real oath.”

Gu also wanted her co-defendant, Matt Abel, formerly of Montpelier, to be called to the stand as a defense witness.  Shelkrot said that would not help the defense because in his plea agreement with the government Abel admitted he conspired with Gu to defraud the banks.  Abel would have to stick with that story or possibly face a perjury charge if he changed his sworn testimony.

Shelkrot said it also appeared that a “Chinese private investigator Wong,” that Gu had maintained she had hired to work on the case in New York was non-existent.

During the trial then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Doyle, who is now a judge, and Drescher, who is now the acting chief federal prosecutor in Vermont, presented 30 witnesses. The jury deliberated almost two hours after the one-week trial.

“One person, two identities, three crimes,” Doyle said in his closing argument about Gu.

The indictment noted that as part of the swindle Gu and Abel, her then boyfriend and co-defendant, bought several properties, including homes on Read Farm Road in Dorset and Old Snow Valley Road in Winhall. Other properties were in Cheshire, Conn., West Yarmouth, Mass., Cocoa Beach, Fla., and Austin Texas, court records show.