By Michael Donoghue, Vermont News First

A former Bennington County woman claimed in federal court in Burlington on Monday that she did not get a fair trial when convicted in federal court for a $1.6 million bank fraud case because she lacked effective legal counsel.

Alison Gu, 49, who had Vermont homes in Dorset and Winhall, maintained defense lawyer Lisa B. Shelkrot failed to work with her and they disagreed over trial strategy when the defendant was convicted in November 2017.

Shelkrot said in a recent court affidavit that she had rejected seven Chinese-speaking witnesses proposed by Gu because they turned out to be actors that responded to a newspaper ad that the defendant had placed.

Shelkrot indicated the recruited actors had been falsely told they were part of a movie and had been provided scripts for their “testimony.”

Gu, now of Cheshire, Conn., maintained the witnesses were not coached and could provide legitimate testimony about the criminal charges she faced. She said Shelkrot re-directed the case to where Gu did not want it to go.

“She pushed me to the witness stand against my wishes,” Gu claimed about Shelkrot.

Chief Federal Judge Christina Reiss noted whether a defendant testifies is up to the witness and not the defense lawyer.

Acting U.S. Attorney Michael P. Drescher argued throughout the 70-minute hearing Monday afternoon that Gu had failed to meet the standard required by law to show ineffective legal counsel.

Drescher maintained the thought of using fake actors would have created an “egregious obstruction of justice.”

He wrote Gu had proposed other witnesses for Shelkrot, but they would have only confirmed the defendant’s dishonesty for the jury.

Drescher maintained that “Ms. Gu lied repeatedly on the stand.” He said Shelkrot had made clear that her testimony was not a good idea.

Reiss agreed to give Gu until July 7 to file any additional legal briefs with the court. Drescher will be allowed seven days to respond if he wishes.

The case will remain under advisement until the filings are made, Reiss said.

Gu has at least nine listed aliases, including Alison Ling, which she now uses in Connecticut.

The jury found her guilty of committing 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.

Gu was eventually sentenced in December 2018 to 3 years in federal prison followed by 3 years of supervised release for bank fraud, aggravated identity theft and making a false statement on a passport application.

Gu has filed to have her three criminal convictions and prison sentence set aside on grounds of ineffective assistance of legal counsel.

Gu also told Vermont News First after the court hearing that she wants the judge to strike a $107,117 restitution order to the Bank of Bennington. It was one of five financial institutions she and a co-defendant targeted in the case.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City upheld the convictions and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the case in February 2022.

Reiss had rejected a handful of motions Gu filed recently, including a request to have a lawyer appointed to represent herself.

The judge noted Gu was unhappy with the seven lawyers she had in the case and removed all of them, so Reiss said she had doubts an eighth lawyer would be suitable to the defendant.

“To appoint counsel now would needlessly delay a hearing that has been pending for months. Petitioner has not demonstrated that she is indigent,” Reiss said in her ruling.

“Based on the facts and circumstances of this case, the interests of justice do not warrant the appointment of counsel,” the judge said.

Reiss also denied a motion to continue the hearing and a separate motion to appear remotely.

Gu told Vermont News First after the hearing that it is a 3- or 4-hour commute from Connecticut to Burlington.

Shelkrot did not attend the hearing.

She had said in a court affidavit that she determined the bogus witnesses were actors after they arrived in Burlington midway through the trial in November 2017. Shelkrot said as she prepared three witnesses 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.”

She eventually sorted out the situation and had the 3 witnesses return to New York. The New York actors had no actual knowledge about any facts about the Vermont fraud case and had been coached on what to say, Shelkrot reported.

Shelkrot said she informed the four other actors due to arrive the following day not to come to Burlington – they were not needed.

The actors were to be paid after they testified and returned to New York, she said.

As Gu’s fabricated defense collapsed, the defendant asked about calling her co-defendant, Matt Abel, formerly of Montpelier, to the witness stand. Shelkrot explained that would never work – Abel in his federal plea agreement had sworn to prosecutors he acted in concert with Gu to complete the fraud.

Attorney-client communication is normally considered confidential, but the court said Gu broke the bond by making public claims in her legal filing about her defense lawyers. Judge Reiss ruled Shelkrot and other lawyers needed to be able to respond in public.

“I believe I conducted appropriate and effective cross-examination of both law enforcement and lay witnesses, consistent with our theory of the case,” Shelkrot’s affidavit said.

Drescher and then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Doyle, who is now a judge, prosecuted the criminal case. They presented 30 witnesses, and 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’s conduct.

Drescher and Doyle showed the jurors the elaborate maze that Gu, a mother of three children, attempted to use to hide her true identity and to obtain bogus bank loans. They maintained she got tripped up when she failed to keep her stories straight.

One of the false identities Gu assumed belonged to a girl killed in a mass shooting outside a Stockton, Calif. school in January 1989. The girl was one of five killed, while 30 other students and teachers were wounded before the gunman turned the weapon on himself, court records show.

The indictment noted that as part of the swindle Gu and her then boyfriend and co-defendant, Matt Abel, 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.

She submitted mortgage loan applications with false information to five financial institutions, including the Bank of Bennington.

Gu also has filed complaints against other defense lawyers who have represented her during her lengthy legal battle. They include Burlington lawyer Mark Oettinger, who represented Gu between June and August 2022 and was at least her seventh lawyer. Most of Oettinger’s time was as stand-by counsel as Gu said she wanted to represent herself.

By the end of the hearing Monday, Gu had withdrawn her complaint about Oettinger.

Oettinger noted the six lawyers before him had also asked for permission to withdraw or had been asked by Gu to leave the case. He noted in his filing he felt uncomfortable breaking the attorney-client privilege, but stated Gu had opened the door with her filing.

Judge Reiss instructed the lawyers to respond to the claims made by Gu.

Oettinger noted Judge Reiss said she believed Gu committed perjury at her trial.

“She also called her three children as witnesses in her defense, including an adult son with autism, and was found to have suborned perjury in doing so,” Oettinger said in his affidavit.

He noted after she was convicted, sentenced and imprisoned, Gu was charged in Connecticut state court with writing a bad check, which led to a federal charge of violating her supervised release conditions in the bank fraud case.

Reiss imposed another 10-months in prison in September 2022 and extended her supervised release for another 12 months.

Oettinger said she also had criminal charges pending in New Hampshire for obtaining two separate driver’s licenses by fraudulently using the identity of deceased persons.

“We helped her pursue a definitive psychiatric diagnosis, which I can share in greater detail if the Court deems it necessary,” Oettinger wrote to the court.

-30-