Three times a charm, at least when it comes to Adam Meyer and his defense lawyers.
Media outlet Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel reported that U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman approved on Monday Meyer’s request to get a new lawyer—his third in less than a year.
Dennis Coffey, a Milwaukee criminal defense lawyer, will replace Robin Shellow and Christopher Donovan. Shellow and Donovan replaced Florida lawyer Joel Hirschhorn, who represented Meyer for years before the sports betting tout fired him earlier this year.
Meyer, who once headed Florida-based Real Money Sports, was arrested in December 2014 by federal authorities on charges of extorting a total of $25 million from a Wisconsin man between 2009 and 2013.
Investigators said the victim, businessman Gary Sadoff, initially paid Meyer $1.2 million to cover the tout’s gambling losses. However, Meyer went back to Sadoff, telling the businessman he owed a debt to a bookie named Kent Wong, and that Wong mistook Sadoff for Meyer’s partner.
Wong, prosecutors said, was actually Meyer, who faked his identity in phone calls to threaten the victim into shelling out more money. Then in April 2012, the victim said Meyer and an associate threatened him at gunpoint for more money.
Last March, Hirschhorn planned to use the “public authority” and the I-am-crazy defense. Meyer claimed that his actions were performed at the behest of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. Also, the man said he shouldn’t be found guilty because he’s insane.
Well, Hirschhorn’s replacements, Shellow and Donovan, said in July that they would not be using those defenses. And then they were sacked. Now, it’s Coffey’s turn.
Meyer awaits trial in a Kenosha County jail after his bail was revoked following his expulsion from a drug rehabilitation program.
