Attorney. Father. Alcoholic.
Seymour lawyer Ralph Crozier told a federal jury Thursday that he’s plenty of things.
But not a crook.
Crozier took the witness stand after prosecutors finished presenting their case to the jury on the third day of Crozier’s trial on money laundering charges before Chief U.S. District Judge Janet Hall in New Haven.
At one point during Crozier’s two and a half hours on the stand his lawyer, Michael Hillis, was asking him to detail his work for a former client for whom Crozier is accused of trying to launder $30,000.
Crozier said he knew the client, Bruce Yazdzik, as a used car salesman.
When Yazdzik and a partner detailed a contract they wanted Crozier to draw up to lease part of a Waterbury auto dealership, Hillis asked, “Did they tell you they were big-time drug dealers?”
“No!” Crozier exclaimed, saying the work he did for Yazdzik was routine and lawful.
He repeated the point emphatically throughout the course of his time on the stand.
Crozier’s testimony is scheduled to continue Monday.
Click here to read about the first day of the trial.
Click here to read about the second day of the trial.
Court ended Thursday with Hillis plodding through exhibit after exhibit of evidence — from the lease Crozier drew up for Yazdzik’s used car business to filings he made with the IRS and Secretary of the State’s office for it and another business Yazdzik started — intended to show the jury that Crozier’s work was anything but out of the ordinary or illicit.
Crozier said his work on behalf of Yazdzik was the same he’d do for any client, and he didn’t know his client was making tens of thousands of dollars a month selling drugs.
He said he talked to Yazdzik about making his car business “legitimate,” but didn’t mean it in the sense of laundering drug money. Rather, he said, Yazdzik had been renting space from another car dealer on the basis of a handshake deal, and needed a written lease.
“They wanted to legitimize it so the agreement would be something that would hold up in court,” Crozier said.
Professor Crozier
Crozier is an outspoken defense attorney, often taking brash stances in defense of clients in court and in media interviews about cases he handles.
His law practice’s website says he’s “renowned as a maverick.”
But he affected a reserved, almost professorial tone from the stand Thursday, carefully enunciating his words and squinting through the tops of his eyeglass lenses at exhibits.
He often launched into long-winded answers explaining the minutiae of his office’s day-to-day routine and arcane legalese.
The digressions prompted several objections from prosecutors — and admonitions from Judge Hall for Crozier to get to the point.
Priors
He was blunter when Hillis asked him about his law license getting suspended in 2010, one of a handful of convictions and professional disciplinary actions Crozier has to his name.
“I had gotten a DWI, and pled guilty to DWI,” Crozier said in reference to a December 2009 arrest in Southbury. “As part of the agreement my law license would be suspended and I would go to jail for 93 days.”
He said his license was reinstated on a probationary basis days after being released from jail, as part of the agreement.
Court records indicate that in March 2010 Crozier received a two-day jail sentence — a mandatory minimum for second-time drunk-driving offenders — to a charge of operating under the influence related to a December 2009 Southbury arrest.
On the same day he was sentenced to 179 days behind bars on probation violation charges related to the 2007 false statement conviction, according to court records.
Hillis asked him whether he had a drinking problem at the time of his drunk-driving arrest.
“Yes,” Crozier said.
Does he still?
“I’ll always be an alcoholic,” Crozier said, noting that one of the conditions of his legal probation was taking weekly urine tests, which he passed.
Going to jail was particularly difficult, Crozier testified, because at the time he had a 1‑year-old daughter with special needs.
“I couldn’t take care of her,” he said.
Government Rests
Thursday’s proceedings began with prosecutors finishing their case with testimony from two banking officials who said Crozier avoided financial reporting rules when routing $30,000 Yazdzik gave him into a solar power company partly owned by a colleague.
The federal government requires banks to report transactions of $10,000 or more, one of many ways the feds try to root out money laundering, the “washing” of ill-gotten money through ostensibly legitimate businesses.
Crozier was charged with conspiracy and attempted money laundering last April, and has since been free on $200,000 bond while awaiting trial.
Each of the two charges carries a maximum 20 years in prison and $1 million fine.
Earlier, DEA Agent Dana Mofenson and FBI Agent Jeffrey Waterman said that Crozier had conceded to them during interviews after his arrest that he knew the money he “invested” on Yazdzik’s behalf was dirty.
Hillis harried the two feds with questions suggesting otherwise, and at one point suggested Mofenson had told Crozier that if Crozier could provide the feds with details on public corruption in Waterbury, the money laundering arrest “would go away.”
“I didn’t make that statement,” Mofenson. “No one made that statement.”
The agent did concede about half the interview with Crozier was taken up with discussing corruption in Waterbury, and Waterman said he’s been assigned since 2009 by the FBI to probe public corruption, though no specific allegations of official wrongdoing in the Brass City have surfaced during Crozier’s trial.
