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The LARRY NOODLES blog is a joint project of the Federal Bureau of Prisons Otisville Satellite Camp, the Lockshen Kugel Kiddush Fund and the Human Fund.
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Former CT lawyer appeals denial of bar reinstatement after mortgage fraud conviction
By Bruno Matarazzo Jr., Staff Writer Updated March 19, 2026 6:52 a.m.
WATERBURY REPUBLICAN
NEW HAVEN — A former lawyer who was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison for mortgage fraud is appealing a three-judge panel’s decision not to reinstate him to the bar, according to court records.
Lawrence Dressler, 60, of New York, said he’s drafting a brief for his appeal that he hopes will convince the state Appellate Court to overturn the three-judge panel’s decision
“It’s always been part of my life,” Dressler said in an interview of his ongoing effort to practice law again. “I practiced for 20 years. It’s a big part of who I was.”
Dressler has been denied reinstatement by two Standing Committees on Recommendations of Admission to the Bar, most recently by a 6-1 vote by the Hartford committee last year. He was denied by the Fairfield County committee in 2023.
In its decision, the Hartford committee cited Dressler not filling out a form correctly as well as “grave concerns” over his present moral fitness to practice law because he “failed to completely remove his blog from the internet.”
The blog, Larry Noodles, was started by Dressler after his release from the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, N.Y. The blog provided commentary on prison life, as well as statewide and national legal topics, and a lengthy description of his legal troubles, his journey through the court system as a defendant and thoughts on the legal system today. Several blog entries were submitted as evidence.
Dressler said he took down the blog but archive posts still remained online.
The three-judge panel said it was “unequivocal” that the Hartford committee’s conclusions “are amply supported by the record.”
In 2014, Dressler was suspended from the state bar following his conviction of one federal felony charge of conspiracy to commit bank, mail and wire fraud based on his participation in a mortgage fraud scheme, according to federal prosecutors.
In his blog post, Dressler said he was hired to perform requirements of real estate closings to complete the purchase of properties in the New Haven area. The mortgages would later go under in the scheme.
“I had no idea that these ‘respectable’ real estate investors were selling run down properties to straw buyers who had no intention of making the mortgage payments. Had I known I would have never represented these shyster idiots,” Dressler wrote in one blog post.
He wrote he only made about $4,000 in legal fees for the seven closings in which he pleaded guilty but his restitution order was $400,000 for restitution to Wells Fargo.
Abuse & Fear At the Yeshiva of New Haven – Yale Daily News
Michael Cohen’s Prison of Choice: Well-Known to Jewish Offenders
- Jan. 22, 2019
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When Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, was sentenced last month to three years in federal prison on fraud charges, he had the right to request any number of prison camps favored by white-collar offenders for their relatively resort-like settings.
But Mr. Cohen chose a shabby, low-slung building 75 miles northwest of New York City, with an antiquated weight room, an uneven tennis court and no swimming pool.
What the minimum-security camp at the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, N.Y., does offer is a rarity in the federal prison system: a full-time Hasidic chaplain who oversees a congregation of dozens of Jewish inmates who gather for prayer services three times a day.
“For a Jewish person, there is no place like Otisville,” said Earl Seth David, 54, a former inmate who attended kosher meals, religious classes and weekly Shabbat services in the prison shul, a shared space where the Torah scrolls are locked up every night
“As a Jew, there’s no other prison you can get services like that.”
Otisville’s camp has long been the lockup of choice among Jewish white-collar offenders, including Sheldon Silver, the former speaker of the New York State Assembly who was convicted on federal corruption charges. Mr. Silver, who is free on bail pending an appeal, has requested to serve his seven-year sentence at the camp.
Otisville is also one of the closest federal lockups to New York City, making it attractive to non-Jewish convicts as well, including Dean Skelos, the former New York State Senate majority leader who reported to the camp this month to begin his four-year sentence on bribery and other charges. Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino, the reality star from “Jersey Shore,” recently arrived at the camp, to serve a sentence for tax evasion.
The camp — which sits near Otisville’s main prison, a much larger medium-security lockup — has a population of about 120 inmates, including drug dealers and other street-level criminals with good prison records.
But most inmates are Jewish — many of them orthodox and Hasidic — and many are doctors, lawyers, accountants and businessmen who committed fraud.
A few also have backgrounds as ordained rabbis and, once inside, some assume a spiritual leadership role. Inmates periodically hold an informal vote to elect a “gabbai” to run the shul, which is currently led by a Hasidic man from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who is locked up for arson and corporate fraud.
There is never a problem reaching a minyan, or a quorum of at least 10 Jews needed to hold services, at the camp, where inmates live communally in dorm-style housing units and sleep in bunk beds.
Orthodox inmates wear fringed vests known as zizit under their green prison uniforms. Prison work shifts are scheduled around daily prayer sessions and Sabbath observances. Before many holidays, the men are taken by prison bus to a nearby town for traditional mikvah baths.
The list of prominent people at Otisville reduced to doing menial prison jobs is long.
Ken Starr, a money manager who siphoned millions from his celebrity clients, wiped down mess hall tables during his stay, and Walter Forbes, an executive charged with securities fraud, mopped floors, according to former inmates. Hassan Nemazee, an investment banker and political bundler associated with the Clintons, cleaned the bathrooms while serving time for bank fraud.
The federal prison camps are not available to certain offenders, like those with sentences of more than 10 years. So Bernie Madoff, who received 150 years for his Ponzi scheme, had his request for Otisville denied.
Messages left for prison officials at Otisville were not returned, and Bureau of Prisons officials would not provide any specific information on Jewish services at the camp.
Over the years, federal officials have “sort of carved this place out as a special location to put Jewish inmates,” said Benjamin Brafman, a prominent defense lawyer who has represented numerous defendants who have requested Otisville.
There are kosher vending machines in the visiting room. The prison commissary sells skullcaps for $6 and offers a kosher selection that includes matzo, gefilte fish, rugelach and seltzer.
“Hey, it’s not Zabar’s, and it’s a little overpriced,” said one former inmate, Lawrence Dressler, 52. “But what do you want? It’s prison.”
While kosher meals — three a day — come in prepackaged trays, inmates make Sabbath and holiday meals from scratch in the small kosher kitchen, to be eaten in the shul on tables with bedsheets as tablecloths.
“You feel like you’re back home, singing Shabbos songs with the other inmates,” Mr. Dressler recalled. “The camaraderie helps take you away from the place for a little while.”
With limited ingredients, inmates devise innovative ways to make Passover Seder meals featuring kosher chicken, handmade matzo, horseradish and grape juice.
They often repurpose food from prepackaged meals and supplement it with food smuggled out of the kitchen or supply room, said Jeff Weisman, 46, who served time in the camp on mail fraud charges and worked in the kosher kitchen.
For Sukkot, inmates assemble a large wooden sukkah shelter outside to sit and eat meals in.
The camp has little in the way of fences or bars, and for observant Jewish inmates, it is “the closest thing you have to nirvana in a federal prison,” said Joel A. Sickler, a criminologist and consultant who advises mostly white-collar offenders facing prison sentences.
But Mr. David said it was no picnic.
“That Club Fed stuff is a myth,” said Mr. David, a lawyer from Manhattan who served four years in seven federal prisons, including Otisville, on immigration fraud charges. “There’s no swanky pool. You’re up at 6 a.m. every morning for the inmate count. The guards can raid your bunk at any time and you get zero rights, zero privacy. You’re sleeping next to 100 snoring men. So being able to practice your faith helps you survive.”