Bethesda lawyer sues DOJ over dropped international fraud charges

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In a lawsuit filed Friday, a Maryland attorney accused the U.S. government of basing his criminal fraud and money laundering prosecution on false testimony by an FBI agent.

Jeremy Schulman, whose charges were dropped in 2024, is seeking compensatory damages of over $30 million for what he alleges was a malicious prosecution by the Department of Justice. The Bethesda-based international lawyer’s charges stemmed from his representation of the Federal Republic of Somalia and the government’s central bank; he alleged in the lawsuit that the FBI targeted him due to his outspoken opposition to the United Nations “and its overreach with respect to Somali affairs.”

Prosecutors accused Schulman in 2020 of engaging in a scheme to fraudulently access more than $12.5 million in Somali government assets from financial institutions. During the prosecution, Schulman’s attorneys alleged that the Justice Department avoided evidence collection that could have favored the attorney and kept back information that would have helped his defense. Prosecutors eventually moved to dismiss their case with prejudice.

In his complaint filed Friday, Schulman alleged that his indictment was based on “the perjurious testimony of just one witness,” the FBI agent who investigated the matter.

Schulman is represented in the suit by civil attorney Deanna Layne Peters, senior counsel at Rockville-based Stein Sperling Bennett De Jong Driscoll P.C. She and the Justice Department did not return requests for comment.

Schulman’s lawsuit targets the FBI agent repeatedly, arguing she was “well aware of irrefutable evidence that Mr. Schulman possessed full authority from the highest levels of the Somali government to recover Somalia’s frozen assets.”

“There was absolutely no legitimate evidence establishing probable cause for these charges,” the complaint says, adding that the 11-count indictment against Schulman “was procured solely based on affirmative misrepresentations of material fact by the FBI agent, and the grand jury would not and could not have indicted without these lies.”

Although Schulman, a former shareholder at Potomac-based Shulman, Rogers, Gandal, Pordy & Ecker, was indicted in 2020, he alleged that prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence presented to another grand jury that was convened in 2017. He was accused of conspiring with former Central Bank of Somalia Governor Ali Abdi Amalow to create a false translation of a presidential decree that inflated his credentials — but the governor’s son, Abdelhakim Abdi, had testified that the decree granting his father “authority and power to recover all the national assets of the country” was legitimate. The translator who prepared the English version had testified the same.

The complaint accuses the FBI agent of engaging “in willful misconduct by failing to present this exculpatory evidence to the 2020 grand jury, while simultaneously providing false and misleading testimony on this topic.”

Schulman alleged that he was targeted because he was “closely aligned and publicly associated with” Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a “target for attack” by U.S. authorities.

Suing under the Federal Tort Claims Act and Maryland state law, he accused the U.S. government of malicious prosecution, abuse of process, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent supervision and retention. The lawsuit in U.S. District Court for Maryland was assigned to District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby.