Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - YSL Lawyer Arrested on Gang Charge Over Alleged Instruction to Destroy Evidence

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. One of the lawyers in the Young Thug Rico case, Nicole Fagan, is all over social media celebrating her big legal wins. I don't know about y'all, but I really do. I'm proud of myself. But now Fagan is the one who needs a lawyer after being arrested and charged in connection to a murder case. We have the details. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy, and this is Crime Fix. Nicole Fagan is probably best known for representing Tanquarius Mender in the Young Thug Rico case. This was Fagan in court with Mender, who goes by Nard back in December of 2022. This time, though, he still maintains

Starting point is 00:00:53 a not guilty plea, respectfully requests, rejects the offer, and we announce ready for trial. Now, we haven't seen Fagan in court during Young Thug's trial because she had her client's case severed from the main case. Fagan actually got in some legal hot water last Friday when Atlanta police picked her up on charges of participation in criminal street gang activity and criminal solicitation to commit the offense of tampering with evidence. Police claim Fagan contacted a suspect in a shooting that happened in September of 2022 and that that suspect was not her client. Police say Fagan told the suspect he had warrants out for his arrest and then went on to tell him about information that she had learned during a hearing related to the shooting and that the suspect should get rid of his phone. Atlanta police say Fagan committed a crime when she did that. But attorney Renee Rockwell told me that Fagan maintains her innocence

Starting point is 00:01:51 and actually posted a $40,000 bond on Friday night so she wasn't in jail all that long. I contacted the office of District Attorney Fannie Willis. At the time of this recording, we had not yet heard back. Fagan's Instagram account shows her often celebrating her court victories, sometimes lip syncing to rap songs. Other times, she's just sharing memories. You know, there is nothing better than when you walk out of the gas station and somebody be like, are you Nicole? And you know, really, the world I live in, I don't even be one to claim myself sometimes. But then when he's like, you might not remember because the world I live in, I don't even be one to claim myself sometimes.

Starting point is 00:02:25 But then when he's like, you might not remember because it was a long time ago, but you got me out of jail. That makes you feel good. Fortunato Perry is no stranger to high profile cases involving rappers. Fortunato, thanks for coming on. I want to ask you just right off the bat, your first impressions of the charges filed against attorney Nicole Feagan. Well, it's certainly a shocking development, but I'm the kind of guy who I don't like to rush to judgment. I'd like to take a look at whatever it is that the prosecution will be relying on in this case against the attorney. You know, it sounds like they've charged her with being involved in gang activity,

Starting point is 00:03:09 which is a bit much from what I've seen in this situation. You know, certainly there could be an issue of whether or not she solicited an individual to either obstruct justice or fabricate, you know, mess with the evidence in the case. But again, without knowing what they're relying on in the prosecution, it's kind of tough to assess whether or not they can get a conviction on these charges. Yeah, it certainly is tough. And we should mention we've been working, and we tried even last week to get a mugshot of Nicole Fegan. We're trying to get the probable cause documents. It's

Starting point is 00:03:45 a holiday, President's Day right now, but they've had a cyber attack on the system down there in Fulton County, Georgia. So it's been very difficult for a while now to get even a mugshot or court documents out of Fulton County. You know, it's interesting to me, she's representing a client in this case. She learns of information in a preliminary hearing. So she's not representing the guy that she calls and says, get rid of your phone. So if you're a lawyer, Fortunato, which you are, and if you're a lawyer on this case and you learn of information in a preliminary hearing involving this shooting and you call somebody and you're like, I was just in a prelim and involving the shooting and you call somebody and you're

Starting point is 00:04:25 like, I was just in a prelim and I heard some information. You might want to get rid of that cell phone you've got. And then the guy gets rid of his cell phone. Are you committing a crime if that's not your client? I don't even think you can tell your own client to dispose of evidence in a criminal investigation. Now, let's take that to the next step of someone who's not your client. I don't think it's a problem necessarily telling an individual that you have knowledge that there's a warrant for their arrest. You know, you maybe just want to communicate that information. Maybe she has some relationship with this person that is not an attorney-client relationship, but maybe she knows him and wants to say, hey, you know what? I heard that there's

Starting point is 00:05:09 a warrant out there. You might want to contact law enforcement and get yourself in and processed on the charges. But to take it the next step that you're telling someone to get rid of evidence, I mean, that's a crime under any circumstance circumstance and that's why i kind of want to know um what the evidence of that that activity is because if you're just going on the guy who who is who she told that had the warrant and to dispose of the phone if you just go by what he's saying um i think that's problematic for the prosecution because you're going to have a guy who's trying to get himself out from under what looks to be a shooting or some other serious criminal activity. And maybe he's just trying to throw somebody under the bus to help himself. And I was wondering about that. If we've got somebody who's a snitch and who's like,

Starting point is 00:05:59 I can get myself out of trouble by giving you this lawyer who I know you probably don't like very much because she's all over the place. She's on social media. She's kind of like thumbing her nose at the system and a little bit, you know, she's she's flamboyant. And there are people like that. She is charged with criminal solicitation to commit the offense of tampering with evidence. So this potentially could have helped her client. I don't know that, but I'm just kind of reading kind of where this could go. So maybe it helps the guy she's calling. And I'm assuming they have a phone record of that because they can easily subpoena phone records. So maybe they have this phone call. Maybe they have that to corroborate whatever the person who made the call told them if they even said that. So is there a tampering with evidence? Do you see that as possibly a charge that could be an easier one to get a conviction on than participation in criminal street gang activity, which seems

Starting point is 00:07:05 a little bit more, I don't know, like a tougher sell. Yeah, that seems like it's a bit over the top to me that participating in gang activity. But, you know, oftentimes the prosecution will overcharge an individual in an attempt to try and negotiate something down the road for, you know, something either in between or a lesser offense. And that's what they may be doing here. But again, I'm troubled with, I need to know what they're relying on on this solicitation to fabricate evidence or tamper with evidence in this case. You know, I tell young lawyers, you know, that are starting out and they kind of want to get in the game and they want to get involved in big cases that the world of criminal defense can sometimes be a bit murky as far as the characters that you're involved with and representing in these types of cases, you know, drug offenses, these gang situations. So I tell young lawyers to be very, very careful when you're dealing with clients or friends of goes from, you know, somebody who's a hanger

Starting point is 00:08:26 on of a client who ends up getting jammed up on his own. And then there's nothing bigger than to throw the prosecution at attorney, you know, someone who has crossed the line. I'm not saying that this person has done that in this case, but she's certainly charged with that. And the prosecution likes nothing better than to take the legs out of an attorney, especially someone who seems to be flamboyant, seems to be kind of, you know, maybe rubbing the nose of law enforcement into this a little bit. So I tell lawyers, be careful all the time, because this is not something this is something that happens frequently. And on social media, she is on there and there are videos of her bragging about winning acquittals for clients, getting cases tossed out or what have you.

Starting point is 00:09:16 And she has a reputation for representing people who are accused of being involved in gang activity. She's representing currently somebody accused of being involved in the whole Young Thug YSL gang. YSL says for their part, we're not a gang, we're a recording label. You're trying to say we're some big organized crime RICO organization. We just make rap music. That case, of course, for her client has been severed from the big main YSL young thug trial that's going on right now. But she is somebody who's out there all over social media, kind of bragging about wins that she gets for her clients. And that doesn't always go over well with prosecutors and with cops. Yeah, I mean, there's kind of a thin line between putting yourself out there and promoting yourself and marketing yourself to get more work.

Starting point is 00:10:19 And again, a lot of young lawyers are faced with that issue. You know, I'm young. I just won a case. And now I want to tell the whole world that I won a case. And now I want to tell the whole world, you know, that I won a case. And again, there's a fine line between just putting the result out on your social media platforms, or getting some media coverage and being quoted as, you know, you kind of quote, that was a tough case, we had a tough fight. But to take the next step and to start rubbing people's noses in victories, you're going to put a target on your back. And you're going to have to face whatever consequences there are if you lean into some of these gray areas with some of these clients. Sometimes you bring the problem to yourself. We'll get you back to Crime Fix in just a sec.

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Starting point is 00:11:41 In Florida, they had one for $12 million. It was 34 times the highest insurance offer. In Philly, Morgan & Morgan won a $26 million verdict. That was 40 times the highest insurance offer. And in New York, they won a $6.8 million verdict. That won a whopping 25 times the highest insurance offer. There are no upfront fees. It's free to submit a claim and you only pay if you win. Log on to www.forthepeople.com slash crime fix or click the link in the description. We should mention she's been arrested on warrants. She hasn't been indicted by a grand jury, but that could be coming. Her attorney,

Starting point is 00:12:26 Renee Rockwell, has told some media outlets, and we have a call out to her, but haven't heard back yet, that she is completely innocent of these charges. So she has been arrested on warrants. She hasn't been, you know, this case hasn't been presented to a grand jury, but we know how low the bar is for obtaining a grand jury indictment. What is the ethical line or what is the, I mean, is there a crime in calling somebody Fortunato when you hear about information and saying to somebody, and we don't know the exact wording that was used. We don't know any of that stuff. But calling somebody after you've been in a hearing and finding out information and just saying, hey, I heard some information in a hearing that is in an open courtroom for the public to listen and for the media to report on. I don't see any evidence of a crime with simply telling someone, hey, you know, I was in court today and there's a warrant for you for X, Y, Z. And you might want to reach out to your attorney if you don't have one. I have a couple of names of some

Starting point is 00:13:45 people i can send you to and get yourself in get get yourself in get yourself processed because you know it's a dangerous world we live in and and you know when when law enforcement are executing um a a warrant uh an arrest warrant for someone who's involved in the allegations are violent um you know sometimes mistakes are made and people are injured. So it's always better, in my view, to get people in to law enforcement when there's a warrant, because you can only run and hide so far. So get in, get processed. I see no problem with that whatsoever. But now the next step is to get rid of evidence in the case. That's a crime. If they can prove it, that's certainly a crime.

Starting point is 00:14:26 And if they can prove that she told him or advised him to dispose of his phone, because it might be evidence that he was involved. There's no doubt about it. If they can prove that fact, that's a crime. Without question. What do you think they have to, I mean, I'm asking you to speculate here, participating in gang activity, that makes it sound like almost like she is a part of a gang in some respect. I don't see that based on what I've read about this situation. You know, could you take it down the road and put her on trial for that? Maybe it depends on what she's doing.

Starting point is 00:15:08 I mean, I've seen circumstances over all the years I've been doing this where, you know, lawyers are helping drug clients launder money through accounts and things like that, claiming it's a fee and all kinds of stuff. So I don't know. But I think that's a reach. I think that charge of being involved in gang activity, I think that's a reach here. Well, we will keep a close eye on it and see where it goes from here. Fortunato Perry, thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate it as always. It's my pleasure. And that's it for this edition of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with us. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Until then, have a great night. You can download Crime Fix on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your favorite

Starting point is 00:15:53 podcasts and new episodes post each weeknight at 6 Eastern time on Law and Crime's YouTube channel. Daniel Camacho does our video editing. Our head of social media is Bobby Zoki. Our senior director of social media is Vanessa Vine. Savannah Williamson is one of our producers. Diane Kay and Alyssa Fisher book our guests. And Brad Mabey is our audio editor.

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - YSL Lawyer Arrested on Gang Charge Over Alleged Instruction to Destroy Evidence

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - YSL Lawyer Arrested on Gang Charge Over Alleged Instruction to Destroy Evidence

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