NH Lawyer gets suckered

[WithoutAPaddle]

Any word on who it was?

NH lawyer out $240,000 for online scam

Saturday, July 17, 2010

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Officials say a New Hampshire attorney is out $240,000 after falling for an online scam.

The New Hampshire Attorney General's Office says the lawyer agreed through e-mail to deposit a check from someone claiming to be from a company in China. When the bank notified him the money was available, the attorney wired $240,000 — about half of what he had received in the first place — to an account held by a "supplier" of the company.

Assistant Attorney General Karen Gorham says the check was later deemed bogus and that the attorney, who is not being named, is now liable because people are responsible for checks they deposit.

The New Hampshire Bar Association has posted a message on its website warning that sophisticated scams are targeting lawyers.

Nice, how they hide his identity, just like they used to do with the New Hampshire Supreme Court's "secret docket" about a decade ago.

[antijingoist]

oh, it's all just ones and zeros anyway.

[Tom Sawyer]

The saying "You can't con an honest man" comes to mind. 

[Lance]

Similar scams snagged several hundreds of thousands of dollars from law firms in southern Missouri a couple years ago. 

I can't recall if they named names.

Any word on who it was?

Inquiring Minds want to know.

Nice, how they hide his identity, just like they used to do with the New Hampshire Supreme Court's "secret docket" about a decade ago.

Got a link or a quick summary?  I'd like to know about that.

[WithoutAPaddle]

Got a link or a quick summary?  I'd like to know about that.

I just Googled a few relevant terms and found this on a website called: The Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press:

Secret Justice
Secret Dockets

In New Hampshire, a secret docket called "Special Matters Confidential" kept cases involving the conduct and discipline of judges and attorneys off the public docket. From its inception by the clerk of court in 1985 until its elimination in 2000, 446 cases were hidden on the SMC docket.

Peter DeVere, a highway safety activist, exposed the secret docket after a trial court dismissed his civil complaint against New Hampshire Supreme Court Justice Linda S. Dalianis. When the court dismissed his case, which alleged that Dalianis had an improper low-digit license plate, it ordered that DeVere could not disclose his complaint. When DeVere appealed the gag order, the court labeled his case SMC-003 and placed it on the secret docket.

DeVere requested to see the SMC docket. In the course of reviewing all cases placed on the SMC docket, the court made 344, or 77 percent, of the 446 cases that appeared on the SMC docket public. According to a report by the state supreme court, "the assignment of many matters to the SMC docket was unnecessary because there was no requirement that the cases be kept confidential."

As a result, the court eliminated the secret docket. On July 1, 2001, the supreme court changed its rules to require that all "docketed entries . . . be available for public inspection unless otherwise ordered by the court."

But even when dockets are available to the public, some parties request to proceed anonymously. In John Doe v. Connecticut Bar Examining Committee, the trial court granted a motion to proceed anonymously, which was filed by an applicant who had been rejected by the state bar. The applicant argued that the confidentiality afforded to bar admission proceedings should extend to judicial proceedings. The state supreme court disagreed, finding that motions to proceed anonymously are granted rarely and that the applicant's desire to avoid embarrassment, economic loss or preserve relationships was insufficient to overcome the presumption of openness to judicial proceedings.

[WithoutAPaddle]

Got a link or a quick summary?  I'd like to know about that.

I just Googled a few relevant terms and found this on a website called: The Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press:

Secret Justice
Secret Dockets....the court eliminated the secret docket. On July 1, 2001, the supreme court changed its rules to require that all "docketed entries . . . be available for public inspection unless otherwise ordered by the court."

I'm not sure how much good a requirement that says that "docketed entries... be available for public inspection" does when followed by a limitation that effectively says, "except when they are not available for public inspection"

Some of my relatives are involved in a twenty-year old New Hampshire Probate docket in which the Register of Probate or one of his assistants erased the computerized docket log back around 2006, and the files for the most recent several years have always since been in the personal  custody of the Probate Judge or the Deputy Register whenever I have tried to see them and are not ordinarily available to the public.

Last I knew, this docket was about fifteen years delinquent on paying about $250,000 in estate taxes to the Department of Revenue and the DRA had calculated interest and penalties plus principal through February of 1999 to be over $500,000, yet the Probate Court allowed the Administrator's bond to be discharged when he became ill without having received any kind of written release from the DRA.

[Lance]

Got a link or a quick summary?  I'd like to know about that.

I just Googled a few relevant terms and found this on a website called: The Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press:

Secret Justice
Secret Dockets....the court eliminated the secret docket. On July 1, 2001, the supreme court changed its rules to require that all "docketed entries . . . be available for public inspection unless otherwise ordered by the court."

I'm not sure how much good a requirement that says that "docketed entries... be available for public inspection" does when followed by a limitation that effectively says, "except when they are not available for public inspection"

Some of my relatives are involved in a twenty-year old New Hampshire Probate docket in which the Register of Probate or one of his assistants erased the computerized docket log back around 2006, and the files for the most recent several years have always since been in the personal  custody of the Probate Judge or the Deputy Register whenever I have tried to see them and are not ordinarily available to the public.

Last I knew, this docket was about fifteen years delinquent on paying about $250,000 in estate taxes to the Department of Revenue and the DRA had calculated interest and penalties plus principal through February of 1999 to be over $500,000, yet the Probate Court allowed the Administrator's bond to be discharged when he became ill without having received any kind of written release from the DRA.

I'm sure it's all for your own good.



Thanks for the info on the SMC docket.  Just amazing.

[WithoutAPaddle]

Second sucker identified...

Former Montgomery malpractice lawyer sentenced to 5 years for bilking clients
 
By Dan Morse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 24, 2010

A former Montgomery County malpractice lawyer who stole more than $1 million in client funds before he was cheated by an e-mail scam was sentenced to five years in prison Monday by a judge who called the case "a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions."

The sentence, imposed in a hearing that shed light on how the $385,000 e-mail scam unfolded, was longer than recommended by state guidelines. It will send Bradley Schwartz, 62, to the state prison system, widely considered harsher than Montgomery's jail.
Circuit Court Judge Steven G. Salant said he wanted to send a message of deterrence. He said Schwartz, who had a longtime gambling problem and spent some of the money at Atlantic City casinos, has besmirched the reputation of lawyers throughout the state.

"He exploited a position of trust," Salant said. "I want to make it very clear that most of the 35,000 some-odd attorneys in the state of Maryland are very hard-working men and women who are honest and ethical. . . . It hurts me to think that when the community, when the public, looks at us, they're going to be looking at what the defendant did here."

Schwartz probably won't have to serve all five years. Maryland gives nonviolent offenders an early chance at parole, and Schwartz will be eligible within 15 months.

His attorney, Thomas L. Heeney, argued in court Monday for a shorter sentence to take into account Schwartz's health problems, the humiliation he has felt and the fact that a state lawyers fund has repaid most of Schwartz's victims and will repay the rest.

"I suggest he be allowed to go home today," Heeney said. "The pound of flesh has already been extracted." Schwartz graduated from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1973. His practice focused on medical malpractice and personal injury litigation. He gained a reputation around the courthouse as a likable lawyer, said Rockville lawyers who know him.

According to letters of support sent to the judge, Schwartz suffered for much of his life from depression, which overwhelmed him after the death of his wife in 1998 from polycystic kidney disease. "When his anchor died, he lost all stability," Heeney wrote in a memo to the judge.

Schwartz also had arthritis in his spine, sleep apnea, lymphoma and trigeminal neuralgia, which causes intense, shooting pain to the left side of his face.

At some point, Schwartz began dipping into a client escrow account. In many cases, money due one client was used to pay another. By late 2008, the scheme had been going on for years.

On Dec.3, 2008, Schwartz received an e-mail from a man who identified himself as Patrick Chan of Matilda Manufacturing, a purported Singapore manufacturer. Chan proposed that Schwartz help the company collect debts in the United States and offered to send Schwartz a retainer. Schwartz was sent a cashier's check for $385,000 and deposited it.

The scam was also perpetrated on other lawyers in the country.

The man named Chan intended to get Schwartz to send part of the money back before Schwartz realized the $385,000 was phony.

Schwartz, though, started writing checks off the new funds to clients, hoping to cover his losses. Those checks soon bounced, M&T Bank started looking into it and authorities were called, according to court records.

Over the past 1 1/2 years, Schwartz cooperated with investigators, wrote letters of apology to clients and helped tell them how to get reimbursed by the Client Protection Fund of the Bar of Maryland. He wrote a confessional letter to the Maryland Attorney Grievance Commission.

"I always thought that I eventually would be able to pay it back," Schwartz told the judge Monday. "But the grave became deeper and deeper. I just could not climb out of it."

Another sucker.   Given that the lawyer was taking money from one client account to replace money in another, the million dollar figure cited  in the opening sentence probably is just the sum of the amounts of money withdrawn from the accounts.  The actual, net amount taken might be relatively small.  Or it might not.  Regardless, I consider the penalty, five years in what one might call "hard labor" is punitive. 

The article says the lawyer was a medical malpractice attorney.   They often make mortal enemies in the legal community.  All the medical malpractice underwriters pay big annual retainers to big name law firms with prestigious, "of counsel" heavyweights on their letterheads to get them favoritism in trials.  When a medical malpractice attorney prevails, it is sometimes humiliating to the establishment law firm that represented the defendent, so successful medical malpractice attorneys are often scorned and persecuted by the legal establishment.  I think this attorney might be getting screwed by the system for being a successful medical malpractice attorney.

[FreelanceFreedomFighter]

Circuit Court Judge Steven G. Salant said {the lawyer} has besmirched the reputation of lawyers throughout the state.

"He exploited a position of trust," Salant said. "I want to make it very clear that most of the 35,000 some-odd attorneys ... are very hard-working men and women who are honest and ethical.

    oh...oh... It hurts when I laugh this hard... oh... I needed that, but... oh... I can't catch my breath! oh...


whew...

oh no...     

[AntonLee]

I had to laugh at that too

[error]

Setting aside the lawyer stealing from his clients for a moment, the scam where somebody sends a very large check and asks you to wire back part of it is a very common one, and not at all limited to lawyers. It was making the rounds on Craigslist for a while. I guess the scammers figured they could steal more money by scamming lawyers.

[FreelanceFreedomFighter]

awww... c'mon... you gotta laugh at the notion that a LAWYER could besmirch the reputation of LAWYERS!

As if they have any sort of decent reputation to begin with...

(In the interests of full disclosure: I have both lawyers and para-legals in my immediate family. Oh... and I give them the schit they deserve every damn day!  )