Lawyers continue to dominate headlines in major fraud and professional misconduct scandals as Marc Drier, the founder of New York firm Drier LLP charged with multiple counts of fraud, was sentenced to 20 years in jail.
Drier was charged with fraud late last year after being found to be impersonating an in-house lawyer. In May he pleaded guilty to conspiracy, money laundering and securities fraud and prosecutors later called for a jail sentence of 145 years. Drier sent a letter to the judge seeking leniency and detailing how "a sense of underachievement" motivated him to build the law firm which grew to 250 lawyers with three offices in just 13 years.
"I had virtually no cash and very few clients, but I was able to grow the firm modestly over the few years by investing my life in it. I had planned poorly, however, for the expenses ... by 2001 I was deeply in debt," he wrote. Drier also accounted how several factors influenced his creation of ponzi schemes to lure money from clients. "Your honour has rightfully observed that as a lawyer I have dishonoured the legal profession, and I am painfully aware of that," he wrote.
Drier's episode comes to an end as Joseph Collins, a lawyer from Mayer Brown's Chicago office, was charged with securities fraud amounting to US$2bn in relation to the bankrupt futures trader Refco, which Collins represented as an external legal advisor.
In Singapore recently, a lawyer who blogged about an ongoing court case was fined for "promoting his view" about witnesses and the merits of the case, while another local lawyer, David Tan Hock Boon, received a five-year sentence last year for his part in a scheme to defraud banks of almost US$700,000.
For lawyers and firms charged with investigating them, the growing number of bankruptcies in the financial crisis can be lucrative. US firm Baker & Hostetler, which was involved in handling the bankruptcy proceedings of the Bernie Madoff scandal, has filed for US$14.9m in fees and expenses associated with its work on the case. Meanwhile Diamond McCarthy, the firm overseeing the bankruptcy proceedings of Drier LLP, has filed US$844,791 in fees and expenses.
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