With the recent scandal surrounding lawyer Dr. Shahrokh Mireskandari allegedly gaining bogus degrees and admitting to consumer fraud, this article looks at other criminal acts of fraud concerning injury lawyers.
In Houston, Texas, a punishment hearing was set in August for former injury lawyer Steven Bearman, who admitted to stealing from a law firm that hired him as he awaited trail on an earlier charge of stealing from clients.

Mr. Bearman aged 44, pleaded guilty to misapplication to fiduciary duty involving over $200,000. Prosecutor Lester Blizzard filed a punishment memorandum listing 46 victims with combined losses of $1.6million.

The first degree crime made Bearman liable for penalties ranging from probation to 99 years in prison. Blizzard, chief of the DA’s Major Fraud Division stated that the lawyer took the client’s money in order to support his lavish lifestyle. Bearman told the customers that their personal injury cases were still active, when in reality; he had settled them and kept all or portions of the settlements. Blizzard commented: “The defendant would listen to his clients' desperate stories about financial hardship and would still steal from them to support his high lifestyle.”

After his release from custody, Bearman was hired at another law firm, but he began stealing from the firm’s trust and operating accounts. Those thefts were used to pay child support and legal bills and repay some earlier victims. Blizzard concluded: “The defendant has committed an offense which reaches at the heart of the justice system," Blizzard's memorandum concluded. "He has taken advantage of this court by continuing criminal conduct while he was on bond.”

Meanwhile, criminal acts involving fraud were also being performed in Virginia too. A Woodbridge attorney pleaded guilty to defrauding his clients out of more than £3.5million. Prosecutors said that Stephen T. Conrad aged 40 pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges in U.S District Court.

Conrad too, was an injury lawyer and studied worker’s compensation cases. Court documents stated that he forged client’s signatures and misappropriated funds coming from insurance companies against which claims were being made.

In a similar story in New York, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau exposed how four injury lawyers and two law firms pleaded guilty to filing false documents with the New York State Office of court Administration (OCA) in an attempt to hide their involvement in paying illegal referral fees to a ‘runner’ who referred cases to them.

The injury lawyers pleaded guilty to filing false OCA retainer statements to conceal their relationship with a separately charged runner, from whom they purchased client referrals. Therefore, as a result, the injury lawyers pleaded guilty to Offering a False Instrument for Filing in the First Degree, a class E crime. In pleading guilty two of the injury lawyers admitted that they intended to defraud the OCA and that they purchased other client referrals from the runner. In addition to their guilty pleas, two of the lawyers had to pay a total of $150,000 in forfeiture, whilst the other two agreed to pay a total of $640,000 in forfeiture.


Catherine has more articles pertaining to injury lawyers as well as other injury claims articles.