It has been five years and one mistrial in the making, but a jury has come to a decision about the collapse of Dewey & LeBoeuf, and it was a split verdict, The New York Times reported today. Joel Sanders, the law firm’s former chief financial officer, was convicted on three criminal counts arising from what prosecutors said was a scheme to hide the firm’s failing finances from its backers. He could be sentenced to up to four years in prison. Stephen DiCarmine, the former executive director, was acquitted of the same charges. Dewey & LeBoeuf, created from the merger of two-storied law firms, once employed more than 1,300 lawyers, but it ran into trouble during the financial crisis. Manhattan prosecutors said that DiCarmine and Sanders had plotted to manipulate the firm’s financial records to defraud banks and insurance companies that had invested in a bond offering. The decision gives Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, some vindication: His office had plowed resources into the case, but the first proceeding was declared a mistrial.
A former chairman of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board is suing his onetime bankruptcy attorney for allegedly under-reporting his state salary and forging his signature on bankruptcy documents, which he said cost him his job with the board, the Cook County (Ill.) Record reported yesterday. Adam Monreal lodged a suit in Cook County Circuit Court against lawyer Al-Haroon Bin Asad Husain and Husain’s law firm, Himont Law Group. Monreal’s two-count suit alleges that Husain committed legal malpractice and unjust enrichment. Monreal has worked as a Cook County assistant state’s attorney, an aide to the Chicago mayor for public safety and as head of the Illinois Department of Insurance Workers’ Compensation Fraud Unit. In 2010, then-Gov. Pat Quinn tapped Monreal to chair the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. Monreal consulted with Husain in early 2011 about filing for bankruptcy and said he “trusted” Husain. Monreal hired Husain, paid a flat fee and turned financial records over to him for use in preparing the bankruptcy filing. According to Monreal, Husain did not properly review the records, but went ahead and filed the bankruptcy papers in May 2011. Monreal alleged that Husain did not go over the papers with him before filing them, and allegedly forged Monreal’s signature. Monreal’s bankruptcy case wrapped up in August 2011. It later came to light that Monreal’s bankruptcy filing listed a significantly lower state salary than he actually earned, forcing Monreal to resign from the prisoner review board in October 2015. Monreal blamed the inaccurate figure on Husain.
A lawyer for former Dewey & LeBoeuf executive director Stephen DiCarmine yesterday sought to inject doubt in the minds of jurors nearing a potential verdict in the long-running criminal case over the firm's demise, the <em>American Lawyer</em> reported. A day after defense lawyers for DiCarmine and former Dewey CFO Joel Sanders told Manhattan acting Supreme Court Justice Robert Stolz they would rest their case without calling witnesses, DiCarmine's lawyer, Rita Glavin of Seward & Kissel, began closing arguments in the three-month-old retrial. Prosecutors accuse DiCarmine and Sanders of misleading lenders and investors about the state of Dewey's financial health before its 2012 collapse.