Former Lawyer Pleads Guilty to $4 Million Wire Fraud Where Clients Were Conned Via Forged Judges'

[TexasTowelie]

Former Lawyer Pleads Guilty to $4 Million Wire Fraud Where Clients Were Conned Via Forged Judges’ Signatures and Fake Phone Calls


LOS ANGELES – A former California attorney has pleaded guilty to one felony count of wire fraud for falsely representing to his clients that he obtained favorable legal resolutions for them, and then perpetuating the scheme by delivering clients fraudulent documents, some with the forged signatures of judges, and by making disguised telephone calls to them.

Shant Ohanian, 36, of Pasadena, entered his plea on Thursday before United States District Judge John A. Kronstadt, who scheduled a September 12 sentencing hearing. Ohanian faces a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.

According to his plea agreement, Ohanian was a licensed California lawyer from January 2012 until he was disbarred in December 2017. Beginning in May 2012, Ohanian and his co-conspirator engaged in a scheme to defraud Ohanian’s clients by claiming he obtained favorable legal resolutions for them, when in fact the favorable resolutions had never been obtained, and, in many cases, Ohanian had never initiated a legal action, court papers state. In some cases, Ohanian’s deception caused his victim clients to entirely lose their opportunity to obtain significant financial or legal remedies as a result of wrongs suffered by them, according to court documents.

Ohanian admitted in his plea agreement to defrauding multiple victims, including one victim who hired Ohanian in July 2013 to assist in the recovery of a $500,000 deposit related to a failed commercial real estate transaction for an Ontario shopping center. During the course of that litigation, Ohanian falsely informed the victim that the victim had prevailed in the case and would receive $1.2 million in damages plus penalties, the plea agreement states.

Read more: https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/former-lawyer-pleads-guilty-4-million-wire-fraud-where-clients-were-conned-forged

[ret5hd]

1. Uhhhh...WHY???

This has to be the most idiotic "scheme" (really, can one honestly elevate this to "scheme" level???) that I have heard of. A middle-schooler could do better. A drunk, meth-addled, high school dropout could do better.

What could have been any other possible outcome???