Legal News

Report: In Wake of Ticket Incident, Lerach Moving to New Prison

By Dan Slater

Bill Lerach — the plaintiffs lawyer who’s serving out a two-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to participating in a scheme to pay kickbacks to lead plaintiffs — ran into trouble earlier this summer when he was apparently caught out offering his San Diego Chargers season tickets to a guard at Lompoc, a fence-less men’s camp outside Santa Barbara.

In a report last week, the Recorder’s Dan Levine noted that, should a formal administrative proceeding go against Lerach, he’d likely be forbidden from returning to the camp, and would instead be placed in a higher-security facility. Today, on his Legal Pad blog, Levine follows up on Lerach. According to the Bureau of Prisons, Lerach’s been transferred to a medium-security institution in Phoenix. Though BOP officials don’t comment on disciplinary transfers, writes Levine, it’s safe to assume Lerach’s reassignment stems from the ticket incident.

Lerach’s new home, says Levine, is two notches of security above that of Lompoc. Medium-security prisons “have strengthened perimeters (often double fences with electronic detection systems)” and “mostly cell-type housing.”

Lawyers at Keker & Van Nest, as well as Lerach’s wife, did not immediately return Levine’s e-mail seeking comment.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 17, 2008 (boomark / email).