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Is "Pilfering Millions" an Oxymoron?

By Lynne DeVenny

By now you may have seen the strange story of Canadian ex-paralegal Shellee Spinks, who has received a four-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to 16 criminal charges surrounding the theft of $2.6 million from clients. Robert Mongue covered the story at The Empowered Paralegal blog in his recent post, "Attorney Supervision of Paralegals".

The Law.com headline "Lawyer says he couldn't have stopped paralegal's pilfering" makes me scratch my head a little in itself. By definition pilfering means stealthily stealing small amounts. Spinks appears to have helped herself quite openly to staggering amounts of cash.

The fact that Michael Puskas, the lawyer who used her as an independent contractor for real estate transactions, thinks he couldn't have done anything about this paralegal's, er, pilfering really makes me scratch my head.

Really?

Puskas says he had an "arms-length" relationship with Spinks from 2002 through 2008, but according to the news article, he admitted borrowing $240,000 from her - which he never paid back. Listen, peeps, we'd have to be pretty tight for me to loan you that amount, even with two or three less zeroes. And I'd be pretty darned curious about your income flow, if you were a paralegal willing and able to loan a couple hundred thousand dollars to me.

The article says, "Puskas says he hopes to put the whole affair behind him."

I bet.

Spinks' nefarious actions, including representing herself as a lawyer, stealing from the elderly, and forging a will, could have happened anywhere in the world. But Ontario Superior Court Justice Barry Matheson is right to wonder how it happened and went undetected so long here. I hope the Law Society of Upper Canada directs more than a few pointed questions to Puskas in its investigation of his role in this affair.

I'd love to hear the answers.

Source: Law Times

Full post as published by Practical Paralegalism on August 22, 2010 (boomark / email).