Legal News

Lawyer Pleas in Case Charging that He Bilked Firm and Clients

By Jamie Heller

UPDATE: Latham & Watkins has confirmed that Samuel Fishman, who pleaded guilty today to bilking clients and his firm, worked at Latham. Here is the firm’s statement:

“As reflected in the statements from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, our firm discovered the issues relating to Mr. Fishman in 2005, immediately acted to protect our clients fully, and disclosed the matter to appropriate law enforcement authorities. Mr. Fishman resigned from the firm at the time the issues were discovered. Since that time, we have cooperated fully with the investigation,” said David Gordon, Latham & Watkins’ New York office managing partner.

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Here’s an update on our earlier post about Samuel A. Fishman, the lawyer who was at major firm and was alleged to have charged clients and the law firm hundreds of thousands of dollars for personal and non-existent business expenses. He has pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and is slated to be sentenced in June. (Our thanks to Chad Bray of the Dow Jones Newswires, who is at the courthouse.)

Here is the criminal information.

The criminal information and papers from the U.S. attorney’s office say Fishman, 50 of New Jersey (age corrected from an earlier version), was a lawyer in the corporate department of a major U.S. law firm with offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia. SEC documents show a Samuel A. Fishman was a lawyer at Latham & Watkins. It was not confirmed whether they were the same person. The law firm did not return several calls and emails this afternoon seeking comment.

The criminal information says that, upon discovering the scheme, the law firm reimbursed its clients hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses.

The information says Fishman was the billing partner for a number of the firm’s institutional clients, including clients in banking, utilities, telecommunications and entertainment. From 1993 through 2005, it says, Fishman mischaracterized on invoices certain expenses, such as non-reimbursable meals and parking fees, as reimbursable expenses, such as photocopying and express mail, amounting to more than $200,000 of mischaracterized expenses. He also sent client invoices that inflated actual costs to the firm, amounting to $100,000 of non-existent expenses, the information says. It says that he also falsely represented personal expenses, such as hotel bills, as reimbursable business expenses.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 28, 2008 (boomark / email).