How do you protect yourself against someone pretending to be a lawyer?
There are several cases in which someone pretending to be a lawyer had no qualifications.
There are also cases where a lawyer has been disciplined or disbarred, but sets up shop in a different city under a different name.
In March of this year, Howard Kieffer, 53, was accused of impersonating a lawyer in at least 10 different states in the United States. He represented NHL player Michael Danton in a murder conspiracy case. When caught and charged, he decided to hire a real lawyer to represent him.
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Also in the U.S., Harold David Goldstein was a convicted felon who had served time when he decided to masquerade as a lawyer.
He kept up the charade for eight months and won about 25 cases that he took to court. Many clients said he was the best lawyer they’d had. He was sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison.
A 29-year-old Baltimore woman also faked being a lawyer to gain access to prison to see her lover who was serving time. “I did it for love,” she told the judge.
She received three years of probation and was ordered to complete 300 hours of community service.
People get hurt by having unqualified or fake lawyers representing them.
It is more of a problem in larger centres. A new lawyer will be noticed in Cereal, Alta., but won’t even hit someone’s radar in cities like Calgary, Winnipeg or Saskatoon.
In 2006, 48-year-old David Villanueva set up his new law office in downtown Toronto. He got fake ID in the name of David Carter, opened new bank accounts, obtained credit cards, and claimed to be a successful lawyer from Miami, Florida.
He then hired employees, including two lawyers. He targeted clients in vulnerable sectors, mostly recent immigrants, by advertising he was an expert in immigration and workplace safety matters.
Villanueva attempted to attract clients by advertising in ethnic media outlets. He’d collect an initial retainer, but had no trust account, and the money went straight into his pocket. Often, these people had little money.
To keep clients happy, he’d forge letters that were supposed to go to government agencies. He’d use these fake documents to keep people informed of progress made on their cases.
Ultimately, time is the enemy and clients became suspicious when they weren’t seeing results on their cases. By mid-2007, there were complaints to the law society and police.
Sensing his time was limited, Villanueva threw his staff a big Christmas party, gave them a week off and disappeared with the money. He was caught, convicted and sentenced to eight years in jail, but clients did not recover their money.
Could they have protected themselves? In this case, a Toronto detective has been critical of the local law society in not pursuing complaints more aggressively against this fake lawyer.
However, it’s hard to regulate someone who isn’t a member. As well, law societies are not set up to investigate or arrest people for fraud – that remains the role of police services throughout Canada.
In almost every province, a client can check out a lawyer with the law society of that province or territory. Most law societies have lawyer search facilities on their websites.
Type in a lawyer’s name to get basic information back on him or her, including whether they’re licensed to practice and whether there are formal discipline proceedings pending against him.
A phone call to a law society can accomplish the same thing. It’s like phoning the Better Business Bureau. It makes sense to do this with lawyers.
Be a smart and sensible consumer and protect yourself at all times.
Rick Danyliuk is a lawyer with McDougall Gauley LLP in Saskatoon.
