Yet another lawyer is alleged to have stolen money from clients January 29, 2009
Posted by tsclaw2209 in News.Tags: Crime, Fraud, Law, money laundering, News
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Steven Rondos, a New York attorney that lives in New Jersey is accused of stealing over 4.7 million from his clients. As if people didn’t hate attorneys enough, he allegedly stole from people with physical or mental disabilities; people he was suppose to help as their appointed guardian.
He is charged with money laundering, grand larceny and scheme to defraud. Another problem he has is that his best bargaining chip, money that he can pay back to the alleged victims, may already be frozen because a civil suit has also been filed against him and his wife (who is also his law partner in the firm Raia & Rondos). However, his wife will probably not be charged. It seems that the Government is pretty confident that they can find the money.
He also faces charges in New Jersey. Attorney David Frankel represents him in New York while Daniel A. D’Alessandro (who does not seem to practice criminal law, let alone white collar crime) represents him with regard to charges he may be facing in New Jersey. Based upon his New Jersey attorney’s statements, it seems like they are already working on a plea deal where they just throw him on the mercy of the court and blame everything on depression and other mental illnesses.
In these cases, attorneys are held to a higher standard and when you take advantage of victims who are more or less helpless, you are looking at a very tough sentence. I fully expect this case to plea out and plea out sooner rather than later; or without extensive litigation. With money frozen, he may not even have the money to litigate this case if he wanted to. He would probably need at least $1,000,000 to litigate both cases from start to finish and I doubt he has it.
NY Times article is here.
White Collar Crime News 
Lovely. Great site.