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In a depressing attempt to impress his fellow partners, a United States lawyer will spend the next six years of his life in jail.As reported by Rollonfriday, a former partner at US firm…
In a depressing attempt to impress his fellow partners, a United States lawyer will spend the next six years of his life in jail.
Lawyer Mark McCombs was providing tax and financial advice to the local authorities in the Chicago suburb Calumet Park - also McCombs' hometown - and reportedly charged Calumet Park for a large amount of unperformed legal work. When the fraud was uncovered by local officials, it is alleged that McCombs also offered to pay $100,000 of his own money to make sure the investigation was dropped.
McCombs was immediately fired by Greenberg, which has now paid back $3.2 million of legal fees. The firm said in a statement: "We pledged full cooperation with the investigation and we pledged full restitution of any fees that were not properly billed."
While Folklaw realises the lawyer's overbilling was undoubtedly wrong, the saddest part of the story seems to be the fact that McCombs did not overcharge the client for personal financial benefit, but rather to impress his partners.
According to Rollonfriday, the partner funnelled the money back to his firm, hoping it would improve his standing amongst his fellow partners. While he will certainly be talked about around the water cooler, Folklaw is pretty sure it won't be in a good way.
Last week McCombs started his six-year sentence after pleading guilty to a single count of thieving $100,000 of government money.
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