Monday, December 17, 2012

NJ Lawyer Indicted for Allegedly Stealing $600K

A Mahwah man has been indicted by the Essex County Grand Jury after allegedly stealing over $600,000 from clients of his East Orange Law Office, Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn A. Murray announced in a release Tuesday.

According to Murray, Raymond Roche, 54, a Mahwah resident, was served with a three-count indictment after allegedly stealing settlement checks from his personal injury clients.

Roche faces 20 years in prison if he is convicted of second-degree theft, misapplication of entrusted funds, and first-degree financial facilitation of criminal activity charges, the release said.

Roche, a lawyer with a practice in East Orange, allegedly “accumulated unpaid medical liens on personal injury cases,” Murray said in the release. “He received settlement checks from the insured but failed to pay off the medical liens.”

Roche is accused of depositing the checks into his attorney’s trust fund, and writing checks from the trust account to his law firm, Roche and Associates, in 2006 and 2007, Murray said.

Full Article and Source:
Lawyer Indicted for Allegedly Stealing $600K

3 comments:

Thelma said...

The purpsoe of IOLTA accounts was to avoid attorney comingling of client moneys. So what good are they if they're not monitored closely?

StandUp said...

I don't think IOLTA accounts are monitored at all.

Finny said...

It amazes me, with lawyers knowing how the legal system operates, that they'd do something like this....