Judge: Bill Lerach Sentence "Way Too Lenient"

Bill Lerach, the plaintiffs' class action lawyer who served two years in prison after pleading guilty for his role in an alleged decades-long conspiracy pursuant to which serial plaintiffs were paid kickbacks to file securities fraud suits, has been denied a request to fulfill some of his mandated 1,000 hours of community service by teaching a class at the University of California/Irvine Law School. In denying the request, U.S. District Judge John Walter cited Lerach's apparent lack of remorse for his crimes, and in retrospect would have sentenced the now-disbarred convicted attorney to a longer prison term as reported by Amanda Bronstad for The National Law Journal:

Walter then cited several recent newspaper articles in which Lerach appeared to indicate that he wouldn't have done anything differently, despite having served a prison sentence, and that the case was simply a "political prosecution." Lerach "still denies that he did anything wrong," Walter said. "He misled and fooled the court into believing he had remorse at the time of his sentencing." Walter said that he now believes the sentence was "way too lenient" and regretted having accepted Lerach's plea deal.

Others involved in the alleged scheme included some of Lerach's colleagues, including Mel Weiss, from then-firm Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman.

NY Post---June 3, 2008

"Mel Weiss was widely recognized as the king of the plaintiffs' securities bar," said a former federal prosecutor. Weiss, Lerach and their counterparts engineered cases and paid litigants to sue that forced companies to pay $45 billion.........and damaged millions of stockholders.

Mel Weiss, co-founder and chief trial counsel for the securities law firm Milberg LLP, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for illegally paying clients to file shareholder suits that prosecutors said earned $251 million in lawyer fees. Weiss pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, admitting he helped secretly pay a stable of plaintiffs to file suits 1979-2005. By using them to sue first, the firm was more likely to lead cases and reap larger fees.

The sentence, along with a similar prison term for Weiss' ex-partner, Bill Lerach, caps a victory for the Justice Department in its effort to combat shareholder litigation and the two men who pioneered the modern securities fraud class action.

Milberg became so feared by corporations that Congress passed a law making it harder to file such suits. Weiss's former law firm dropped him from its name when he pleaded guilty. Lerach made a plea deal in a scheme prosecutors alleged involved kickback payments to plaintiffs in class action lawsuits he and his former law firm brought. Court papers say that the two employed the scheme for more than two decades in 150 cases that brought their firm more than $200 million in fees (that we know of).

The Milberg Weiss law firm was indicted on conspiracy, mail fraud and money laundering charges in May 2006. In Lerach's agreement to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge, Justice Department lawyers agreed not to prosecute him over "election, campaign, or other political contributions" related to shady donations to the John Edwards campaign.

SAME MODUS OPERANDI AS LERACH/WEISS Among the lowlifes attacking TEA Parties as racist Hate Groups is Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

So who is this little twerp and where does he come from? Dees is phony race hustler who used to defend the Klan but switched sides for the money involved in fleecing sappy liberals. He labels patriotic groups as Hate Groups and liberals throw money at him. It makes them feel good.

As George Wallace’s Coordinator of Youth Activities Dees worked to elect the noted segregationist in 1958. In 1961, as Dees has written he, “… didn’t think twice” when a Klansman accused of murdering an innocent Black man asked him to be his lawyer. Dees was so eager to take the case he accepted just $500.00 which even in rural Alabama in 1961 was a ridiculously low fee for a murder trial. Dees won the bigot an acquittal.

At 26 Dees was considered a “Klan lawyer” and racist enough to be a candidate for office in Alabama running on the States’s Rights Party. In 1972 Dees, who … had a national reputation as a great direct mail fund raiser, was for some reason asked by George McGovern to run his campaign’s national direct mail fund raising operation. Dees took one look at the 700,000 names on McGovern’s mailing list and became a liberal!

He was so eager to get the list he agreed to take the job for nothing if he could keep the list… He has been fleecing liberals by calling us haters ever since. (Excerpt) Read more at coachisright.com ...

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By 2007 the “non-profit” SPLC had amassed $190 million dollars making it one of the most profitable “non-profits” in America.

Can SPLC produce records on how they spent tax-exempt money? Oh, nevermind. The IRS, SEC, FBI, Congress and the GAO can find out (/snix).

SCAM-A-RAMA Morris Seligman Dees, Jr. is co-founder and chief trial counsel for the tax-exempt Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Dees was one of the principal architects of an innovative strategy of using civil lawsuits to secure a court judgment for money damages against an organization for a wrongful act and then use the courts to seize its assets (money, land, buildings, other property) to pay the judgment.

FBI TIP PAGE http://tips.fbi.gov/ (you may remain anonymous)

The IRS should determine if all income was reported and whether all relevant taxes were paid (stolen money is taxable).
IRS TOLL-FREE 1-800-829-0433 (you may remain anonymous when reporting possible tax fraud).

L/E needs to determine whether collusion and conspiracy to collude occured. For example, SPLC officers may have committed government fraud and may have integrated schemes such as:

(a) misusing reserve accounts, (b) concealing losses, (c) inflating asset values and (d) improperly accounting for transactions, as well as (e) diverting monies into reserve accounts, (f) improperly shifting govt funding to other projects to hide illegal payments, (g) engaging in money laundering schemes, (h) evading IRS, FEC, and US banking laws, and (i) engaging in illegal conversions)

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REFERENCE----ANIMAL RIGHTS SHAKEDOWN America's farmers, ranchers, hunters, fishermen, research scientists, fashion designers, and restaurateurs have seen for decades how the animal rights movement is like a mobbed-up shakedown racket.

A Federal judge ruled "animal rights defendants" collaborated to bribe a "barn helper" w/ $190,000 in exchange for his impeached testimony. A "nonprofit charity"---called the Wildlife Advocacy Project---- was used to funnel the money from a law firm to the bribed plaintiff.

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