The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "lawyer fraud" ...
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Bales: Army suspect in Afghan shooting was liable in financial fraud
On the day that tips arose about a U.S. soldier who may have strafed two Afghan villages, I left the office for a flight to Tacoma. Within 48 hours of the soldier’s being identified as Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, I and two colleagues broke the news that the emerging hagiography of Bales drafted by family and attorneys had more to it than the story of a soldier who enlisted at the ripe of 27 driven by outrage over the 2001 terrorist attacks—and then broken down by an unrelenting cycle of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Our story started with pure spidey senses: Bales’ s family and lawyer said he had left a stockbroker’s career to enlist, as they explained his call to serve. Yet he had not finished college and clearly had financial troubles, I had determined. And he was active in brokerage in the late 1990s in Florida I learned by checking assorted online records—which raised my suspicions about the quick-money penny stock trading that was commonplace then. Based on those instincts, while also doing the running daily story from Bales’ Army base in Washington state, I had checked some online brokerage records and enlisted Julie Tate to look at others and run through civil and criminal filings in Ohio (Bales’s home state and then nationally). Within an hour, I had found one suspicious record and Julie had found others and we were off on a 30-hour run of investigative reporting and boots on the ground interviews that yielded the breaking news of Bales’s more complicated—and less laudatory—past in the period just before he joined the Army. We located and I interviewed an elderly couple who had lost substantial savings in accounts managed by Bales and received copies of detailed financial records that corroborated their claims and showed Bales as the account manager. We also peeled back corporate records for a now-shuttered firm run by Bales and his brother with backing from a longtime friend and reached him to further flesh out the checkered professional history of the Staff Sgt. at the center of an explosive, fast-moving and intensely competitive story. The story demanded intense investigative reporting that netted notable results in far far less than 30 days of a breaking event.
Tags: U.S. soldier; Afghanistan; military draft; terrorist attacks; deployment
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D.C. Tax Office Scandal
The District of Columbia struck an unprecedented number of deals behind closed doors this year with prominent commercial property owners who had appealed their tax assessments, reducing the city's tax base by $2.6 billion. The settlements were kept from the public for months until The Washington Post started mining public records and filing FOIAs, which the city routinely denied until the newspaper's lawyers got involved. The Post also learned that city leaders had kept critical internal audits about the tax office in "draft" format to prevent their release under FOIA. Through sources, The Post obtained the undisclosed reports -- along with a dozen other audits that had been kept from public view -- and published the findings for the first time. The series prompted the City Council to change the law to require the tax office to immediately make public all of its reports -- bringing a new level of transparency to a once secretive agency. The Securities and Exchange Commission also launched a probe to see if the city had kept critical findings from audits used to determine bond ratings. The inquiry is ongoing.
Tags: tax fraud; taxes; taxpayers; tax office
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Crash Course
A popular Florida referral service company had been attracting customers injured in car accidents. The company had been exploiting Florida's "no-fault" auto insurance law to mislead it's customers into giving money to a network of chiropractors and lawyers that pocketed their money.
Tags: fraud; scam; auto insurance; lawyer fraud
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Scott Rothstein's Ponzi scheme
A group of reporters from the Sun Sentinel followed the demise of former Fort Lauderdale lawyer Scott Rothstein. Rothstein, once a wealthy political contributor, ran a "$1.2 billion Ponzi scheme" and fled the country after "millions of dollars" were found "missing." The reporters provide an in-depth look at how Rothstein pulled off the scam.
Tags: investment; scam; fraud; Florida; Fort Lauderdale; Rosenfeldt; Adler; lawyer
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Justice Unserved: The Scott Saloman Investigation
"Scott Salomon was a criminal lawyer who sought out high-profile clients and loved media attention. But I found more than 70 clients across the country who felt he took large, upfront retainers and then did little or nothing for them. Salomon caused many of them to face ruinous results - from loss of child visitations to loss of homes. Salomon would even try to leverage their dire circumstances to get even more money out of his clients.
Tags: criminal law; Salomon; fraud; Florida; indictments; federal grand jury;
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Lawyers' bills to state don't add up
"The stories revealed that North Carolina's system for paying appointed lawyers is vulnerable to financial errors and abuse. One lawyer had repeatedly double-billed. On more than 50 occasions, he submitted multiple bills for expenses such as travel time, mileage and parking for what records indicated were single jail visits. Other lawyers had charged for visits that don't appear in jail records."
Tags: False report; Indigent Defense Services; Mecklenburg Country Sheriff; fraud; state appointed lawyers
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Jay Sekulow's Golden Ticket
How Jay Sekulow, a leading lawyer of the Christian right, used funds donated to the American Center for Law and Justice, a nonprofit organization, to benefit himself and his family. The story revealed that ACLJ and affiliated organizations under his or his family's control paid more than $2 million for residences for Sekulow, as well as additional funds for planes and bodyguards, and that he "outsourced" his own legal services in ways that obscured his actual salary.
Tags: nonprofit; lawyer; legal services; ACLJ; American Center for Law and Justice; Jay Sekulow; Christian Right; fraud
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"Dr. Buzzard"
Gary Karpin billed himself to citizens of Arizona as a "divorce mediator" and former prosecutor. He was actually a disbarred lawyer from Vermont. Thousands of people flocked to his offices hoping for quick and relatively painless divorces. Over 300 eventually filed complaints against him, and the Maricopa County Attorney's office filed charges against him on 16 counts of theft and fraud.
Tags: Fraud; legal advice; divorce
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Personal Politics
Thirty nine states have lawmakers who meet part time. These lawmakers often pursue other careers, sometimes in sectors that are regulated by the government. The Center for Public Integrity recognized the huge potential for conflicts of interest, if lawmakers end up serving on committees or deciding legislation that could affect their outside interests. The only way to combat the conflict of interest is through full disclosure of lawmakers' private interests, however, many states do not make that information available to the public. But, this project by the Center for Public Integrity does that for them: in two years, reporters used thousands of documents and dozens of interviews to create a database, available online, that includes information on lawmakers; outside interests, as well as the committees they serve on in the legislature.
Tags: transparency; legislative ethics; private companies; lawyers; political fraud; conflict of interest; legislation; state capital; state government
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At fault: Inside the culture of auto insurance fraud
This investigation reveals how auto insurance fraud has pushed premiums for Massachusetts drivers to among the highest in the nation. The series "connected the dots of an epidemic of fraud," from "frequent flyer" accident victims who pretend to suffer injuries in order to collect claims, to staged accidents in which people are recruited to file fraudulent claims, to lawyers and chiropractors who pay "runners" to solicit accident cases and victims of fake claims, to the criminal justice system and insurance companies that have failed to tackle the problem.
Tags: auto insurance fraud; car insurance; bodily injury claims; CAR; computer-assisted reporting