Globally Infamous Cons

There is really no way of knowing whet­her a lawyer standing outside a courtroom is a certified legal professional. In Brooklyn, New York, Mikhail Perlov listed himself as a lawyer on Russian-language portals as well as social-media sites—and would appear in local courts. He would also solicit business from clients and create fake lawsuits, promising the client would win huge sums in court. Perlov was caught once—in 2015, and admitted to having ripped off around 50 ‘clients’ for about $50,000 and was let off after he signed an agreement and returned the money and paid a fine. Last year, he was at it again and now faces up to seven years in prison.

On to the world of entertainment, television series Suits shows law school dropout Mike Ross as a prodigy, who teams up with a law-firm partner named Harvey Spectre. Together, they con people for several seasons bec­ause Ross’ picture-perfect memory makes him appear as an ace lawyer. The fantasy draws the line when he is offered a partnership in Spectre’s firm.

In real life, Kimberly Kitchen did not stop at that. She had worked through several firms, spent a term as the president of the county bar association and been a partner of BMZ Law in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, before her fraud was detected. A bar association official, compiling a list, stumbled upon Kitchen’s enrolment number matching that of another lawyer.

The firm had to go through each and every file she had handled. Kitchen had allegedly forged her bar licence, law degree records claiming she was a topper and bar exam res­ults to become a highly sought-after lawyer. In a decade, she became so powerful in court that the authorities decided to bring in a judge from another county and hand the case over to the state’s attorney, when charges were filed in 2016. Kitchen was ult­imately convicted.

James Patrick Henry was a US cop who posed as a lawyer during a murder trial and had to quit his job. Later, a law firm hired him as a law clerk and he went on to pass the bar and became an attorney for real. Last year, he even applied for the position of a judge in his native Monroe county, but did not hide his past during the interview.