BOSTON, April 10, 2014—The second of two lawyers indicted for stealing from their clients pleaded guilty this week, taking a house of correction sentence rather than the state prison term recommended by prosecutors, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.
PETER LAGORIO (D.O.B. 8/22/55) of Lynnfield admitted Tuesday to 17 counts of uttering a false document, three counts of larceny, and one count each of embezzlement by a fiduciary, conspiracy to commit larceny, and attempted larceny. Assistant District Attorney Benjamin Goldberger of the DA’s Special Prosecutions Unit recommended a term of two to three years in state prison; Suffolk Superior Court Judge Carol Ball imposed one year in a house of correction with six months to serve and the balance suspended for three years.
Lagorio’s co-defendant, MICHAEL GERMANO (D.O.B. 9/29/63) of Wilmington, pleaded guilty in January to 17 counts of uttering a false document, five counts of larceny, three counts of embezzlement by a fiduciary, and one count each of conspiracy to commit larceny and attempted larceny. Prosecutors’ recommended sentence and the sentence imposed by the court were identical to Lagorio’s.
Both defendants were civil attorneys working in private practice: Germano primarily worked in personal injury claims, while Lagorio primarily handled class action suits in the same building on Atlantic Avenue in Boston’s North End. Both men were disbarred and are no longer licensed to act as attorneys.
Both defendants admitted to two types of theft: stealing from clients and defrauding various finance companies.
Germano admitted to taking money from insurance settlements owed to two car accident victims he represented. In those matters, after receiving $180,000 in settlements, he moved the money from a trust account to his operating account and used it for his own purposes, giving none of it to the clients.
Lagorio admitted to taking a $90,000 settlement from a client’s wrongful termination suit. When the client initially balked at a settlement of less than $100,000, Lagorio said he would waive his fee in order to increase the amount of money the man would receive. Once the client signed the settlement form, Lagorio deposited the check into German’s operating account.
Germano and Lagorio both admitted to the second form of theft, which involved defrauding financing companies in the business of advancing funds to lawyers and clients based on settled lawsuits. Such companies provide funds up front before the agreed-upon settlement can be finally disbursed to the lawyer or the client. The victimized finance companies relied on the existence and amounts of settlements as represented by the defendants and evidenced by fraudulent documents provided by the defendants to the companies.
In these cases, Germano and Lagorio provided the companies with false evidence of settled claims. In Germano’s case, he altered closed settlements from past clients and kept for himself the money paid to him by the finance companies. Lagorio used real individuals’ identities to create fraudulent plaintiffs in a class action suit arising out of the 2006 explosion at a Danvers chemical company.
The losses were investigated by Boston Police and Suffolk prosecutors, with the support and cooperation of the Insurance Fraud Bureau of Massachusetts and the US Postal Inspection Service.
Germano was represented by attorney William Keefe and Lagorio by attorney Thomas Butters.
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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
