From Bob O'brien's blog
Milberg Weiss is about to have a harder time of it, methinks. In a NY Times article today, a guy who turns out to be a professional plaintiff admitted to taking cash in exchange for acting as the aggrieved party in many of Milberg’s suits.
“The New York Times Company
April 29, 2006
Case Turns Toward Law Firm
By JULIE CRESWELL
A six-year investigation into whether lawyers at the influential securities class-action law firm of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman used illegal tactics took a significant turn yesterday after a retired real estate mortgage broker agreed to plead guilty and cooperate in the investigation.
The broker, Howard J. Vogel of Englewood, N.J., and Florida, received nearly $2.5 million in kickbacks from lawyers inside Milberg Weiss for agreeing to be, or having a family member agree to be, the lead plaintiff in 40 cases, including lawsuits against Oxford Health Plans and Barnesandnoble.com, prosecutors contend.
According to papers filed yesterday in Federal District Court in Los Angeles, Mr. Vogel has agreed to plead guilty to a criminal charge that he provided false information about his role in dozens of securities lawsuits filed by a "New York law firm" from 1991 to as recently as May 2005.
A spokeswoman for Milberg Weiss confirmed that it was the firm referred to in the plea agreement.
Mr. Vogel's testimony could prove crucial in building a case against partners inside Milberg Weiss as well as the firm itself.”
That is illegal, and a huge no-no from an ethical standpoint.
It also makes me wonder over the fallout from the revelation – what does that do to the suits filed against companies under false pretenses? What about the settlements collected in those suits? What about the ongoing actions? If this guy was acting as a pretense for ambulance chasers to sue, that means that their business model was to pick targets, contrive a case using their pet plaintiff, and then sue, hoping the company would settle.
Very, very scummy, and obviously only the first shoe to drop.
If they were doing stuff like that, what are the odds that they also filed suits solely to move stock prices for their hedge fund buddies?
Milberg has sued many of Rocker Partners’ known short positions, which is sort of fun – apparently they are the preferred, go-to guys for those poor shareholders (who it now turns out are paid flim-flam men) who feel aggrieved when the stock goes down, usually due to a hatchet job written by one of a handful of journalists, immediately followed by an SEC inquiry (wanna bet those are initiated by the same one or two guys?).
What a small world it is. NFI is currently involved in a class action where Milberg had a suit ready to file within 24 hours of a WSJ story which Rocker Partners was lucky enough to have gotten in front of with many millions worth of puts, due to expire within weeks of their purchase dates. Rocker made a small fortune from that. The world is filled with marvelous, and highly profitable for some hedge funds, coincidences, is it not?
I believe that they also sued known Rocker short TASR, and ACAS, and ALD, and KKD…the list goes on and on.
And now, apparently, they are being revealed to be lying, cheating scumbags?
What a complete surprise. Say it isn’t so. |
