Gus,
True enough. Many "Jews" are pro-human and civil rights for all until the issue comes to Isra'El and then it all breaks down and the benchmarks for determining and defending other's rights go out the window.
This is a very sore point with me. There is a lack of consistency and a big black mark of hypocrisy involved here.
Now to another matter of how Zionists have used the victims of Hitler's genocide to shakedown others, each other, and also to create a bigot state (colony) on Palestinian lands.
Lawyer siphoned Holocaust victims' cash
Ethics counts allege misuse of $400,000
nj.com
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
BY KATE COSCARELLI
Star-Ledger Staff
"A New Jersey lawyer who helped broker the historic $1.25 billion settlement between Swiss banks and Holocaust victims now faces disbarment over allegations that he mishandled more than $400,000 of the victims' money.
Edward Fagan is accused by state attorney ethics authorities of misusing money from two of his clients, including one who was the first to come forward to file suit against the Swiss banks.
"He stabbed me right in the back," said Brooklyn resident Gizella Weisshaus, 75, an Auschwitz survivor. "I supported him. He used me. He used my money."
Attempts to reach Fagan by phone and at his Morris Plains home were unsuccessful yesterday.
Fagan gained international attention in 1996 when he filed the Holocaust suit and helped generate a wave of outrage on behalf of victims whose plight had been ignored by Swiss banks for decades. What started as a single case on behalf of Weisshaus quickly gained momentum and became a class-action lawsuit that was settled in 1998.
His eventual success in the Holocaust case brought him inquiries from people around the world seeking justice for past wrongs. He has since sued over slavery in America and apartheid in South Africa.
The complaint filed by the New Jersey Office of Attorney Ethics says Fagan virtually emptied Weisshaus' trust account, then sought to replace the funds by using money from the settlement he had won for another client in the Holocaust case, Estelle Sapir.
He also wrote checks to cash on Sapir's account and transferred the money to his other business accounts, according to the complaint. It does not detail exactly how the money was spent.
"We don't have to prove what Mr. Fagan did with the money as long as we can prove that his use of the funds were unauthorized and were not for the benefit of a client," said John McGill III, deputy ethics counsel who is handling the case.
According to the ethics complaint, the trouble started when Weisshaus, who lost her entire family in the Holocaust, hired Fagan to handle the estate of her deceased cousin, Jack Oestreicher.
In 1996, Fagan took control of the estate, which was worth almost $82,600. The same year, he filed suit against the Swiss banks in federal court in Brooklyn. The case was believed to be the first of its kind, and his client, Weisshaus, was the first plaintiff.
While the Holocaust suit gained momentum, the Oestreicher estate foundered. A year after taking it on, Fagan had dipped into the account on several occasions, draining it to only $100, the complaint states.
In 1998, a New York surrogate judge ordered the assets to be distributed, requiring Fagan to replenish the account.
But the repayment only complicated matters, the ethics complaint alleges.
To pay off his debt, Fagan used part of the $500,000 settlement won by Sapir, the complaint alleges. After paying Weisshaus, he continued to dip into Sapir's money.
Fifty-five times Fagan wrote checks to cash or made wire transfers from the Sapir settlement, according to the complaint. The withdrawals continued after she died in 1999, it says.
"He made the disbursements ... knowing that he lacked the authority to do so," the complaint states. Fagan was only due $60,000 in fees for his work to broker the settlement.
Fagan eventually paid Sapir's heirs about $190,000, using a $225,000 loan from a friend and former client, Andrew Decter.
"He knew he had obligations ... to those heirs and must have known the moneys weren't there. He had to borrow money," said McGill.
This is not Fagan's first brush with notoriety.
During the Holocaust suit, Fagan came under attack by other lawyers in the case and leaders of Jewish groups who accused him of exaggerating hisrole in winning the settlement. Fagan, a native Texan who once lived in Israel, defended his handling of the case and his request in 2000 for $4 million in fees.
"No one is asking to take advantage, just to be paid for the reasonable value of our services plus something for the risk. We all took an enormous risk. These weren't slam-dunk cases," Fagan said in an interview with the Star-Ledger at the time. It is unclear how much he was paid.
Last August, a New York judge ordered him to pay $3.2 million to a Brooklyn man after mishandling the man's personal-injury suit.
The New Jersey ethics complaint was initially filed last month. But because it did not go to the correct address, it had to be sent again earlier this month. As a result, Fagan has until February to respond to the allegations, McGill said."
When David Irving writes the same, he is blasted for being an "anti-semite" [sic]. Go figure!
fpp.co.uk |
