Feds charge another Rothstein lawyer, say sheriff's office went to escort's home to erase phone info
A name partner of a now-shuttered South Florida law firm linked to a massive fraud has been federally charged with a single conspiracy count.
Stuart Rosenfeldt is charged with conspiracy to commit campaign finance fraud, bank fraud and civil rights violations. He could get as much as five years if he is convicted in the Miami case, but has been cooperating with prosecutors, the Sun Sentinel reports.
He is accused of making political campaign contributions that were illegally reimbursed by the Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler firm and participating in bank fraud and check-kiting schemes operated from the RRA firm’s offices in Fort Lauderdale.
A charging document also says that Rosenfeldt, concerned that an escort might have information about him on her cellphone, met at RRA with law firm founder Scott Rothstein and a Broward sheriff’s lieutenant “in order to facilitate having the escort and her boyfriend threatened with arrest so as to induce them to refrain from publicly disclosing the sexual interaction between the escort and defendant Rosenfeldt,” the newspaper reports.
According to the charges, the lieutenant, who has agreed to take a plea in a related case, arranged for other officers to force their way into the escort’s home, handcuff her boyfriend and delete any Rosenfeldt information from her cellphone.
Rothstein is currently serving a 50-year prison term for masterminding a $1.4 billion swindle while serving as the chief of the now-bankrupt RRA firm.
Rothstein reportedly ran the firm with little or no input from others, and Rosenfeldt has said he had no knowledge of the financial scheme.
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “3 new pleas linked to ex-law firm chief serving 50 years in $1.2B swindle; 20th conviction now looms”
