Former law student accused of tampering with verdict slip was involved in many suits, newspaper says
A former Suffolk University Law School student, who allegedly tampered with his criminal court record and now faces forgery and perjury charges, appeared in court for a pretrial hearing on Wednesday.
In 2014, David E. Scher of Brighton, Massachusetts, was convicted of larceny for stealing a laptop from a campus locker at Suffolk University Law School, according to the Boston Globe. Scher allegedly took the jury’s verdict slip from the larceny conviction, doctored it to read that he’d been found not guilty, and put it back in the file. The fake verdict slip showed up in a variety of matters, according to the Suffolk County district attorney’s office, including an attempt Scher made to get his law school degree. His alleged plan backfired because Massachusetts keeps electronic arrest and conviction reports, Above the Law reports.
When the charges against Scher for allegedly falsifying the verdict slip were made public, numerous lawsuits Scher was involved in also came to light, the Globe reports.
Incidents from a former career as a real estate broker came up at Scher’s Wednesday pretrial hearing. In 2012, Scher sued trustee owners of a home after his attempt to buy the property fell through. One of the trustees—an 87-year-old man who didn’t see well and has since died—in an affidavit said that Scher and the man’s nephew mislead him into signing a purchase and sale agreement they said was for $300,000, when in fact it was for $130,000. The man contacted an attorney after deciding that he’d been tricked.
Scher also sued the Sutherland Village condo board in Brighton over election issues, reportedly when he failed to win a seat on its board. He sued his parents regarding the sale of a family boat and produced emails in which they called their son a “sleaze ball,” according to the Globe.
“He clearly used the legal system to push people around and take advantage of them, and I wanted him to think twice about ever treating someone like that again,” said Sherry William to the Globe. William is a California attorney who filed a small-claims court action against Scher regarding an apartment listing he had as broker. According to her, he kept her deposit for the property, instead of giving it to the owners.
For the larceny conviction, Scher received a suspended sentence of 90 days. If convicted in the more recent charges, he faces a 20-year prison sentence. Scher’s attorney declined to comment to the Globe.
