Former Willkie partner accused of defrauding her firm faces scrutiny in credit-card cases
A former antitrust partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher accused of defrauding her law firm is facing new scrutiny because of her email communications with opposing counsel in an antitrust suit.
The former partner, Keila Ravelo, was accused in December of bilking two law firms and a client out of $5.75 million, creating dummy corporations that submitted bills for litigation support work. The law firms were Willkie Farr & Gallagher and Hunton & Williams.
Willkie conducted an internal review after Ravelo’s arrest and found emails raising questions about her discussions with a long-time friend, Gary Friedman, who is among the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in two credit-card class actions involving swipe fees, report the New York Law Journal (sub. req.) and Reuters’ Alison Frankel blog. Ravelo was among the lawyers representing defendant MasterCard International in one of the cases, but she wasn’t part of the second suit.
The litigation involving MasterCard produced a $5.7 billion settlement, approved in 2013.
Willkie said it found emails relating to both cases, including information that may have been subject to a protective order and some possibly confidential information relating to MasterCard, according to the New York Law Journal account. Willkie has filed a protocol with the court for proposed disclosure of the communications.
At a recent hearing, Magistrate Judge James Orenstein said an area of concern was whether the MasterCard settlement was the product of arm’s length negotiations, according to the New York Law Journal. But Reuters says Orenstein was “notably skeptical that communications between Ravelo and Friedman could undermine the entire deal.”
Friedman’s lawyer, Samuel Issacharoff, has said his client had no knowledge of Ravelo’s alleged fraudulent activities. Based on Issacharoff’s public statements, he apparently will argue that Friedman and Ravelo were engaging in “back channel” talks to test negotiating positions, according to the Reuters article.