Scheme to defraud Mayer Brown nets 27-month sentence for former employee
A former chief information officer at Mayer Brown has been sentenced to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay $1.1 million in restitution in an alleged scheme to defraud the law firm.
David Tresch was sentenced on Tuesday, a year and a half after he admitted participating in the multiyear scheme, the Am Law Daily (sub. req.) reports. Sentencing guidelines called for a sentence between 57 and 71 months in prison, the story says, citing the plea agreement (PDF by the Am Law Daily).
Tresch’s lawyer, Jeffrey Steinback, told the Am Law Daily that Tresch won’t have to surrender until January. The delay will allow Tresch to spend the holidays with his wife and 10 children, an “extraordinarily meaningful opportunity,” Steinback said, given that his client is a “deeply religious man.”
According to the April 2013 plea agreement, Tresch was assistant director of global operations at Mayer Brown when he recommended NS Mater for contract technology work without disclosing he had previously worked there. He told NS Mater the company would have to charge no more than the going market rate to avoid suspicion. At first Tresch collected 40 percent of the profits, and then 50 percent of the profits, the plea agreement said.
After Tresch realized in late 2010 that Mayer Brown would stop using NS Mater contract employees, the plea agreement says, Tresch instructed NS Mater to send false invoices for work that wasn’t done, the plea agreement says. Tresch told NS Mater he would pay it $5,000 for each false invoice, the plea agreement says, and the company should funnel the rest of the invoice payments back to Tresch, who said he would use the money to hire non NS-Mater employees to perform the work supposedly done by NS Mater.
Tresch collected about $1.13 million in kickbacks from NS Mater’s profits between 2006 and March 2011, the plea agreement says. Tresch collected $976,000 from the false invoices during the latter part of the scheme, between December 2010 and May 2012, the plea agreement says.
Tresch was promoted to chief information officer in July 2011 “in the midst of the scheme,” the plea agreement says. He was fired in June 2012.
