Criminal Justice
William Lerach in Prison Lockdown for Alleged Football Tickets Offer
Posted Sep 9, 2008, 05:04 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Former lawyer William Lerach, serving time for paying kickbacks to lead plaintiffs in securities class actions, is now accused of offering another kind of incentive, this time to a prison guard: his San Diego Chargers season tickets.
Lerach has been moved to administrative segregation where he is locked up for 23 hours a day because of the alleged offer, three sources told the Recorder. If he loses a formal administrative proceeding on the matter, he could be moved to a higher security facility and lose his good time credits, the story says.
Lerach was sentenced to two years in prison in February and was incarcerated at a prison camp that is part of the penitentiary in Lompoc, Calif. Prison rules bar inmates from offering anything of value to a staff member and categorize the offense at the second most egregious level in a four-tier system.
But the news isn't all bad for Lerach. A federal judge has approved nearly $700 million in attorney fees for plaintiffs lawyers who represented shareholders in Enron litigation, and Lerach stands to collect as much as $50 million of that amount, according to one previous report.
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