Criminal Justice

Disbarred lawyer is convicted even though twin took responsibility for the crime

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A disbarred lawyer faces up to five years in prison after jurors convicted him Friday of faking an order in a child custody case involving his twin brother.

Jurors convicted disbarred lawyer Christopher Brady of Englewood, Florida, even though his twin brother, Matthew Brady, told jurors that he was the one who drafted the document, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports. The document ordered the mother of Matthew Brady’s child to turn over custody to him.

The document misspelled the words “habeas” and “honorable” and was purportedly filed on a Saturday, when the clerk’s office does not file documents.

The twin brothers tried to serve the document at the mother’s home in December 2018, but a man there was suspicious of its authenticity, according to an arrest report cited by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Christopher Brady was disbarred in July 2019 after a video allegedly showed him breaking into a Bradenton, Florida, law firm that had fired him in 2018.

The video allegedly showed Brady and an accomplice backing a truck up to the Barak Law Group, tying a rope from the truck to the front door, and using the car to rip open the door. The video showed two men removing a safe and the computer server, according to testimony by the owner of the firm.

Brady had held himself out as the owner of the Barak Law Group soon after his firing. Brady had maintained that he had the right to create a new firm of the same name by filing as a professional association with the proper periods, so that it read “P.A.” instead of “PA.”

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