Lawyer accused of inflating work history is convicted of forgery
A lawyer has been convicted of forgery for inflating her work history with faked documents.
A Manhattan judge convicted 52-year-old Soma Sengupta on Friday, the New York Times reports. Sengupta’s lies were discovered after a suspicious clerk at a British law firm where Sengupta worked questioned the lawyer’s claim that she was 29; Sengupta was in her late 40s at the time.
Prosecutors said Sengupta, a Georgetown law grad, had claimed she once worked as gang crimes prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, though her actual position was that of a paralegal. She also was accused of claiming to have worked as a staff lawyer handling murder cases and other felonies for the Legal Aid Society in New York, though she actually did unpaid volunteer work.
Sengupta had obtained the paralegal job in the DA’s office after allegedly claiming she left law school before graduation, a statement that overcame the office’s ban on hiring lawyers as paralegals.
Judge Thomas Farber convicted Sengupta of eight felony forgery and false instruments counts and one misdemeanor conspiracy count, according to the Times. “One could not help but be struck by the sheer magnitude and the intensity and breadth of the defendant’s lies and schemes and deceitful behavior,” Farber said.
