New York lawyer charged for allegedly deceiving family over misplaced will
A New York estate lawyer has been arraigned on charges that he forged a fake receipt to hide the fact that he had misplaced a dead man’s will.
James Robbins, 62, was arraigned Wednesday on one count of possessing a forged instrument and one count of offering a false instrument for filing, the New York Daily News reports. He pleaded not guilty.
Robbins is accused of stringing along a grieving family for more than a year after misplacing the dead man’s will. It’s not clear how Robbins misplaced the will, the Daily News reports. His lawyer, James Schiff, declined comment to the newspaper.
Robbins allegedly gave relatives a variety of excuses for the delay, including that the will he drafted might be published in the New York Law Journal, prosecutors said.
“For more than a year and a half, the defendant made one false statement after another to the decedent’s family,” Assistant District Attorney Jaime Hickey-Mendoza said.
Robbins did not profit from the ruse and never even billed the family for his services, prosecutors said.
