Bizarre $50M Fraud Case Will Help NY Lawyer Challenge Law Office Raid
A prominent New York lawyer complained bitterly when his law office was raided last month by Suffolk County authorities. But now George Guldi is in a better position to object to the warrant that authorized the search and records confiscation, thanks to a bizarre $50 million mortgage-fraud case in which he is a defendant along with a dominatrix, her husband, two other New York attorneys and two more individuals.
After pleading not guilty last week to first-degree grand larceny and other count in Southampton Village Justice Court to the claimed scam, which allegedly involved straw buyers recruited from a fetish club, Guldi now plans to refocus on challenging both the search warrant and the methods used to obtain it, his lawyer tells the New York Law Journal.
The raid took place soon after Guldi, a former Suffolk County legislator who is now a sole practitioner, publicly announced his possible return to political life, says his lawyer, Kathy Huang, who is based in Manhattan. The law-office raid sets a “dangerous precedent to allow a prosecutor to do this in an adversarial system to a lawyer,” she says.
Guldi’s age is given as 55 in the article, but was previously reported as 57 elsewhere.
Additional coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “N.Y. Lawyers & Dominatrix Allegedly Ran $50M Mortgage Fraud Scheme”
Newsday: “Colleagues recall a hard-charging Guldi”
