Day: March 25, 2009

Breaking News – 15 Years for Perdiago

The Times-Picayune beat PACER with their story!

James Perdigao, the gambling-law specialist who claimed to be the victim of a wide-ranging conspiracy and then admitted stealing $20 million from his former law firm, was sentenced Wednesday to more than 15 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon. He was also ordered to pay $23 million in restitution.

Offered an opportunity to speak, Perdigao, who was clad in an orange prison jumpsuit, said little. “I’m sorry for my conduct,” he said. “I’m very, very sorry.”

Fallon dressed Perdigao down. With a quality education, a law degree and a high-paying job at a white-shoe law firm, the judge said, Perdigao had everything going for him. Continue reading “Breaking News – 15 Years for Perdiago”

The Daily Slab – March 25 (Updated)

Check out the comments reader Steve has added to  A bit more on $enator Chri$ Dodd’$ ties to offshore reinsurers as we follow the $$$$$$$$.  Fascinating information and incredible research – Sop and I shout out a big Thank You.

Several news items with updates on topics we’ve covered were posted during the day yesterday and are linked below in no particular order:

Any other time, one or more of these items would have be the subject of a post – and maybe will be one day; but, for now, we’re just keeping readers up to date on current news and reporting  breaking news in posts.  As David Rossmiller said so well, “Work is the curse of the blogging class”.

“True Life Adventures” of a corporate lawyer…..(Updated)

There has been a criminal case we’ve been following here at Slabbed involving a corporate attorney that ended up on the wrong side of the law. When Nowdy sent me the PACER docs she didn’t quite know what to make of things as she doesn’t have the advantage of proxmity to the story. Before I get to naming names let’s examine some of the contents of the Government’s Sentencing Memorandum:

ACCEPTANCE OF RESPONSIBILITY
The goverrnment will not object to the two point reduction for acceptance of responsibility based upon the defendant’s statement expressing remorse and acceptance of responsibility which is as follows:

“Since I entered my guilty plea, I have had time to reflect on how I handled my legal situation and what went wrong with my decision-making along the way. Unfortunately, my personal life includes a long series of bad judgments and poor decision-making for reasons I don’t full (sic) understand.

Up until I pled, I continuously tried to shift responsibility for my own misconduct and rationalize my behavior. I am not sure what is wrong with my judgement and decision-making process but it relates somehow to the fact that-I don’t have much balance in my life. My life was my work. On most nights for many years, I left the office after the night cleaning Crew. I never bought a house, never married, never had children. I lived very frugally in a $500.00 per month apartment and never took a vacation. At firm Christmas parties, I received the “Table for One” award or a blanket and a pillow for my office, as the firm poked fun at my being a loner and a workaholic. Given that I had spent most ofmy life working and saving every penny, I could not rationally and objectively deal with giving up all ofthe money and accept the consequences of my misconduct. Continue reading ““True Life Adventures” of a corporate lawyer…..(Updated)”

Did Allstate mislead the government? KATRINA Road Home website worth the wait

For Joan Cross, producer of Frontline’s The Old Man and the Storm, it was a long road to the supporting web site, KATRINA Road Home.

It started with the images of all those people in the Superdome and the Morial convention center on CNN…There were so many layers of loss I hardly knew where to begin; the loss so vast, I soon discovered, that no one film could do it justice.

rimkus-track-changes-v2For the rest of us, it was well worth the wait.

Merryl and Robert Weiss owned a $600,000 three-story home on Lake Pontchartrain in Slidell, Louisiana, northeast of New Orleans..The eye of Hurricane Katrina went right over Slidell, and after it passed through, all that remained of the Weiss’ home was the foundation… Continue reading “Did Allstate mislead the government? KATRINA Road Home website worth the wait”