Too Good to Be True?
Then it probably is.
I thoroughly enjoyed these quotes from this article:
“Certainly, the allegations that we participated in any scheme with any knowledge of any scheme are totally, totally scurrilous,” Behr said. “This lawyer is an SOB, frankly.”
“This is scurrilous and scandalous that he puts stuff like that in,” Behr said. “He’s a real bastard, I have to tell you. This is not how you plead a lawsuit. He’s trying to shame us and embarrass us.”
The underlying facts, however, are more troubling:
Behr received a check for the amount owed, deducted his 15 percent fee, or $36,000, and sent the remaining $208,000 on to Yu, according to the lawsuit filed by IndyMac Bank in Pasadena, Calif., the nation’s seventh-largest savings and loan.
But there was a problem, the bank said.
The check was drawn on a home equity account the bank approved for two borrowers, and was fraudulent, according to the lawsuit filed against Behr on behalf of the bank by Richard
J. Landau of Ann Arbor, Mich. Landau demanded that Behr return the $36,000 fee, Behr refused, and Landau sued him in U. S. District Court in Buffalo.
Behr denies that he was part of any fraud.
It looks like the Buffalo lawyer was a unknowing patsy for a probably Nigerian scam operator. Here, the bank is the victim - not the lawyer, amazingly enough. I’d be very curious to see what sort of information “Xu Yu” sent to verify his identity. I guess I’ll have to pull up the complaint…
Terry Says:July 5th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Having defended a client in a similar situation (i.e., the deposited check turned out to be a counterfeit)I was amazed that banks could declare to a customer that a deposited check had “cleared” and then weeks later inform the same customer that, in fact, the check turned out to be bogus….Just because an item “clears” in five business days doesn’t necessarily mean that it actually does…a fact that the banks never tell you until you are on the end of a lawsuit and have possibly spent the money…..It would seem to me in these days of electronic advances, where a cell phone photo of a celebrity urinating in public can be sent around the world in a matter of minutes, the banking industry should be slapped into determining the authenticity of deposited funds alot quicker than what actually exists…we are all at risk.
Bill Altreuter Says:July 7th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Larry Behr’s ability to find himself in the middle of oddball news stories never ceases to astonish. You can pretty much guess who the “Buffalo lawyer” is by the second paragraph at this point.
Ben Franklin Says:July 7th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I love Barth’s (alleged) response - “You won a gold star”. D’oh!!!