Montanta-based Private Investigator, Michael Lair (President of wing-nutty ConsumerDefense.com) bilked as much as $300,000 from his lawyer-clients by claiming he could get information about companies of interest to them. It goes without saying that he didn't make good on actually providing the promised data.

This week Lair plead guilty to four counts of wire fraud in relation to these activities. In his plea agreement, Lair named several prominent law firms that he successfully swindled, including two New York firms: Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, Anello & Bohrer and Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman.

"Information" is a little vague, but Lair has stated that he was asked by some law firms to gather information by illegal means (he actually used this as a sales tactic for his scams) implying that he was able to obtain information otherwise unavailable as a public record.

The Wall Street Journal law blog has a bit more on Mr. Lair.

-- MDT

Labels: Kasowitz Benson, Michael Lair, Morvillo Abramowitz, wire fraud