Fraud Roundup
Mo. AG sues man posing as lawyer; victim sought insurance claim
Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon has filed suit against a Springfield man who allegedly took advantage of a local woman by claiming to be an attorney for the NAACP. The lawsuit, filed in Greene County Circuit Court, accuses Calvin Allen of practicing law without a license and claiming a nonexistent association with the Springfield branch of the NAACP.
According to Nixon, Allen approached a local woman who was seeking to get an insurance benefit from a policy taken out by her deceased husband. She then signed an agreement with him to represent her for $75 per hour or a percentage of any insurance claim she received.
Allen clearly played on the emotions of a woman who had lost her husband to a long-standing illness, Nixon said. He earned her trust by posing as a lawyer with an organization that symbolizes trust with many people locally and nationally, he added.
The Rev. Larry Maddox, president of the Springfield NAACP, says there have been reports from as far away as southeast Missouri about Allen representing himself as a Springfield NAACP lawyer.
The Springfield Branch NAACP wants to commend Attorney General Nixon for looking into this matter, Maddox commented. We believe this has been happening for several years and it is time for it to stop, he said.
Nixon thanked the Springfield NAACP office for its help in this investigation. In the lawsuit, he asks that Allen fully refund money he received by the widow in this case, reimburse the Attorney General’s Office for its legal and investigative costs and pay penalties to the state.
Ohio man accused of fraud denied request for judges to be dismissed
Ohio’s top judge rejected a request by the coin dealer charged in a state investment scandal who requested that all Lucas County judges be disqualified from hearing his case.
In a four-page order, Chief Justice Thomas Moyer of the Ohio Supreme Court said he saw no reason that Judge Thomas Osowik of Lucas County Common Pleas Court could not oversee the case against coin dealer Tom Noe.
Noe is charged with stealing at least $1 million from an $50 million investment in rare coins he received from the state insurance fund for injured workers. He said the judges should be removed because they are either personal friends or political enemies.
Noe said he considers Osowik a political enemy he has long opposed. Moyer says there’s no evidence that Osowik has said or done anything that would indicate bias against Noe.
Noe’s use of the term ‘political enemies’ to describe Judge Osowik and other judges in Lucas County perhaps reflects the defendant’s own views about the judges, but it tells us nothing about Judge Osowik’s views of the defendant,” Moyer said. Osowik on Tuesday delayed a hearing involving Noe to wait for a ruling on the disqualification request. He argued in a court filing he should stay on the case.
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