One longtime San Diego attorney laundered his client’s medical marijuana profits. A second is accused of aiding a global laundering operation with ties to drug traffickers.

A third is awaiting sentencing for stealing from his clients. A fourth got 12 years in prison for helping run a massive mortgage scam.

The prosecutions, all in San Diego federal court, are recent examples of lawyers accused of not only crossing an ethical boundary they’ve sworn to uphold, but venturing into criminal territory.

A federal investigation is still open into six unnamed attorneys and their representatives who are suspected of conspiring to bribe a San Diego DMV official to keep their clients from getting their driver’s licenses suspended in DUI cases.

Prosecutors pay extra attention to cases that involve professional licenses, such as attorneys, physicians and securities brokers, Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip Halpern said.

“The public has an expectation of trust when someone is a professional, so when there’s a violation of that trust, that would certainly elevate the crime as far as our enforcement,” Halpern said.

Data from the State Bar indicates the number of lawyers prosecuted criminally in California has remained fairly steady over the past five years.

In 2014, the bar suspended 49 licenses following criminal convictions and was monitoring an additional 149 attorneys who had been criminally charged. The number of attorneys ultimately disbarred after convictions is not tracked, nor are the crimes for which they were prosecuted.

Moral hazards and trust

So what makes a lawyer go bad?

Attorneys who study ethics agree that most don’t endure three years of law school and sweat through the bar exam with the intent of breaking the law.

“I don’t think most attorneys go out there with the conscious decision to do something wrong by their clients,” said David Majchrzak, a San Diego lawyer who specializes in attorney ethics.

It’s a job filled with so-called “moral hazards,” said David Carr, a former State Bar prosecutor who now defends lawyers accused of misconduct.

“Because we propose a great trust in attorneys and put them in that position, they are subject to a great temptation,” Carr said.

It was that “halo of trust,” coupled with the desperation that followed the Great Recession, that made it possible for attorney Dean Chandler’s Oceanside-based loan modification business to victimize hundreds of families.

Clients Henry and Jeanie Morrow, who were in danger of losing their home due to a variety of circumstances, believed the sales pitch that Chandler’s 1st American Law Center could save their home.

“I was a bit skeptical but looked them up on the Internet, checked the San Diego Bar Association, the California Bar Association and Mr. Chandler’s record,” Henry Morrow told a judge in April during Chandler’s sentencing hearing. “He seemed legit. I told my wife, ‘Besides, what lawyer would give up his career and education?’”

In the end, Chandler not only gave up his career, but was sentenced to 12 years in prison for the scam that pocketed millions of dollars in retainer fees without modifying homeowners’ loans. Many victims not only lost their homes, but had to file for bankruptcy.

“Our society says there are certain professions that can be trusted — doctors, lawyers and others who take ethics classes and instructions and morals and swear oaths to that effect,” Morrow told the judge. “Did Mr. Chandler sleep during those classes?”

Chandler’s defense attorney, Michael Crowley, argued that Chandler was actually the one taken advantage of by his business partner, the mastermind of the scheme who used Chandler’s law license to perpetrate the fraud.

It is a defense that legal experts say can be valid in some cases.

In Chandler’s case, the judge only half bought it.



“I think Mr. Chandler in this case was guilty of avarice,” said U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez. “… He saw an opportunity to make money without basically doing anything. That is the way I see it. You loaned your name. You loaned your license. You loaned your good will. You loaned your reputation.”

Attorney Todd Macaluso had a reputation for big verdicts and high-profile clients, including Florida mom Casey Anthony, acquitted in the slaying of her 2-year-old daughter, and former Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman, accused but never charged in a domestic disturbance with reality star Tila Tequila .

In April, Macaluso pleaded guilty to a scheme that put his clients’ personal injury cases up as collateral without their knowledge and forged their signatures to persuade investors to advance him millions of dollars, according to his plea agreement. The funds kept his downtown law practice afloat, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

The loss to victims totaled about $70,000, court records say. He is set to be sentenced this month.

Helping clients

While some lawyers took advantage of the public’s trust, others have stretched the legal limits of their law licenses to the benefit of their clients.

“Attorneys are not hired guns, hired to use any possible means to help their clients evade the law,” Carr said. “You can’t advise your client to break the law and you obviously can’t break the law to advance your client’s interest. It’s obviously reprehensible.”

Majchrzak said sometimes attorneys cave to the pressure of performance.

“We are taught to be self-advocates for the client. … Some attorneys make mistakes in being overly zealous for their client and perhaps doing something they ought not do.”

James Warner ended his 40-plus-year legal career when he agreed to launder $100,000 in drug proceeds. The cash had been overlooked by federal authorities who’d searched the home of his client, a medical marijuana dispensary owner.

Warner was given three years probation, including a year of home detention, when he was sentenced in November. He also resigned from the bar.

“I have loved being a lawyer and helping people. But I did this to myself and it fills me with self loathing,” Warner told the judge at his sentencing. “… Looking back I see that I deluded myself into the actions which bring me before the court. They were illegal and I was a fool.”

Numerous letters on Warner’s behalf flooded into court, many from judges and fellow lawyers stating how surprised they were at his lapse in judgment.

Another local lawyer, Richard Medina Jr., is still facing charges of laundering money, allegedly for drug traffickers, according to prosecutors. He has pleaded not guilty.

Co-conspirators have pleaded guilty to a scheme that collected $12 million from around the United States. The money was then deposited into lawyer trust accounts opened by Medina to conceal the cash flow, and later wired out of the country, often to Mexico, according to court records.

One defendant admitted in his guilty plea to hiring Medina “to convey a sense of legitimacy to the conspiracy.”

San Diego’s criminal defense bar is closely watching the still unresolved case of six unnamed attorneys suspected of conspiring to bribe a Department of Motor Vehicles official in DUI license suspension cases. The official, Alva Benavidez, has pleaded guilty, and a California Highway Patrol officer, Carlos Ravelo, has also been charged, but the U.S. Attorney’s Office has remained mum on the status of the attorneys implicated.

Adequate safeguards?

The recent spate of cases raises questions about whether the State Bar is doing enough to protect consumers when attorney misconduct is uncovered. Some lawyers who have been prosecuted have an otherwise unblemished record, while others, including Macaluso, had prior disciplinary charges involving the misuse of money.

State Bar spokeswoman Laura Ernde said the bar’s Office of the Chief Trial Counsel works with law enforcement when they come across potential criminal conduct by lawyers. But most misconduct is handled through the disciplinary system — a system that has come under fire recently.

Tips on hiring a lawyer • Ask acquaintances for recommendations. • Check the lawyer’s credentials and discipline record at the State Bar, calbar.ca.gov. • Check the lawyer’s or firm’s record via the Better Business Bureau, bbb.org. • Check if the lawyer has a criminal record or been a defendant in a lawsuit via the San Diego Superior Court, sdcourt.ca.gov. • Google the lawyer. Red flags may pop up that aren’t covered in official records. • Try a referral service, such as the San Diego County Bar Association, sdcba.org. • Interview the lawyer, asking about experience handling certain types of cases, strategy and costs. Source: Legal experts, The State Bar of California

Carr, who worked as a prosecutor for the bar for 10 years, said the proper level of discipline is “a complicated question.”

“Most attorneys I see, most can be helped in the disciplinary system by counsel,” he said. “They are people dealing with some drastic combination of circumstances that has led them to a difficult place.” Discipline often results in probation, more education, remedial activities and, if serious enough, suspension from practice.

“That gives them a period of time to reflect and reform themselves. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t,” Carr said.

Generally, discipline is supposed to be progressive, and a third strike often equals disbarment, although “quite a few lawyers have been disciplined more than three times,” he noted.

The State Bar recently updated its attorney discipline standards, the first substantial change in decades. The new rules add several specific offenses, including representation of adverse interests and breach of confidentiality, according to the California Bar Journal. It also adds two new aggravating factors: misrepresentation and high level of vulnerability of the victim.

The bar was blasted last month in a scathing report by a state auditor who said scores of attorneys were let off too easily with “inadequate” punishment, blaming the lax consequences on the bar’s effort to reduce a backlog of cases. The practice put the public “at significant risk,” the report stated.

While it’s not possible to entirely protect yourself from a bad lawyer, experts suggest doing due diligence by looking at their bar records, asking acquaintances for referrals and interviewing the attorney.

As Majchrzak put it, “Cold calling and Google search is probably not the best way to find legal representation.”