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Dewey & LeBoeuf Former Employees Try to Redirect Blame

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By Amanda Griffin

Posted on June 25, 2015

Summary: The former Dewey & LeBoeuf lawyers in a fraud and larceny case brought by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office attempt to paint themselves as good people.

An accounting fraud and larceny case against Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP’s former Chairman Steven Davis, former Executive Director Stephen DiCarmine, and former Chief Financial Officer Joel Sanders has turned into a blame game. Seven other former employees of the law firm have already pleaded guilty for their participation in the alleged scheme. They are all accused of assisting Dewey in lying about the ability of the firm to reach financial benchmarks as they raised $100 million from bank lenders and $150 million from bond investors.

Dewey experienced a mass exodus of attorneys in March of 2012 when 13 of their attorneys left for Wilkie Far & Gallagher LLP, including John Schwolsky and Alexander Dye. The attorneys for Davis, DiCarmine, and Sanders claim the exodus of greedy lawyers caused the law firm to flounder, not the alleged fraud. Austin Campriello, DiCarmine’s attorney, tried to place the blame of the departing attorneys by asking Schwolsky if “the floodgates opened and partner defections skyrocketed” after he left. Schwolsky responded with a yes.

The defendants’ attorneys also tried to paint their clients as caring and forgiving people by presenting evidence of emails between Schwolsky and Dye that crudely badmouth the defendants and other colleagues. When Davis learned of the emails, he removed Schwolsky from the executive committee but did not fire him and even gave him a pay increase. DiCarmine arranged a personal trip to an aircraft carrier for Schwolsky that was “one of the highlights of (his) life”.

Steve Pilynak, prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, showed an email that contradicted the defendants claims. The email displayed Davis downplaying the impact the departure of partners would have on the firm.

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Davis is represented by Lawrence S. Bader, Elkan Abramowitz, Priya Raghavan, and Jasmine Juteau. DiCarmine representation includes Austin V. Campriello and Anne T. Redcross. Sanders is represented by Cesar de Castro, Amanda L. Bassen, and Andrew J. Frisch.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is reprenseted by Steve Pilnyak, Peirce Moser, Gregory Weiss, and Christopher Conroy.