| In the interest of speed and timeliness, this story is fed directly from the Associated Press newswire and may contain spelling or grammatical errors. |
Con artist convicted of posing as lawyer
Friday August 22, 2003SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) A man who spent years in prison for running a variety of fraud schemes was convicted of posing as a lawyer and representing unsuspecting clients in criminal and civil cases.
Harold David Goldstein, 57, was convicted Wednesday following a three-day trial at which he testified he was actually performing a service by taking on clients other lawyers didn't want and representing many of them for free.
Although he was not a lawyer, Goldstein said, he had honed his legal skills during 12 years of writing appeals while in prison on various fraud charges.
``It was tremendous experience that could be used to help others,'' he said.
Authorities said Goldstein took the identity of a real lawyer, David M. Goldstein of Redwood City, and began representing clients after he got out of prison.
He was arrested last February in Las Vegas after a former partner in his Newport Beach law firm discovered the deception and contacted authorities.
He faces up to five years in prison when he is sentenced Dec. 2. He also faces trial in September on mail fraud charges for the more than $130,000 prosecutors say his clients paid him.
One of his clients, Hasdwell Geovang Pineeda Hernandez, was deported to Honduras after his request for political asylum was rejected.
After a judge learned Hernandez's lawyer was a fraud, he ordered the federal public defender's office to return him to the United States, but authorities said they could never find him.
Goldstein has convictions dating to the 1970s when he was found guilty of defrauding 13,000 investors in a commodities scheme and of selling $1 million in phony gold contracts.
In 1980, the Los Angeles County district attorney charged him with stealing $4 million from small businesses seeking loans at a phony overseas bank he and a partner established. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released in 1986.
It was during his last prison term, for dealing in phony certificates of deposit, that Goldstein said he began earning money from legitimate lawyers for legal research and writing briefs.
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