Things Bill Lerach Won't Be Indicted For

It’s Tuesday evening now, and we’ve all known for 24 hours or so the fate of Bill Lerach: After a seven-year criminal investigation that began with a tip to prosecutors by an ophthalmologist-cum-art-fraudster and circled through the depths of Beverly Hills, New Jersey and Florida, Lerach has stopped fighting. The famed plaintiff lawyer is headed to jail after pleading guilty to giving an improper payment to Steven Cooperman — the Beverly Hills eye doctor with whom the case started, and who was widely believed to lack the credibility necessary to be a key witness.

That leaves a gaping question for those of us who’ve spent the past few years following the case: What happened to the other seven years’ worth of investigation, which, Cal Law and others have reported, touched on other Lerach clients as well as a prolific expert witness?

We thankfully get a partial answer in the plea deal, which lists specific theoretically indictable behaviors that Lerach won't have to hear about again. We’ll summarize under the heading Things For Which Bill Lerach Won’t Be Indicted:

1. Payments to stockbrokers, lawyers and non-lawyers who served as — or referred lead plaintiffs for class actions.
2. Requests to courts for payments to be given to “a damages expert witness and/or his relatives” in Princeton New Jersey (John Torkelsen, an expert witness currently imprisoned for an investment scam, is from Princeton, and ran a business with family members). It was speculated for years (and written about in various business publications) that Torkelsen was paid on a contingency basis, which would contradict what courts were told in the cases.
3. Payments to the Princeton expert.
4. The expert’s participation as a witness or consultant in cases brought by Milberg Weiss or Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins.
5. Campaign contributions relating to the expert (it was widely rumored that Torkelsen’s generous campaign gifts were tied to Lerach money).
6. Lerach’s investment in the Acorn Technology Fund, a venture that Torkelsen was convicted of using to steal money from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

The agreement also precludes prosecutors from going after two of Lerach’s former partners, Patrick Coughlin and Keith Park, for related conduct. It doesn’t require Lerach to cooperate in the ongoing probe of his former partner Melvyn Weiss.

—  Justin Scheck