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Well, not necessarily a *better* job than you, but he pulled down some elite jobs. You have to admire the number of six-figure attorney jobs this guy was able to secure *after* being disbarred. He must be a helluva interview.
Richard Louis Crosby III was arrested on charges of wire fraud, Social Security number fraud, and aggravated identity theft for his bold scheme of trying to work more legal jobs. Crosby resigned his Ohio bar membership in September 2021, after he was indicted for stealing client funds. He pleaded guilty to that charge and was sentenced to probation.
Those facts — as bad as they are for him — didn’t deter Crosby from trying to practice law. Using the name Richard Williams and claiming he was licensed in New York and Washington, D.C., Crosby was “briefly employed” by a Washington D.C. firm in 2021.
But that wasn’t the only time he attempted to work, as reported by the ABA Journal:
In October 2022, Crosby was offered a job with starting pay of $185,000 with a $5,000 signing bonus at a Miami law firm. He allegedly used a former romantic partner’s Social Security number, passport number and name for the bank account he listed in the onboarding process. He was fired in April, however, after the law firm received an inquiry from a child support investigator who made the firm aware of his real identity. Crosby earned about $83,000 before his firing, the affidavit said.
Crosby allegedly used the same alias in July for an interview with a law firm in Coral Gables, Florida. During the hiring process, he allegedly sent an email attachment that was supposedly a screenshot of the name Richard Coleman Williams Jr. in the District of Columbia online bar membership directory. There is no one by the name of Richard Coleman Williams in the directory, but there is a Richard Coleman, the affidavit says. Crosby apparently altered the screen shot to add the name “Williams,” according to the affidavit.
Crosby was offered a salary of $195,000 and a $10,000 signing bonus, but the law firm didn’t hire him after determining he was using a fake identity, according to prosecutors.
That’s an awful lot of effort for a scheme that seems certain to come unraveled. Perhaps in the bygone analog days you could pull something like this off for an extended amount of time, but in 2023, it seems destined to fail.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.
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