1. Home
2. Daily News
3. Former lawyer gets prison time after posing…

Criminal Justice

Former lawyer gets prison time after posing as BigLaw alum, former football player in quest for jobs

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 13, 2025, 9:00 am CDT

Updated: An Ohio lawyer has been sentenced to 37 months in prison for Social Security fraud after using fake identities in a quest for law firm jobs.

Richard Louis Crosby III, 37, of Mason, Ohio, was sentenced Monday, according to Reuters and a March 10 press release. In addition to serving time in prison, Crosby will have to pay $171,000 in restitution to defrauded firms.

Crosby had used the name Richard Williams while applying to firms and claimed at various times to be a former Marine, a former University of Michigan football player and a Kirkland & Ellis lawyer, according to the press release.

He used fake identities to get job offers with at least seven firms that often offered six-figure salaries and, in some cases, signing bonuses, the press release said. One California firm hired Crosby at an annual salary of $250,000 the month before his federal indictment.

Crosby pleaded guilty to three federal counts of Social Security fraud in July 2024. He had used identifying information for his elderly father, his girlfriend, a dead man and others, federal prosecutors said.

Crosby used the fake identities beginning in June 2021, after he indicated that he intended to resign from the practice of law. Crosby was indicted in the state on theft charges in June 2021 and November 2021, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio. “After his indictments, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio entered an order disbarring Crosby,” the news release states. However, he applied at a second firm in June 2022.

The Supreme Court of Ohio’s directory still lists Crosby as “Resigned-Discipline Pending,” and an employee in the clerk’s office confirmed that he has not been disbarred by the Supreme Court of Ohio.

He pleaded guilty in the Ohio theft cases in May 2023 and was sentenced to probation the next month.

Updated on March 14 to note that while the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio refers to him as disbarred, the Supreme Court Of Ohio Attorney Directory refers to him as resigned with discipline pending.

Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.

1. Home
2. Daily News
3. Law grads with past substance-use disorders…

Disability Law

Law grads with past substance-use disorders suffered disability bias in quest for license, DOJ says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 6, 2025, 3:15 pm CST

Would-be Tennessee lawyers encountered unlawful disability discrimination when they were required to submit to “burdensome examinations” and conditions triggered by their past diagnosis or treatment for a substance-use disorder or a mental health disorder, the U.S. Department of Justice has concluded.

The Tennessee Board of Law Examiners and the Tennessee Lawyers Assistance Program violated Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act, which protects people with from being excluded from programs of state and local governments, according to a letter of findings released Dec. 17.

The DOJ investigated after receiving complaints from two bar applicants, “D.S.” and “C.B.,” who were previously treated for substance-use disorders related to prescription drugs. Both suffered “significant economic harm,” including loss of jobs because of delays in obtaining a law license and costs incurred in complying with required evaluations by treatment facilities.

The conditions for obtaining a law license were “burdensome, intrusive and unnecessary,” the letter said.

NBC News has identified D.S. as Derek Scott, who was taking buprenorphine, a Food and Drug Administration-approved medication that his doctor prescribed, to treat the opioid-use disorder that he developed after becoming addicted to painkillers. The network chronicled Scott’s battle for a law license.

Scott, now an attorney in Clarksville, Tennessee, has been treated continuously for opioid-use disorder since 2012. He graduated from the University of Tennessee College of Law in 2019. On his bar application, Scott disclosed charges that were later dismissed, most of which happened when his addiction to painkillers was untreated.

Because Scott was taking buprenorphine, he was required to undergo a multiday assessment at an addiction-recovery facility that cost him $2,000. No drugs were found in his system other than buprenorphine. No cognitive impairment was found. The facility nonetheless recommended a six-month inpatient treatment program that would cost Scott $30,000, an amount lowered to $15,000 with credit for the $2,000 already spent because of scholarship money from the Tennessee Lawyers Assistance Program.

Scott’s treating physician “emphatically” disagreed with the need for inpatient treatment to stop a medication that was effectively treating his disability, the DOJ letter said. If he didn’t comply, Scott was told, he wouldn’t get a law license.

“Thus, D.S. was left with the choice of continuing the treatment that is successful for him in treating his [opioid-use disorder] or obtaining his license to practice law,” according to the letter of findings.

The law firm that had employed Scott as a law clerk fired him in November 2021 because of his inability to get a law license.

Scott sought a second evaluation by another facility and was granted permission. A psychiatrist there found that the drug therapy had been successful, and there were no legal, educational or occupational deficiencies. The medical report nonetheless concluded that Scott was not fit to practice law, and that abstinence treatment at a facility should be considered.

After the DOJ notified the Tennessee agencies in September 2023 that it was investigating, Scott received his law license.

The other lawyer, C.B., had completed an inpatient rehabilitation program in 2010 and graduated from law school in 2020. C.B. informed the Tennessee Board of Law Examiners that several misdemeanor arrests happened while he was abusing alcohol and Xanax, which is often used to treat anxiety disorders and anxiety caused by depression. A board interviewer concluded that C.B. had no mental or psychological disorder that would affect his ability to practice law.

C.B. was nonetheless referred to the Tennessee Lawyers Assistance Program for evaluation and was required to pay $6,000 for a psychological and drug assessment. The medical report found that C.B. was fit to practice law but recommended abstinence-based outpatient therapy for substance-use management and physical therapy for pain. He should also quit smoking and get his cholesterol checked, the report said.

The Tennessee Lawyers Assistance Program said C.B. should get outpatient treatment in a drug program four days per week. C.B. lost his job and moved from Ohio to Tennessee to attend a seven-week program. He was then allowed to obtain a law license as long as he entered a five-year monitoring contract and submitted to random drug tests.

The restrictions and conditions imposed on Scott and C.B. “were based on speculation about their disabilities that were contrary to demonstrated conduct, and as to D.S. in particular, they were based on stigma and stereotypes about his prescribed treatment,” the letter said.

Scott told NBC News that he felt validated by the findings.

“I felt like they had put up an obstacle that they knew I couldn’t overcome,” he said.

Scott works as a lawyer primarily handling criminal defense cases, according to NBC News. He continues to take his medication.

NBC News spoke with civil rights attorney David Sinkman, who handles substance-use bias cases, about the DOJ letter. He was not involved in the case.

“This is a powerful finding by the Department of Justice that applies beyond admission to practice law in Tennessee, since there are similar licensing restrictions in other states and for other professions,” Sinkman said.

1. Home
2. Daily News
3. Was wrong person executed in death of Lindbergh…

Legal History

Was wrong person executed in death of Lindbergh baby? Ex-judge’s book and DNA quest raise issues

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 11, 2024, 10:22 am CDT

Updated: A court case and a book by a former judge are raising questions about the guilt of German immigrant Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a man convicted and executed in the 1932 kidnapping and death of the 20-month-old son of aviator Charles A. Lindbergh.

Lawyer Kurt Perhach is asking a New Jersey appeals court to reverse a judge’s 2023 ruling that rejected his client’s bid to test saliva on stamped ransom envelopes to determine whether Hauptmann is the killer, report the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and New Jersey Monthly.

The judge had reasoned that the state’s open-records law “is not the vehicle by which a citizen can march up to a museum and demand that the custodians of historical artifacts and documents surrender the state’s treasures for analysis, alteration and destruction.”

Hauptmann’s great-great niece and her aunt have provided DNA samples that could help answer the question whether their late relative is indeed guilty.

A retired California judge, Judge Lise Pearlman, is not part of that lawsuit, but she is promoting a theory that Lindbergh is a potential suspect. She says that Lindbergh was fascinated with eugenics and had been conducting research with Dr. Alexis Carrel, a surgeon and an organ transplant pioneer.

“My theory is that the child was operated on,” Pearlman told the San Francisco Chronicle. “We think at the very least that his carotid and probably his thyroid were taken out and kept viable for 30 days. We think he died on the operating table. And I think Carrel conducted the operation with Lindbergh’s permission—and Lindbergh was likely present at the operation.”

She suggests that Carrel had operated on the toddler and removed organs to see whether they could be preserved outside the body for use in transplants. The goal may have been to help Lindbergh’s sister-in-law, who had a damaged heart valve.

An autopsy of the toddler had revealed that all his organs were missing, except for his heart and liver, according to the New York Times. And there appeared to be no blood in the woods where the body was found. Investigators had attributed the missing organs to animals feeding on the body.

Pearlman points to other clues—there appeared to be no vermin on the body, and the toddler’s face and feet may have decomposed more slowly than the rest of the body. That could mean that chemicals had been used.

Hauptmann was arrested in 1934 after he used a $10 gold certificate that was part of a ransom payment to buy gas. Hauptmann had claimed, however, that a man had asked him to hold the gold certificates before he died in Germany.

Some dispute Pearlman’s theories, including David M. Friedman, who wrote The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever. He called Pearlman’s ideas “malicious garbage” in an interview with the New York Times. He acknowledged, however, that he had not read Pearlman’s book.

Updated March 12 at 9:10 a.m. to report that David M. Friedman said he had not read Judge Lise Pearlman’s book.