Lawyer on the Lam Nabbed in Nicaragua

February 11, 2020

Last month, U.S. Marshals arrested a West Virginia lawyer who fled the United States back in 2016 over accusations of fraudulent billing. 

The attorney reportedly billed the state more than $600,000 during a two-year period. Most of our readers probably won’t blink an eye seeing a high-six-figure legal bill, but as you’d expect, there is more to this story.

The lawyer was billing the Mountain State for legal services allegedly provided to the indigent, which pays $45 per hour.

Let’s crunch some numbers. If those hours split out evenly over both years, that’s $300K per year, which comes out to 6,666.66 hours billed each year. In a non-leap year, the total number of hours on the calendar tally up to 8,760. That’s the equivalent of billing the state almost 18 hours per day, for each and every day of the year. No wonder he took that trip to Nicaragua. He must have been dead tired! 

On top of it all, West Virginia cites a flawed accounting system that somehow allowed him to bill multiple days in which he claimed to work more than 24 hours in the day.

Hope he has a good lawyer.