Sunday, May 11, 2008
Lawyers - to be "snared"?
This looks likely to get quite interesting...
At www.law.com, Joel Stashenko reports:
"New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo predicted Thursday that "hundreds and hundreds" of attorneys will ultimately be implicated in his office's investigation of government entities improperly enrolling non-employees in public pension funds.
While his investigators have only exposed the "tip of the iceberg" so far, Cuomo said the problem is not limited to a few school districts on Long Island which were initially exposed for having put attorneys doing work for the districts on the public pension rolls.
Cuomo said the problem is also evident at BOCES school districts, "special" districts like sewer or water districts and towns and villages.
"In many ways, this situation is the public integrity version of death by a thousand cuts," Cuomo said. "Ten thousand governments. Little scams. Chronic widespread corruption and fraud. And in the end, the taxpayers bleed millions of dollars."
While "there will be people beyond lawyers" found to be receiving improper public pension benefits, "the predominant class will be lawyers," Cuomo said."
