CRKL partners Charles Clayman and Wayne Gosnell’s work on behalf of two attorneys whose firm had been the victim of employee theft recently resulted in a guilty plea in New York State Supreme Court.

Sanford Gold and David Dince, partners in the now defunct law firm of Gordon & Silber P.C., initially retained CRKL in 2020 to conduct an internal investigation of possible illegal use of the firm’s finances.  The investigation ultimately revealed that Gordon & Silber’s former partner and treasurer, Arthur Cohen, had stolen money from the firm.

Clayman and Gosnell later provided the results of their investigation to the Manhattan District Attorney, which brought charges against Cohen in April of 2022.

According to the indictment, Cohen used his position as treasurer to systematically steal funds from the firm by fabricated accounting entries and filing fraudulent expense reports. Between January 2014 and February 2020, Cohen secretly directed the firm to pay his and his family’s credit cards, charged significant personal expenses to company cards, submitted fraudulent expense reports for fictitious expenses, and overpaid himself in 2019.

On September 6, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced that Cohen had pled guilty to Grand Larceny for stealing approximately $1.2 million from Gordon & Silber P.C., which included underreporting his income over five years, falsifying business records, and making fraudulent legal claims in an attempt to cover his thefts. Cohen is expected to be sentenced on October 10 to serve between 2 ½ and 7 ½ years in state prison.

Read more about the case and its outcome here.