The FBI undercover crash-fraud investigation netted 35 defendants, including 31 patients faking injury supposedly arising from car crashes and three “runners”. It also caught lawyer Jordan Luber (Luber & Cataldi) of Philadelphia. Per the Philadelphia Business Journal:

The sting included a fake chiropractic clinic the FBI set up in Northeast Philadelphia called Injury Associates. Instead of providing care it generated paperwork to make it appear patients received treatment so they could file fake claims.

According to prosecutors: Two agents posing as cleaning women told Luber they went to Injury Associates and wanted to pursue claims. They admitted on audio and video recordings to Luber that they had not received any treatment and had created fake medical records. Luber still pursued the claims, telling an insurer they were in an accident and received treatment. He negotiated a settlement of $7,500 each.

Luber, who is reported to have kept $6,000 of the $15,000 or 40% as his fee, drew a sentence of two months plus a year of supervised release and 100 hours of community service. He is “also prohibited from practicing law for a year.” The Philadelphia Daily News account says he’s surrendered his license, although the only report I could find online is of a suspension (PDF). So it sounds as if, assuming equal luck in any bar disciplinary process, he might reapply for the license and be back practicing law before too long. Won’t that bolster confidence in our court system? (IFA Webnews via P&S weekly roundup).

Filed under: crash faking, legal discipline, Philadelphia