On March 8, 2011, the FBI reported that Attorney Paul J. Aparo of the firm of O'Connell, Flaherty & Attmore, LLC was sentenced to jail for two years by Chief United States District Judge Alvin W. Thompson in Hartford. This sentence will be followed by five years of supervised release. All of this is a punishment for Attorney Aparo's involvment in two fraud schemes. Aparo was also ordered to pay a $20,000 fine.
What happened is that Attorney Paul J. Aparo of the firm of O'Connell, Flaherty & Attmore, a firm that has been cited previously on this website for its corrupt practices, conspired with Kevin J. O'Keefe, former Vice President of Fleet Bank (which later became Bank of America) in Hartford, and Richard R. Girouard, a real estate developer to corrupt the bidding process on distressed loans that Fleet Bank was selling.
In doing so, the three conspirators created shell companies through which to submit bids on distressed loans being sold by Fleet Bank, and also through which they could then receive the profits and distribute them.
O'Keefe, who, as a bank employee, had inside information from the bank regarding the loans, passed on that information to Attorney Aparo of O'Connell, Flaherty & Attmore and also to Richard R. Girouard so that they could provide winning bids on the distressed loans. At the same time O'Keefe provided outdated information to other bidders so their bids would always come in low. Also, he excluded other bidders he thought might outbid his friends.
Paul J. Aparo of O'Connell, Flaherty & Attmore admitted that Richard R. Girouard paid him and Kevin J. O'Keefe approximately $100,000 on one loan that was fraudulently obtained. In addition, through a shell company called Lexington Associates, Aparo and O'Keefe also received an amount of more than $1.4 million which the two split evenly.
Between December 2005 and January 2006, as part of another scheme, Paul J. Aparo of O'Connell, Flaherty & Attmore and Kevin J. O'Keefe, defrauded a client of Aparo's. What happened was, the client contacted Aparo about getting a release from Bank of America from an old mortgage. However, there was no record of the release at the bank. What Aparo and O'Keefe did was tell the client the bank would release the mortgage for $55,000. The client paid this amount to Aparo through his law firm's trust account. Paul Aparo then paid O'Keefe the $55,000 and O'Keefe gave a release from Bank of America to the client.
Paul J. Aparo of O'Connell, Flaherty & Attmore pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit financial institution bribery and one count of bank fraud.
Well, what can you say. This sounds exactly the kind of thing an attorney from the law firm of O'Connell, Flaherty & Attmore would do. It's just one great big happy crime spree at that law firm!
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