Former BigLaw Counsel Who Lied to Lenders in Maxim Deal Gets Jail
Harvey Newkirk, a former lawyer at Bryan Cave LLP was sentenced to six months in prison for lying to lenders as part of a failed scheme to buy Maxim Magazine through impersonation, a false e-mail and stolen money, reports Bloomberg BNA.
New York prosecutors wanted the judge to sentence Newkirk, 39, to a “significant term of imprisonment,” describing him as “a facile liar lacking shame, remorse or sympathy for his many victims.” Newkirk’s lawyers sought probation, saying he was a “precocious only child born into a family of God” who lost his job and suffered from the shame of a criminal conviction.
Newkirk, while not part of the most “despicable aspects” of the scheme, “was a knowing and willful perpetrator of fraud in his own part,” U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan said Thursday at his sentencing. “The jury’s verdict was amply deserved.” He could have been sentenced to more than 17 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, the Bloomberg report says.
