A decade ago, flash-in-the-pan lawyer Scott Rothstein was charged with using the guise of his plush Fort Lauderdale law firm to dupe dozens of wealthy investors into buying phony legal settlements purported to be worth more than $1 billion.
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Rothstein was removed from the Broward County Grievance Committee, and his name has also been removed from the database of "The Best Lawyers in America".
Although his arraignment plea was not guilty, Rothstein cooperated with the Government and reversed his plea to guilty of five federal crimes on January 27, 2010. Rothstein was denied bond by U.S. Magistrate Judge Robin Rosenbaum, who ruled that due to his ability to forge documents, he was considered a flight risk.
Marc Nurik is representing Rothstein, and has stepped down as a lawyer from the firm. The prosecutors are Lawrence D. LaVecchio, Paul F. Schwartz and Jeffrey N. Kaplan. They have decades of experience investigating public corruption, white-collar fraud and organized crime.
The FBI and the IRS raided the offices of his law firm on Wednesday, Nov. 4. Documents filed by the IRS on Nov. 9 alleged a Ponzi scheme dating back to 2004. Before his trip to Morocco, Rothstein was an important figure on the South Florida social and political scene.
50 yearsRothstein, who fled to Morocco only to return and start cooperating with the feds, pleaded guilty to running a racket and was sentenced to a stunning 50 years in prison.
Where is Scott Rothstein now? Scott Rothstein today is serving his term in the Broward County Jail.
June 9, 2010 — -- Former lawyer Scott Rothstein was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison Wednesday for using his Fort Lauderdale law firm to run a $1.2 billion Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme that brought him yachts and sports cars and allowed him to make sizable contributions to Florida politicians.
famous stoneRothstein is a Germanic-language (German, Yiddish) surname of several possible origins: toponymic surname from a place with the same name near Merseburg; from a Germanic personal name, Hrodstein (hrod- (Hróð-), "fame", "glory", meaning "famous stone").
June 9, 2010 — -- Former lawyer Scott Rothstein was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison Wednesday for using his Fort Lauderdale law firm to run a $1.2 billion Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme that brought him yachts and sports cars and allowed him to make sizable contributions to Florida politicians.
The scam began to unravel in late 2009. In October, Rothstein flew to Morocco without his wife. The Florida Sun-Sentinel reported that four days later, he texted partners at his law firm, saying he wouldn't see them again. "Sorry for letting you all down," he wrote. "I am a fool.
In a classic Ponzi scheme, he used funds for new investors to pay off old investors. Rothstein's scheme destroyed his law firm, Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler, which once employed more than 70 lawyers and is now defunct.
Rothstein gave big to charitable organizations and hospitals as well. All together, he donated $1.8 million to two Ft. Lauderdale hospitals -- $800,000 to Joe DiMaggio Children's and $1 million to Holy Cross.
Political contributions to the state Democratic and Republican parties and to individual politicians have now been returned. Rothstein gave $9,600 to Republican Gov. Charlie Crist 's campaign for the U.S. Senate and $6,000 to Democrat Alex Sink's gubernatorial campaign.
Attorney Wilfredo Ferrer said that the "rags-to-riches-to-jail saga" of Rothstein, who rose from blue-collar roots in the Bronx to the society pages of South Florida, was a "humbling reminder of what can happen when greed and ambition run amok.".
Rothstein returned from Morocco on Tuesday, Nov. 3 and apparently met with federal prosecutors. Local investors filed their first lawsuit the same day, alleging losses of $3 million. The FBI and the IRS raided the offices of his law firm on Wednesday, Nov. 4. Documents filed by the IRS on Nov. 9 alleged a Ponzi scheme dating back to 2004.
LaVecchio didn’t provide details of Rothstein’s false information in the court filing. Rothstein’s defense attorney, Marc Nurik, could not be reached for comment on the appeals court’s ruling. Rothstein’s crime shook up powerful people in high places throughout the region.
But Rothstein’s fatal mistake — though not spelled out in the court record — was lying to authorities about jewelry that he bought for his wife but did not turn over to authorities from the proceeds of his $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
Rothstein was sentenced to the 50 years in June 2010 on racketeering and other fraud convictions for selling fabricated legal settlements to investors from Florida, New York and Texas. He pleaded guilty in January 2010, after his Ponzi scheme collapsed around Halloween the previous year.
Rothstein, who fled to Morocco only to return and start cooperating with the feds, pleaded guilty to running a racket and was sentenced to a stunning 50 years in prison. The feds formally pledged to recommend a lower sentence.
Prosecutors withdrew their motion two years ago to reduce Rothstein’s sentence based on his cooperation in the sprawling racketeering investigation because he provided “false” information and violated his plea agreement.
Rothstein, 57, still has roughly 40 years to go on the 2010 sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge James Cohn. Last year, Cohn rejected Rothstein’s challenge that federal prosecutors Lawrence LaVecchio, Paul Schwartz and Jeffrey Kaplan reneged on their formal promise to lower his sentence under the plea deal.
Fort Lauderdale lawyer Scott Rothstein is pictured with a collection of men’s watches in 2007, before he was charged with running a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme. Lilly Echeverria Miami Herald File
Rothstein was disbarred after pleading guilty to wire fraud, racketeering, conspiracy to commit money laundering ...
Ex-South Florida attorney Scott Rothstein is stuck with his 50-year prison sentence, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld a district court ruling that allowed the government to withdraw from a potential reduction.
Scott Rothstein, formerly of Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler in Fort Lauderdale, now a federal inmate. (Photo: Melanie Bell/ALM) NEWS.
On Monday, Senior U.S. District Judge James Cohn, the sentencing judge, filed a nine-page ruling that prosecutors were correct and Rothstein was wrong. The terms of the agreement stated that prosecutors could bow out if Rothstein failed to live up to his side of the bargain, the judge found.
Prosecutors said that Rothstein, a disbarred attorney, violated the explicit terms of his plea agreement by lying to them and committing additional crimes after he signed the cooperation agreement.
Scott Rothstein is desperately fighting to force the feds to cut some time off his 50-year federal prison term. So far, he has served eight years. Rothstein's defense attorney Marc Nurik said he hadn't had a chance to fully study the judge's ruling or speak with Rothstein.
Scott Rothstein is serving a 50-year prison term for masterminding Florida's largest Ponzi scheme at the Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler law firm. He cooperated and pleaded guilty in June 2010. He is at an undisclosed prison location in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons witness protection system. (Lilly Echeverria / MCT)
In September 2017, prosecutors notified the judge that they were withdrawing their offer because "in the judgment of the United States, the defendant provided false material information to the government and violated the terms of his plea agreement.".
With standard time off for good behavior — 15 percent — Rothstein can expect to serve 42 ½ years in prison and would be eligible for release sometime in the year 2052. He would be about 90 years old.
Kim Rothstein, her friend and one of her attorneys all served prison time for their roles in trying to conceal some of the couple's assets. The judge wrote in his decision that prosecutors clearly had the "sole discretion" to file the recommendation in the first place and to withdraw it. Advertisement.
Advertisement. Advertisement. Rothstein concludes by talking about history ; specifically, how it’s taught. Looking at some of the most popular U.S. history textbooks in public schools, he highlights what little they have to say about segregation, especially in the North.
Rothstein persuasively debunks many contemporary myths about racial discrimination. He goes after, for instance, the resilient misconception that racial separation was only government policy in the Jim Crow South, and that black entrants into neighborhoods cause white homeowners’ property values to fall. In one powerful section on zoning policies, Rothstein traces how hazardous waste sites were concentrated in segregated black neighborhoods. The episode mirrors the displacement of black families by urban renewal and interstate highway construction in mid-20 th century. Even though it has long been recognized that these policies were immensely destructive and racially targeted, hardly any compensatory assistance has ever been provided.
The segregation of and discrimination against black families is far more than the result of individual choices; after all, individual choices can be either supported or prohibited by government.
Do we know why racial segregation occurs? In 1973, the Supreme Court said no, and in doing so, dealt a crushing blow to the civil rights movement. In Milliken v. Bradley, the court ruled that the white suburbs of Detroit could not be included in Detroit’s school desegregation plan, because no real evidence existed to show that segregation in the region’s schools or neighborhoods was “in any significant measure caused by governmental activity.” The justices concluded black students were concentrated in Detroit because of “unknown and perhaps unknowable factors.”
Rothstein’s book comes at a turning point for civil rights. After decades of public skepticism for many of its signature solutions, like integrated schools and equal access to housing, many have started to question whether the way we talk about inequality and segregation has strayed off course. Advertisement. Advertisement.
In The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute concludes that the court was wrong—and still is—when it described racial segregation as the product of private individual choices.
In 2007, when rejecting school desegregation plans in Louisville and Seattle, Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that discrimination “not traceable to [the government’s] own actions” requires no constitutional remedy. An essential new book takes square aim at these decisions and the very notion of de facto segregation itself.