Suspected Taiwan e-mail scam enmeshes Buffalo lawyer
The e-mail from Xu Yu, saying he was seeking an American lawyer to collect a debt owed to Taiwan Industries Ltd., sounded so phony that Buffalo attorney Laurence D. Behr said so in a return e-mail.
“I am very concerned that this may be a scam,” Behr wrote back to Yu last December.
Behr told Yu what he found suspicious.
“My name in your e-mail is of a different font size from the body of your letter and even the ‘Dear’ preceding it,” Behr replied, “suggesting that this e-mail was sent to many lawyers. Was it?”
Despite Behr’s suspicions, he became convinced that the Taiwanese man was legitimate, collected the $245,000 debt, and kept a $36,000 fee.
But now Behr is being sued for fraud.
A federal court lawsuit filed against Behr and his firm, Barth Sullivan Behr, said the e-mail was in fact, “a mass mailing sent to numerous law firms fishing for lawyers to help facilitate a fraudulent check scheme.”
The lawsuit said that Yu was able to quell Behr’s initial suspicions, and that Behr eventually contracted with Yu to collect the $245,000 debt.
Behr received a check for the amount owed, deducted his 15 percent fee, or $36,000, and sent the remaining $208,000 on to Yu, according to the lawsuit filed by IndyMac Bank in Pasadena, Calif., the nation’s seventh-largest savings and loan.
But there was a problem, the bank said.
The check was drawn on a home equity account the bank approved for two borrowers, and was fraudulent, according to the lawsuit filed against Behr on behalf of the bank by Richard
J. Landau of Ann Arbor, Mich. Landau demanded that Behr return the $36,000 fee, Behr refused, and Landau sued him in U. S. District Court in Buffalo.
Behr denies that he was part of any fraud.
“Certainly, the allegations that we participated in any scheme with any knowledge of any scheme are totally, totally scurrilous,” Behr said. “This lawyer is an SOB, frankly.”
Landau said he was prohibited by the bank from making any comment, and the bank itself declined to comment through its attorney.
Landau’s lawsuit accuses Behr and Philip C. Barth III, the grandson of the
firm’s founder, with taking part in the scheme.
The suit quotes an e-mail exchange between Behr and Barth after Behr collected the debt.
Barth wrote Behr an e-mail on Dec. 14, congratulating his law partner on collecting a $36,000 fee by saying, “You get a gold star! I was sure it was a scam.”
“To which Behr responded,” according to the suit, “ ‘it sounded too good to be true.’ ”
Behr, who said he has not been served with the lawsuit, which is publicly available on the U. S. District Court Web site, was read that conversation.
“This is scurrilous and scandalous that he puts stuff like that in,” Behr said. “He’s a real bastard, I have to tell you. This is not how you plead a lawsuit. He’s trying to shame us and embarrass us.”
Behr said the Grievance Committee of the Appellate Division, which investigates lawyers, looked at the transactions and found no wrongdoing. The grievance committee’s work is secret, and there is no independent means to verify the claim.
Behr was asked if he collected a debt for Taiwan Industries.
“I collected a debt, yes,” he replied.
Was it the result of a solicitation sent to your firm by someone named Xu Yu?
“Are you going to walk through the complaint and ask me about everything in it?” Behr replied.
“They have a claim,” he said of the bank. “We don’t recognize their claim, and that’s all I would say.”
Behr is the executive director of the pro-life group that is trying to raise as much as $100 million to erect a 700-foot-tall religious shrine to Mary in Buffalo’s inner harbor.
