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State’s high court revokes Madison attorney’s license for fraud

By: Amy Karon, [email protected]//August 17, 2012//

State’s high court revokes Madison attorney’s license for fraud

By: Amy Karon, [email protected]//August 17, 2012//

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday revoked the license of David Stokes, a Madison attorney convicted in 2011 of felony theft by fraud.

In 2010, prosecutors said Stokes billed the Wisconsin State Defender’s Office for 691 hours of work he never performed, according to the court’s decision. They alleged he filed 628 fraudulent billing entries in more than 40 client matters, resulting in payments of $19,630 over nearly four years.

In August, Dane County Circuit Judge Nicholas McNamara sentenced Stokes to two years probation and six months of jail time. His license was suspended in September.

The Office of Lawyer Regulation was also investigating five additional grievances against Stokes – three related to fraudulent billing and two related to alleged incompetence and failure to provide adequate representation.

In March, referee Lisa Goldman wrote she was “troubled by Stokes’ willingness to lie, forge signatures, and fraudulently bill the SPD in furtherance of his own personal goals.” She added Stokes had lied to a sitting court and forged client signatures on documents filed in bankruptcy court.

“Equally disturbing,” she wrote, “are the allegations that his filings were filled with mistakes, and that the court personnel could not decipher the filings, or process his client’s cases appropriately.”

The Supreme Court concurred, writing that Stokes’ professional conduct deserved “the severest level of discipline that we impose, namely, the revocation of his license to practice law in Wisconsin.”

Stokes has a history of reprimands. In 1982, he was privately chastised for talking about a client’s legal issues with another client. Thirteen years later, he receive a public reprimand for “failing to provide competent and diligent representation of a client and failing to communicate with a client in a criminal appeal matter,” according to the Supreme Court decision.

The court ordered Stokes to pay $1,562.12 for the cost of the proceeding.

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