Bankruptcy Trustee Seeks Clawback from Rothstein's Pal and Ex-Law Partner Salamone
A friend and former law partner of imprisoned ex-attorney and convicted swindler Scott Rothstein has been sued by a Chapter 11 bankruptcy trustee for Rothstein’s former South Florida law firm.
Trustee Herbert Stettin is attempting to claw back six-figure profits that he says were fraudulently transferred to defendant Chris Salamone, his former law firm Chris M. Salamone & Associates (now a business consulting firm of the same name) and another corporate defendant. The suit was filed last week in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Salamone, according to a copy of the complaint (PDF) provided on a bankruptcy trustee website (reg. req.), attended law school at Nova Southeastern University along with Rothstein; was formerly a partner of Rothstein in the law firm of Kaplan Kusnick Rothstein & Salamone; and was a close friend of Rothstein.
As other “investors” in Rothstein’s $188 million Ponzi scheme were taken to the cleaners, Salamone and companies associated with him paid in about $1.775 million to the now-defunct Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler law firm and got about $2.413 million in return, during a period of a little over one year in 2007 and 2008, the suit says.
A phone number listed for Salamone’s business consulting company on the Internet wasn’t answered this afternoon when called by the ABA Journal.
Hat tip: Heard Along the Coast (South Florida Business Journal)
Updated at 1:09 p.m. to include information about attempted contact with Salamone’s company.
