Law Firm Office Manager Pleads Guilty to Perjury in $275,000 Overbilling Case
A former office manager for a West Virginia lawyer has pleaded guilty to one count of perjury concerning an alleged $275,000 scheme to defraud the state public defender’s office for claimed attorney work that wasn’t actually performed by an attorney.
Yesterday’s plea by Nancy Burkhart, 52, was for lying to a federal grand jury investigating the scheme at a Martinsburg law firm, reports the Associated Press.
It follows a guilty plea earlier this year by her former boss, Heidi Silver Myers, to one count of aiding and abetting mail fraud and one count of aiding and abetting wire fraud, reports the Herald-Mail.
Burkhart was originally charged with four counts of perjury in a 112-count 2007 indictment against herself and Myers. The two women were accused of conspiring to overbill the public defender’s office by $275,000, between 2004 and 2006, for attorney work, charged at $45 per hour, that was actually performed by non-lawyers.
Her boss, who is now known as Heidi J. Silver, had her law license annulled, the Herald-Mail says.
It appears that neither Burkhart nor Silver may yet have been sentenced.
An earlier Herald-Mail article provides additional details about the case.
