Police Pose as Clients, Charge Disbarred Lawyer in Office Sting
After what reportedly could be as much as a decade or more of alleged unauthorized practice in Nevada on the part of disbarred attorney Charles Radosevich, authorities have apparently mounted a full-scale campaign against him.
Two Las Vegas police detectives went to the Radosevich’s office posing as potential clients on Tuesday and issued two misdemeanor citations to the 62-year-old for practicing law without a license, reports the Las Vegas Sun. He allegedly accepted $200 from the detectives in exchange for agreeing to provide legal services.
The citations follow news that Radosevich was charged with felony theft last week for allegedly accepting nearly $190,000 to represent “clients” in Clark County. Although a law school graduate, he was never admitted to practice in Nevada, authorities tell the newspaper. He was disbarred in Colorado in 1989 for making personal use of client funds and was subsequently disbarred in Nebraska, too.
As the Las Vegas Sun details in a lengthy Sunday article, Radosevich resolved an earlier Nevada State Bar matter by entering into a court-approved 2000 agreement not to practice law. But the state bar continued to receive occasional complaints about him over the next nine years, says deputy counsel David Clark.
The state bar pursued disciplinary cases against two actual lawyers who worked with Radosevich and they reportedly lost or are losing their licenses. But evidence of “brazen public harm” by Radosevich only surfaced this year, Clark tells the newspaper.
Radosevich, who is accused of having on occasion circulated forged court documents to help persuade clients to give him money, allegedly pocketed $112,000 from a California woman for whom he negotiated a $118,000 settlement of a $128,000 gambling debt with the prosecution in a bad-check case, according to the Sun.
The 44-year-old wound up in jail for more than two weeks this year when authorities caught up with her in her home state, the newspaper reports. And she still faces prosecution concerning the criminal case even though she paid the entire settlement (she sent $6,000 directly to the government in two payments of $3,000 each).
“There’s something wrong with the system for this guy to be able to act as an attorney in our community for this period of time and nobody blows the whistle on him,” says Detective Pete Dustin. He is a member of the Metro Police department that made the felony theft case against Radosevich.
Radosevich declined the newspaper’s request for comment.
