Criminal Justice

William Lerach in Prison Lockdown for Alleged Football Tickets Offer

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Former lawyer William Lerach, serving time for paying kickbacks to lead plaintiffs in securities class actions, is now accused of offering another kind of incentive, this time to a prison guard: his San Diego Chargers season tickets.

Lerach has been moved to administrative segregation where he is locked up for 23 hours a day because of the alleged offer, three sources told the Recorder. If he loses a formal administrative proceeding on the matter, he could be moved to a higher security facility and lose his good time credits, the story says.

Lerach was sentenced to two years in prison in February and was incarcerated at a prison camp that is part of the penitentiary in Lompoc, Calif. Prison rules bar inmates from offering anything of value to a staff member and categorize the offense at the second most egregious level in a four-tier system.

But the news isn’t all bad for Lerach. A federal judge has approved nearly $700 million in attorney fees for plaintiffs lawyers who represented shareholders in Enron litigation, and Lerach stands to collect as much as $50 million of that amount, according to one previous report.

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