California Attorney Pleads Guilty For Role In $912M Ponzi Scheme

Rule of thumb: you should never represent your client in a way that will make you need a lawyer down the line. As much as it is in your rights to argue up and down that your client is on the straight and narrow, once you cross in to moving money and making up misleading documents to make your case, it is only a matter of time before you’re going to be on the other side of the law. That time eventually caught up with Ari Lauer.

Reuters has coverage:

A California attorney on Tuesday pleaded guilty a week before he was set to face trial on criminal charges stemming from his role in an estimated $912 million Ponzi scheme involving California solar power supply company DC Solar.

Ari Lauer pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Dale Drozd in Sacramento to 23 counts, including bank fraud and wire fraud affecting a financial institution.

The finer details of the scheme reads like one of those “You have two cows” entries. Over the span of about 7 years DC Solar entered contracts promising to sell solar generators. Totally fine at face value, but things go south pretty quickly once you realize DC only actually had about half of the 17,000 or so generators they promised to sell and padded out the numbers that didn’t add up with fraud.

Lauer’s sentencing is scheduled for January 26th. If the members of his cohort are any indication of what he’s in for, he’s looking at some serious time. Both of the owners of DC Solar earned a good deal of time behind bars: Paulette Carpoff got 11 years and her husband Jeff got 30. That said, whatever amount of money Lauer is going to be on the hook for will be dwarfed by the $790M Jeff was ordered to pay back to the people he frauded. That said, this might be the end of his law license.

Solar Firm’s Lawyer Pleads Guilty To Ponzi Scheme Charges [Reuters]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s .  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who is learning to swim, is interested in critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.