Boston lawyer accused of screwing clients, own workers to help lease Mercedes, rent $11,000 downtown apartment

Wassem Amin, 31, faces arraignment tomorrow on a 26-count indictment that he defrauded two clients and a lawyer and intern he had working in his downtown law practice, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Amin used money from clients - and opened credit lines in his workers' names - to lease a Mercedes S-class sedan and help support a lifestyle that included a $10,819-a-month penthouse apartment on Canal Street, the DA's office alleges.

Amin, who put up his legal shingle in 2012, is formally charged with five counts of consumer-credit violations, four counts of larcenty over $250, three counts of witness intimidation, larceny over $250 by scheme, money laundering, attempted larceny, forgery by check, uttering, common law forgery, common law uttering and publishing a false statement of financial condition.

According to the DA's office, Amin:

Started a practice known as Amin Legal Group last year and lured a college acquaintance along with a law school intern to join the firm. According to prosecutors, Amin opened several lines of credit in the victims’ names without their knowledge or consent and used them to charge expenses totaling nearly $35,000. Amin allegedly threatened one victim by text message after learning that the victim had filed a complaint against him with the Board of Bar Overseers.

Amin is charged with embezzling nearly $50,000 from a client who was in the process of launching a business. The victim wired the funds to Amin with the expectation that they would be transferred into an account Amin claimed he had created in the name of the new company. Amin instead transferred the funds into his corporate accounts and used the majority of the money to pre-pay a lease for a Mercedes S-class sedan, prosecutors said. In response to the victim’s repeated demands for the return of the money, Amin wrote a check on an account that had been closed two months earlier.

Amin is also accused of charging expenses totaling $9,000 to the credit card of another client. The charges were not related to any legal services.

Additional indictments charge Amin for securing the lease for a $10,819/month Canal Street penthouse apartment by providing false information, then failing to pay rent; fraudulently inducing a classmate to co-sign a student loan during 2011; altering a paycheck from a former employer in an attempt to steal more than $22,000 from the company; and writing bad checks to defraud two banks.

The Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers suspended his law license in June of this year.

Innocent, etc.