Three Years Is Not Enough

The Georgia Supreme Court has rejected an attorney’s petition for a voluntary three-year suspension.

The [criminal] charges arose out of Gaines’s efforts to suppress and eliminate competition by rigging bids for the purchase of real estate at public foreclosure auctions; Gaines was acting on his own behalf as a real estate investor and not on behalf of any client. The conduct, which occurred between 2008 and 2010 in Fulton County and between 2006 and 2011 in DeKalb County, involved over a dozen properties and more than six co-conspirators. Gaines and his coconspirators negotiated payoffs with each other in exchange for agreements not to compete at public auctions; conducted secret, second auctions, open only to members of the conspiracy; transferred title to rigged foreclosure properties into the names of the co-conspirators who submitted the highest bids at the secret auctions; distributed payoffs to co-conspirators that otherwise would have gone to financial institutions, homeowners, and others with a legal interest in the foreclosed properties; made materially false representations to trustees and others involved in the public auctions; and caused artificially suppressed purchase prices to be reported and paid to financial institutions and others.

The court noted the lengthy pattern of criminal conduct and concluded 

Having carefully considered the petition, response, the precedent cited by both parties, and the lengthy criminal conduct to which Gaines has admitted, we cannot agree that a three-year suspension is the appropriate sanction in this matter.

(Mike Frisch)