Disgraced And (Soon To Be) Disbarred

The District of Columbia Board on Professional Responsibility has approved the consent disbarment of former Akin Gump partner Jeffrey Wertkin.

The consent goes to the Court of Appeals for final action. 

Bloomberg reported 

The pressure finally got to Jeffrey Wertkin.

Before joining Akin Gump, Wertkin spent six years as a lawyer in the Justice Department’s False Claims unit, which handles whistle-blower cases alleging fraud in connection with government contracts. Wertkin specialized in health-care fraud.

FBI Lawyer Sting Rattles Billion-Dollar Whistle-Blower Unit

The suits, known as qui tam complaints, are filed under seal and given to the Justice Department for review. Prosecutors can intervene if they believe a case is worth pursuing. Only judges can unseal the suits and companies often don’t know they’ve been sued until then.

Wertin said in the brief that his spiral began after a federal judge in Alabama threw out a 2016 jury verdict against AseraCare Inc. over a whistle-blower’s allegations that the hospice provider fraudulently billed Medicare for patients who weren’t terminally ill. Wertkin had spent the better part a year preparing and trying the case and the outcome left him “devastated,” his wife, Erin, said, according to the brief.

Wertkin admitted making off with piles of whistle-blower complaints, some of which he grabbed off his boss’s desk after hours and copied. The lawyer said he initially sought to use them to identify companies he could market himself to as a false-claims specialist after joining Akin Gump in 2016.

“I had never done anything like that in my entire life,’’ Wertkin said, according to the brief. “I knew it was wrong. But my judgment was clouded by stress.’’

Compromised Anonymity

Prosecutors said Wertkin called companies targeted in the suits and hinted “that problems could be lurking for them.” By doing so, the lawyer “blatantly and unilaterally’’ compromised anonymity protections promised to whistle-blowers, the government said.

By November 2016, Wertkin’s efforts to build a client list stalled and the lawyer panicked. “If I couldn’t succeed with this inside information then how could I ever expect to succeed without it?’’ he said in the filing.

Wertkin said he decided to see whether the pilfered whistle-blower cases could be monetized more directly. He used an old iPhone to leave a message for the general counsel of a Sunnyvale, California-based company named in a sealed suit. Identifying himself only as “Dan,’’ he offered to sell a copy of the complaint, he said.

Wertkin also called companies in Oregon, Alabama and New York to make the same offer. None of the companies are identified in court papers. He offered to provide a copy to the Alabama firm for $50,000, prosecutors said.

FBI Sting

The in-house lawyer he contacted at the Silicon Valley firm had alerted the FBI to the call. Agents set up a sting in the hotel lobby. “My life is over,” Wertkin told them when he was arrested.

Still, the government contends Wertkin’s bizarre crime spree went on even after he got out on bail.

Wertkin flew from San Francisco to Washington and headed to his Akin Gump office, where he ditched copies of the purloined complaints and destroyed phone bills reflecting calls to companies, prosecutors said.

He also attempted to frame a former Justice Department colleague to make look as if he’d sent him two of the stolen whistle-blower cases, prosecutors said. Wertkin put the suits in an envelope bearing the government lawyer’s return address, hoping to mislead investigators about the source of the complaints, according to the defense brief. The FBI started an investigation of the False Claims unit in the wake of Wertkin’s arrest.

Even before Wertkin showed up to collect the $310,000 payoff, the cops were on his heels. As an Uber driver drove him to the California hotel, he got a call from a state official at Alabama’s Department of Justice inquiring about “Dan’s attempt to sell a qui tam complaint,” according to Wertkin’s brief.

For his part, Wertkin now acknowledges he betrayed the trust of his colleagues at the Justice Department and Akin Gump. “Looking back,” he said, “I’m shocked at not only how wrong my actions were, but how reckless.”

The case is U.S. v. Wertkin, 17-cr-0557, U.S. District Court, District of Northern California (San Francisco).

Law.com reported on his recent sentencing. (Mike Frisch)