Acquittal Vacates Suspension

The Michigan Attorney Discipline Board vacated an interim suspension

On July 16, 2024, the United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division entered an order (1) granting defendants’ motions for judgment of acquittal (ECF Nos. 533, 537) and (2) terminating defendants’ motions for new trial (ECF Nos. 535, 538) as moot; and, a judgment of acquittal, in the matter titled United States of America v John Angelo and Glenn Phillip Franklin, III, Case No. 20-cr-20599, acquitting respondent of the felony offense for which he was earlier convicted. Upon conviction, respondent’s license to practice law in Michigan was automatically suspended. See Notice of Automatic Interim Suspension dated December 18, 2023.

In accordance with MCR 9.120(B)(1), the Attorney Discipline Board must set aside an attorney’s automatic suspension upon conviction of a felony if that conviction is subsequently vacated, reversed, or otherwise set aside for any reason by the trial court or an appellate court. Pursuant to that rule, the Board is hereby vacating the automatic interim suspension, effective July 16, 2024, the date of the United States District Court’s order.

The allegations were described in a press release of the Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs

According to the indictment, from at least January 2014 through October 2019, John Angelo, Mann, Daneshvar, Franklin, and Sitto, along with others, conspired to fraudulently use a Detroit Police Department (DPD) password to unlawfully obtain State of Michigan Traffic Crash Reports from a third-party private vendor, when many of the reports were not then publicly available and bore the watermark “Unapproved Report.” They allegedly used these  reports to solicit crash victims and direct them to the personal injury law firm operated by Franklin and Sitto, a chiropractic business operated by Daneshvar, and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) businesses owned and operated by Angelo, Mann, and other conspirators. The indictment further alleges that from approximately August 2014 through February 2017, Franklin and Sitto delivered weekly payments to John Angelo for providing access to the fraudulently obtained crash  reports and managing the solicitation of automobile crash victims.

(Mike Frisch)