Phony FiDi Attorney Pleads Guilty to Larceny and Fraud
The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has announced the conviction of Sean Mescall, who had been passing himself off as a lawyer for three years, while working out of an expensive suite of offices at 140 Broadway and stealing almost $300,000 from clients. In a plea bargain, Mr. Mescall has admitted guilt to one count of third degree grand larceny, and one count of scheming to defraud in the first degree, which are class D and class E felonies, respectively. Conviction on these counts carries a term of two to six years in prison. Mr. Mescall has also agreed to a financial judgment of $294,275, which will be used to seek restitution for his victims.
According to court documents, Sean Patrick Mescall created a fake law firm on the 46th floor at 140 Broadway under multiple business names, such as “Mescall Law P.C./Prospection Legal Group,” “Prospection Legal Group,” and “Legal Prospection.” To attract clients, Mr. Mescall created profiles on multiple online legal search engines, such as Justia.com, Law.com, Lawyer.com, and Nolo.com, as well as social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. In these profiles, he boasted (falsely) of a holding law degree from Texas Tech, of being a member of the Bar Association in New York, and having more than a decade of litigation experience.
As dozens (and eventually more than 100) clients streamed in (the firm took on cases for discrimination, class-action, and breach-of-contract lawsuits), Mr. Mescall began to feel a tad overwhelmed and hired an actual lawyer to assist him, successfully convincing her that he was a licensed attorney.
This may not be Mr. Mescall’s first brush with the law. Mr. Bragg’s office identifies Mr. Mescall’s place of residence as Newburgh, New York, in the Hudson Valley. Multiple public records indicate that Newburgh is also the home of a person going by the same name and born in the same year, but using a different middle initial.
Sean Fitzgerald Mescall (as opposed the middle initial “P,” used by the ersatz attorney at 140 Broadway) was convicted by federal prosecutors more than a decade ago of operating a Ponzi scheme that induced more than 100 elderly residents of North Carolina to invest their life savings (in the aggregate, more than $1.5 million) in currency trading strategies that promised annual returns of between 60 to 80 percent. He claimed to have developed this technique will working as a senior executive at Merrill Lynch. In fact, Mr. Mescall had never been employed in any capacity at Merrill, and never traded any currencies, according to prosecutors. Instead, he spent the money he took from investors on a BMW, a Ferrari, a Rolex watch, diamonds, and other personal expenses. In 2014, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
While incarcerated, this Sean Mescall tried his hand at jailhouse lawyering, writing appellate briefs on behalf of fellow prisoners that he signed, “Sean Fitzgerald Patrick Mescall, Esq.” using the honorific traditionally reserved for attorneys. In this context, it appears that the Sean Patrick Mescall who pretended to be a lawyer at 140 Broadway and the Sean Fitzgerald Mescall who defrauded investors in North Carolina (both of whom were born in 1979 and recently lived in Newburgh) are the same person: the Sean Fitzgerald Patrick Mescall who signed legal briefs filed from federal prison.
By 2022, Mr. Mescall had been transferred from federal prison to home confinement in Newburgh, where he began filing lawsuits against the federal government (under the Americans with Disabilities Act) for not providing him with his preferred medications to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression, and substance abuse withdrawal. These claims were eventually dismissed.
Around this time, Sean Patrick Mescall began practicing law at 140 Broadway, and filing legal briefs on behalf of multiple clients. By August 2023, he had been released entirely from federal custody and supervision (years ahead of the end of his original sentence, in 2030). At this point, the new law practice in Lower Manhattan’s Financial District began to ramp up in earnest. Requests for comment from Mr. Mescall’s attorney were not answered before press time.