By: Ellen Cans
Attorney Stuart Finkelstein has pleaded guilty to filing over 300 bunk lawsuits related to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the states of New York and Florida.
As reported by the NY Post, last week, in Manhattan federal court, Finkelstein, 67, admitted to one count of mail fraud for having filed lawsuits on behalf of two clients who did not even know he was representing them. Finkelstein stole the identities of his two victims and then settled the fake suits to profit over $900,000 in attorney’s fees, said prosecutors from the Southern District of New York.
The phony suits, seeking attorney fees and other relief, were filed against public establishments pursuant to the ADA, but were not actually on behalf of the plaintiffs, with neither of the two named plaintiffs ever having authorizing him to take the legal action, federal prosecutors said. The suits were filed between 2013 and 2016 on behalf of the two unsuspecting persons, who are referred to in court papers only as “Victim 1” and “Victim 2.” The lawyer faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Finkelstein, of Davie, Florida, had already been branded a fraudster having been barred from practicing law in 2007 and finally being reinstated in March 2016. In February 2019, the Post had reported that the ambulance-chasing lawyer had filed dozens of more lawsuits in New York on behalf of clients without their knowledge or consent. He had filed 25 lawsuits between August 2017 and March 2018, on behalf of one Bronx man, José Figueroa, without telling him a thing. “Oh, Lord!” Figueroa had said when a Post reporter told him about the suits. “I’m totally blindsided.”
In one of the suits filed fraudulently on Figueroa’s behalf, Finkelstein allegedly forged Figueroa’s name on a HIPAA form for a disability-discrimination suit against Sidewalk Cafe in the East Village. “That’s not my signature. I didn’t fill that out,” Figueroa had told The Post when they had showed him a copy of the form filed in Manhattan federal court. In January 2019, Finkelstein had filed another case on behalf of Figueroa in Manhattan federal court, arguing that his wheelchair-bound client couldn’t get a seat at a Fish restaurant in Greenwich Village because a concrete step obstructed the entrance. Figueroa said he hadn’t been in a wheelchair for weeks, that he didn’t retain the lawyer and that he didn’t receive a penny from the hordes of settlements made in his name.
Federal prosecutors had charged Finkelstein in November 2019 with mail fraud, aggravated identity theft, obstruction of justice, and making false declarations before a court, as per the Post. “Stuart Finkelstein, a practicing attorney, appeared to be advocating on his clients’ behalf by allegedly filing lawsuits claiming they were unable to access public establishments due to ADA noncompliance,” Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in a statement. “This was false. Not only did he allegedly fabricate the underlying facts of the lawsuits – the victims never actually tried to access the establishments – Finkelstein stole their identities and didn’t even represent them as an attorney.”
On Monday, an attorney for Finkelstein did not immediately return the Post’s request for comment.
