By Ramon Coronado
Bee Staff Writer
(Published Feb. 3, 2001) Metro Page 1. Picture (not attached herewith) can be see on Metro page 4.
Shawn Sadighian, accused of fooling prosecutors and judges into thinking he was a criminal defense lawyer, surrendered to police Friday after two days as a fugitive.
"He walked over to the jail with his lawyer and turned himself in," said Sacramento Police Lt. Sam Somers.
Sadighian, 27, is accused of advising defendants even though he didn't have a license to practice law. The Sacramento man was booked into county jail on a felony charge of taking money under false pretenses.
Deputy District Attorney Jean Williamson said Sadighian will be arraigned next week.
"My understanding is that he never left town," Williamson said.
Sadighian's photo was in newspapers and aired on television throughout the region after police interviewed three people who claimed they had paid him upward of $5,000 to represent them in separate criminal cases.
"A fourth victim has since come forward," Somers said, declining to be more specific.
From July to October of last year, Sadighian, who was also known as Shahin Sadighian and Mark Mancini, posed as a criminal defense lawyer in courthouses in Sacramento and San Joaquin counties, according to a Southern California lawyer whose State Bar number Sadighian was using. Prosecutors in both counties are investigating.
Sadighian telephoned police Thursday, and he and his lawyer, David W. Dratman, negotiated as to when the surrender would take place, Somers said.
Dratman, a former assistant federal defender, said a severe beating with a baseball bat that Sadighian suffered three years ago could play a role in his defense. Sadighian had brain surgery and was left with a scar several inches long on his forehead.
"People should understand that he was brutally assaulted, and that may have some relevance to his present situation," Dratman said.
Dratman is well-known for his criminal defense work in Northern California.
Over the years, his clients have included Kuen Lee, a chemist convicted of fraud for feeding federal agencies false test results on water, soil and air samples from polluted sites, and former state Food and Agriculture Secretary Henry Voss, who pleaded no contest to drunken driving charges after a Christmas party at the home of then-Gov. Pete Wilson.
After The Bee reported on Sadighian's alleged activities Wednesday, prosecutors in Sacramento, Yolo and San Joaquin counties began investigating to see how many cases they might have to retry because of legal problems arising from Sadighian's unlicensed advice.
One of the Sacramento cases was in court Thursday. Charles Lee Mills withdrew the guilty plea that Sadighian had negotiated for him.
Mills, who was serving three years in prison, was brought back to court Jan. 4 by Judge Jane Ure after she discovered that Sadighian was not a lawyer.
The judge told Mills that he had been brought back for re-sentencing because of "improper counsel." But in a jail interview Wednesday, Mills said he didn't understand what that meant until a story appeared in The Bee detailing Sadighian's activities.
Mills, who remains in custody on $20,000 bail, is scheduled for a preliminary hearing Feb. 15.
"It is like starting all over from scratch," said Paul Irish, Mills' newly appointed defense attorney.
If convicted of evading police and four counts of drug possession, Mills could face an eight-year prison sentence.
Mills said he met Sadighian at a Denny's restaurant parking lot. What caught his attention was the personalized license plate on Sadighian's Mercedes-Benz that read "TRU LIEZ," Mills said.
"He had this expensive car, expensive clothes and he looked like a lawyer, so I asked him if he was. He said he was, so I asked him if he could help me on my case," Mills said.
"He told me he went to Yale and that he had been practicing for three, four years," Mills said.
After the chance meeting, Sadighian telephoned Mills and instructed him to meet him at a Franklin Boulevard auto repair shop. When they met, Sadighian took Mills to the garage office, where they worked out the terms of his legal representation, Mills said.
"He took me upstairs and told me to give him $1,000 then, and ... to pay him the $2,000 later," Mills said.
"He told me he did a lot of drug cases and that he beat a lot of them," Mills said.
Court records show that Sadighian did make a few routine court appearances. His name still appears on the file. He even appeared at a Sept. 8 preliminary hearing in Department 4 of the main courthouse.
There were mixed reports on his performance. Some said he acted like any other young lawyer, while others said he was laughable.
"I thought he was asking stupid questions," Mills said of Sadighian's cross-examination of police officers. "He asked a cop why a black man would be carrying $3,000 in cash."
The 26-year-old Sacramento man said Sadighian urged him to plead guilty, but Mills said he wanted to go to trial because he felt he had a shot at acquittal.
There were two other men in the car when Mills was arrested. They each pleaded guilty and got terms of less than a year, court records show. Mills was the driver.
At another court hearing, Mills, no longer in custody, got into an argument with Sadighian. Sadighian told the judge that Mills was threatening him, so the judge ordered a bailiff to escort Sadighian to his car, according to Mills.
Though Sadighian's legal skills were debatable, it appears his fees were reasonable.
Sacramento defense attorney Paul W. Comiskey, who has written a "citizens' guide" for people who have been arrested, distributes his guide and fee schedule outside the jail.
According to Comiskey's fee schedule, Comiskey would have charged Mills the same amount for the same work.
While Sadighian told many people that he was Yale Law School graduate, it is still unclear if Sadighian earned a law degree from any school.
An official at Yale said Thursday that Sadighian never attended law school there nor did he earn a doctorate from the Ivy League school as claimed on the resume Sadighian furnished to an area college where he taught computer science for a time.
He did enroll as a graduate student in the Yale geology department, but he withdrew after three months, in November 1994.
Officials at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., confirmed Thursday that Sadighian earned a bachelor's degree in physics, graduating cum laude, but he never earned the master's degree he reported to Sacramento's National University.
Bee staff writer Ed Fletcher contributed to this report.
The Sacramento County District Attorney's Office on Wednesday began a review of its criminal cases involving a Sacramento man who witnesses say masqueraded as a lawyer, fooling clients, prosecutors and even judges. So far, three criminal cases have been identified, but it is not known how many other defendants were represented by Shawn Sadighian, Special Assistant Deputy District Attorney Robin Shakely said.
Convictions in which Sadighian was involved could be undone and cases retried. At least one defendant, Charles Mills, who was serving a three-year-prison sentence on drug charges, will come before Judge Jane Ure today to withdraw his guilty plea.
"I paid him $3,000. He told me three years was the best I could do, and now I'm finding out that he wasn't a real lawyer. How can that happen?" Mills said from the county jail.
Shakely said it is too early to tell how many other cases will be uncovered.
"We just started the process of determining how many, and we will get them back to court if necessary," Shakely said.
Meanwhile, Sacramento police said they are looking for Sadighian, 28, on multiple felony charges, including grand theft. And as the search continues, questions are surfacing about what Sadighian did with his time when he wasn't in court.
Sadighian formerly taught computer science and electronic commerce at two local colleges, officials there said, and he claimed to have a doctorate in physics from Yale University.
Sadighian, known at the courthouse to be the son of a Sacramento physician, wore expensive suits, jewelry and Italian shoes. He drove a 1995 Mercedes-Benz two-seater roadster with personalized plates that read "TRU LIEZ," according to the Department of Motor Vehicles.
"Let's hope he's not in a hospital picking up a new profession," said Bianca A. Sofonio, an Irvine lawyer whose California Bar Association number was used by Sadighian.
Sadighian also was known as Shahin Sadighhian and Mark Mancini, police said. While it is not known how long he may have practiced law without a license in Sacramento, he had also appeared in courthouses in Yolo and San Joaquin counties, according to a complaint Sofonio made with the state bar.
Defense attorneys, who questioned his lawyering skills, confronted him in November and he hasn't been seen since.
Though he is apparently no longer practicing law, the aftermath of his wrongdoing is just beginning to surface.
Joshua Dressler, a McGeorge School of Law professor, said any conviction with which Sadighian was involved as a lawyer has the potential to be undone.
"This is a lot like that situation with those problems of the Los Angeles police officers. You have to look at each case one by one. The whole process gets tainted," Dressler said.
Under the law, people have the right to competent legal advice and being advised by a non-lawyer would make invalid any guilty plea or conviction, he said.
"The prosecution now needs to renegotiate with a real attorney. One can't know whether a real attorney would have bargained more persuasively," he said.
"The prosecutor has an ethical duty to inform defendants," Dressler said.
Shakely agreed with the professor. Prosecutors in San Joaquin and Yolo counties could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
"The same ethical duty binds all prosecutors," Shakely said.
Although two Sacramento deputy district attorneys notified a local defense group when they suspected Sadighian was not a real lawyer, it wasn't until a story appeared in The Bee on Wednesday that the top brass of the District Attorney's Office knew that there might be problems with the Sadighian cases, Shakely said.
Kathleen Beitiks, spokeswoman for the state bar in San Francisco, said that although they were notified Sadighian was practicing without a license, they had no jurisdiction over him.
"We only police licensed lawyers. Someone practicing without a license is a problem the local police and prosecutors have to deal with," Beitiks said.
Although a former client of Sadighian claims to have made a police report in September, Sacramento Police Lt. Sam Somers said the report wasn't made until November.
"The follow-up is something that does not happen overnight," he said. "We have three victims, but there are probably more who will be coming forward as word gets out."
Aside from felony grand theft, Sadighian is wanted on a charge of obtaining money under false pretenses, Somers said.
C. Emmett Mahle, the Sacramento defense attorney who investigated Sadighian's fraud for the local defense attorney group, said the incident is not welcome in a profession that gets more than its fair share of bad publicity already.
"We get such a bad rap as attorneys, this is one situation where we were able to police our own," he said. "I think it has made the whole system, especially our local court, more aware that these situations happen."
Laurance Smith, a Sacramento criminal defense attorney, said he encountered Sadighian three years ago in court not as a lawyer, but as a "nuclear physicist" who claimed his career was ruined after he became a victim of a beating.
Smith represented Darin James Guisande, who was convicted of assaulting Sadighian, who testified that he armed himself with a shotgun to protect himself but that he lost the fight anyway, court records show.
"He claimed he was a Yale-educated nuclear physicist. I was suspicious because great intellectuals like that don't get into fistfights and run down the street with sawed-off shotguns," Smith said.
From the spring of 1998 until the end of June 2000, Sadighian taught computer science courses at area colleges. In the spring of 1998, he began teaching computer information system courses as an associate professor at American River College.
His relationship with the school ended in January or February 2000, a school official said. The official would not say why Sadighian was not given a new contract.
His time at ARC showed up on his résumé when he applied to teach computer science classes at the Sacramento branch of National University. He was hired there as an adjunct professor in 1999 and in May 1999 he was hired as an associate professor, the school said.
The school is confident Sadighian has the credentials required to teach at National University, said Hoyt Smith, the school's director of public relations.
"They did the background check and found him qualified to teach the classes he taught," Smith said.
Sadighian's résumé says he has a doctorate in physics from Yale, where he worked as a research teaching fellow, Smith said. That information was not verified by National University because it was not required for the courses he was teaching, Smith said.
Smith said the university did verify that Sadighian graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., in 1994 with a degree in nuclear physics, as he claims.
His relationship with National University ended on June 30, 2000. Smith would not say why Sadighian was not signed to a new contact.
"His contract was not renewed, and we have been disassociated with him since June of 2000," Smith said.
The Bee was unable to contact officials at Rensselaer to independently verify his physics degree.
An official in the alumni affairs office at Yale said it had an undergraduate student named Shahin Sadighian who would have graduated in 1994 but who never finished. Yale officials were unable to confirm whether or not Sadighian had earned a Ph.D. or a law degree from Yale.
Shawn Sadighian dressed like a lawyer. He talked like a lawyer. So there was no reason for the judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys in Sacramento Superior Court to believe otherwise.
Initially. But some checking by a client and an attorney helped uncover the truth -- he was a fraud and, according to the State Bar of California, is not licensed to practice law nor has he ever been.
"It is wrong what he did. It is playing with a person's freedom. It is no different than a con artist," said Troy Ellerman, a defense attorney who helped uncover Sadighian's masquerade.
Now Sadighian is missing and a cloud has been cast over the fate of the cases he has defended in three counties, court officials said Tuesday. A police investigation is ongoing.
Efforts to reach Sadighian were unsuccessful. His father, Manoochehr Sadighian, who is a physician, was reached at his Sacramento medical office but said he did not know where his son was and declined to comment.
The dapper young man, who wore expensive suits, Italian shoes and drove an expensive car, managed to fool just about everyone in the Sacramento courthouse and in courthouses in Yolo and San Joaquin counties, according to local bar officials.
Although it is not known how long he carried off his charade, local lawyers can remember working with him for at least several months. He joined a law practice with Neil B. Leonard, a veteran criminal defense attorney who had an office across the street from the courthouse.
It is also not known how many court cases he handled and are now in jeopardy of being undone because clients relied on his bogus expertise.
He tried to step in as a lawyer on one murder case and negotiated two drug cases, one of which ended with a man agreeing to spend his next three years in prison, court records show. As of Tuesday, there were no charges on file against Sadighian in Sacramento Superior Court.
Sacramento police detectives declined to discuss the case. But Gina Gomez told The Bee she filled out a complaint against Sadighian with Sacramento police in September.
"He fooled me," said Gomez, who hired Sadighian upon the advice of a friend who was represented by him on a drunken-driving charge.
Gomez, who runs an adult escort service, said she consulted with Sadighian about her business and after acting upon his advice was arrested on pimping and pandering charges. That's when she said she began to question his qualifications.
"I'm into computers, so I checked on the Internet and I found he wasn't licensed," said Gomez, who said Sadighian claimed to be a Yale Law School graduate.
Ellerman and his law partner, William T. Yankey, said that when they took over Gomez's case, they demanded that Sadighian divulge his bar number. Such a number is issued to every lawyer in the state.
"He gave us some story which didn't make sense," Ellerman said.
The lawyers then shared their suspicions with C. Emmett Mahle, vice chair to the Indigent Defense Panel, made up of a group of lawyers appointed by judges to defend poor people who are not represented by public defenders.
In November, Mahle was in court when he heard Sadighian's name called for a case.
"He was there to stand in for another lawyer in a four-defendant murder case," Mahle said.
Mahle told Judge Gary Ransom that he suspected Sadighian was not a lawyer.
After the judge consulted with a number of lawyers in his chambers about their individual cases, including Sadighian, he waited for the others to leave, then he pulled Sadighian aside.
"I told him. 'I'm not convinced you're a lawyer and unless you show me something to the contrary, you can't appear in my court,' " Ransom said he told him.
Sadighian then walked out and he hasn't been heard from or seen since, the judge said.
Neil Leonard, who had quadruple bypass surgery last week, said he was in practice with Sadighian for about a month before the caper was uncovered.
"I'd seen him in court with other lawyers and before judges. I just assumed he was an attorney," Leonard said.
Alec Scott Rose, another criminal defense attorney, who worked alongside Sadighian in court and got to know him over coffee, said the man acted no differently than other young lawyers.
"I'm sorry to hear this has happened. I never saw him do anything incorrectly," Rose said.
"He appeared to me to be very competent. ... There was no sign in my mind that he didn't know what he was talking about," Rose said. "He had a professional demeanor. He knew a lot about the law. I'm willing to believe that no one is worse off than if they had a licensed lawyer."
