Sean is A Liar, crook, Thug,... meet the lawyer who's tearing the Met apart

Liar, crook and friend of billionaires and royalty... meet the lawyer who's tearing the Met apart | Daily Mail Online:

CONNED BY A CONMAN:

View comments

Lawyer: Shahrokh Mireskandari

Awaiting sentence before a judge at Los Angeles Municipal Court, the defendant is preparing for the worst.

Educated at an English boarding school, a few weeks short of his 30th birthday, he has neither youth nor hardship to excuse his crime.

His leading role in a tele-marketing scam deserves a 'substantial' jail sentence, the prosecuting District Attorney believes.

Having entered a guilty plea, the best the defendant in Case 90C000627 can hope for now is a period of probation and community service - typically picking litter from the roadside, clad humiliatingly in a dayglo orange vest.

He will also have to pay back his victims and, unless he can keep his conviction secret, find a job which is not based on trust or integrity, nor involves the unsupervised handling of other people's money.

A salutary lesson in crime not paying, it seems.

But let us jump 6,000 miles and 17 years to Gloucester Place, Central London.

At an elegant Georgian terrace a short, immaculately-suited figure in his late forties emerges from a chauffeured Rolls-Royce Phantom.

Dr Shahrokh 'Sean' Mireskandari. he is the mafia type, just the way he talks and looks.

Masterminding' is how many describe the lawyer's powerful influence.

He has boasted that his team is 'running rings' around the Met and its aim is to 'destroy the Commissioner and his golden circle'.

These comments backfired spectacularly this week when Blair effectively suspended Ghaffur for the 'media campaign' run by his advisers.

Meanwhile the lawyer is pursuing his own £10million action against the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the profession's watchdog, which he accuses of having racially harassed and defamed him.

Both the Met and SRA are mighty institutions. But Mireskandari also has powerful associates, many involved in the race relations industry.

He is best friend and legal representative to fellow Iranian Commander Ali Dizaei, the president of the National Black Police Association, for which Dean and Dean provides official legal advice. The NBPA is backing Ghaffur.

He is a also a confidant of the Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, the Rt Hon Keith Vaz MP, who has described Mireskandari as 'one of the best lawyers in the world'.

Indeed, at the Palace of Westminster Vaz recently presented his friend with the 'Asian Solicitor of the Year' award. The MP and his family are frequent VIP guests of the solicitor.

At social functions he rubs shoulders with the likes of Leader of the Commons and Labour Party deputy leader Harriet Harman.

Mireskandari also represents royal families, billionaire tycoons such as the Hindujas and foreign politicians. Many are invited to his annual Christmas party at a Park Lane hotel, which is recorded on a 'souvenir' DVD.

How many of his powerful clients and friends know that the lawyer is also a crook - the man who stood in that Los Angeles dock in 1991?

The money was to be the least of her problems, she said. 'Some months after I had left his firm the Ventura District Attorney's office came after me.'

More than 50 customers had complained about the racket, carried out from the office in Miss Darcy's name.

She was arrested and spent several days in jail before being charged with consumer fraud.

In early 1991 at Los Angeles Municipal Court she was advised to enter a limited guilty plea and was fined and sentenced to community service, including litter picking.

The DA's office also went after Mireskandari. 'They knew I wasn't the mastermind,' says Miss Darcy.

By this time, Mireskandari was on the payroll of a Los Angeles law firm. His job was to find clients among the city's wealthy Iranian expatriate community.

When he was charged with the telemarketing-related offences the firm stood by him, representing him in court.

The DA's office wanted a prison sentence, his attorney remembers. However, when he faced the judge on 'misdemeanour' charges (which carry a maximum jail sentence of 12 months) it became evident that a plea bargain could save him from the Ventura County Jail.

According to the attorney involved in the case, which was reported in the LA Times, Mireskandari was sentenced to three months on the 'criminal justice work release programme'.

This meant that instead of being jailed around the clock he would be allowed to attend his place of work during the day, returning to prison in the evenings. The weekends would be spent behind bars.

Because Ventura was a 90-minute drive from his new place of work, said the attorney, he was allowed to attend a a government-run halfway house 15 minutes from his office.

'He was living with persons about to be released from the prison system.'

On top of this Mireskandari had to serve three years' probation and pay back some $6,813.90 to his known victims.

Could this really be the man now representing Britain's top ethnicminority police officer?

Miss Darcy told the Mail: 'I had a hard time believing this could be the same person until I saw his photo on his law firm's website.

'That's definitely the same person, just 18 years older and with a lot less hair.'

In time, according to his ex-attorney, California state law allowed Mireskandari to have his guilty plea bargain struck out and his criminal record expunged. The conviction became spent.

Unless, of course he applied for something like an attorney's licence.

Senior attorneys at the LA law firm which employed him were persuaded to give him another chance following his conviction.

'There was a time when he seemed sincere,' one told the Mail. 'We tried to help him.

'His main academic credential was a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania (the university has no record of it).

'Sean had documentation which seemed to support this, although having seen his written work, I am sceptical he could have graduated from any college, anywhere at any time.

'Nevertheless, on the strength of this degree and our letter of recommendation, Sean started a law course at a minor local university.

'Unfortunately he failed his exams miserably at the end of his first semester. He failed his retakes and that was that.

'I want to make it clear that he never worked for us as a lawyer.'

The attorney said that Mireskandari worked for the LA law firm until the mid-1990s, when the relationship was 'terminated and not amicably'.

What would he do next? He would return to the UK and become one of London's most expensive lawyers.

So how did he manage to accumulate so many letters after his name: BSc, MA and JD, all with honours?

A profile of him in the Law Gazette states that he gained 'a business degree in the United States followed by a doctorate in law and a masters in international law'.

This summer the Solicitors Regulation Authority sent investigators to the U.S. to examine the veracity of Mireskandari's qualifications.

One man they spoke to was Jeffrey Brunton, head lawyer for Hawaii's Office of Consumer Protection.

He said the SRA had interviewed him about a law degree which it said had been awarded to Mireskandari by the American University of Hawaii.

Mr Brunton said the 'university' was founded in the early 1990s by a couple from Arizona. They based it in Hawaii because of the 'lax laws' at the time.

It was then sold to an American-based Anglo-Iranian named Hassan.

'He ran the American University of Hawaii until our courts shut it down,' said Mr Brunton.

Of course it is possible that Mireskandari has a legitimate law degree from a credible university somewhere. However, last night the Mail asked him repeatedly to specify where he gained his qualifications and he refused to answer.

For the record the State Bars in California and Virginia both said that they had no listing of any licensed lawyer by the name of Mireskandari. The SRA inquiry continues.

By 1999, with the discredited Hawaiian doctorate to his name, Mireskandari was back in London and founding Tehrani and Co, Solicitors.

His U.S. qualifications were convincing enough for him to be accepted on the Law Society's rigorous Legal Practice Course, a conversion course for overseas-qualified lawyers.

Surprisingly, perhaps, he passed, qualifying as a solicitor in 2000.

Did he disclose his conviction?

A spokesman for the SRA said: 'We run a criminal record check as standard practice. All applicants have to divulge all criminal convictions from the past.

'A conviction would not necessarily bar someone and we use our judgment.

'But if it had something to do with financial dishonesty that would be a very serious matter indeed.'

By 2003 the firm's name was changed to Dean and Dean, with Mireskandari its figurehead.

An LA attorney who knew him says: 'I remember him saying there were thousands of personal injury cases in the UK. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.'

Instead, Mireskandari was to specialise in race relations and the wealthy Middle Eastern, Asian and Russian expatriate communities. He plans to open offices in Moscow and Mecca.

His 'expertise' doesn't come cheap. One former client was charged £10,000 for a day's work.

An American attorney who has given a statement to the SRA said he had been told it had received numerous complaints 'from people who have been cheated out of their life savings and paid for services they never got'.

One of his clients was Iranian-born academic Dr Sheida Oraki, 50. She employed Mireskandari, then a trainee solicitor, for an agreed fixed fee of £1,000.

Yet when it was presented his bill had risen to £19,000. She refused to pay and made a complaint to the Law Society.

After litigation she offered to pay, but Mireskandari forced her into bankruptcy as she would not withdraw her complaint. He is still pursuing her for more than £150,000 in costs.

Dr Oraki has been supported by the Liberal Democrat deputy leader Vince Cable, who has brought up the case in the House of Commons.

Another cause celebre is Mireskandari's even more expensive battle with former client Angel Airlines.

It refused to pay a grossly inflated bill of almost £500,000. A specialist costs judge estimated that a reasonable bill would have been one fifth of that figure.

In June this year Mr Justice Coulson pointed out that Mireskandari's pursuit of the full fee had occupied 50 days of court time and the participation of 24 judges.

One fellow judge had described Dean and Dean's case as 'an appalling piece of litigation'.

Mr Justice Coulson agreed. He said: 'The multiplicity of proceedings, appeals and applications is the product of what I consider to be an abuse of process by the proposed applicants, Dean and Dean.'

So it's not only the Met around which the good doctor is running rings. But the Mireskandari story could be about to turn full circle.

In 1991 he had to return almost $7,000.

Today, when his wealthy clients learn that he is a fraudster with doubtful qualifications, will there be a new reckoning?

Additional reporting: DAVID GARDNER in Los Angeles

Search This Blog

Dr Lazin's Academic Coaching Services: ACADEMIC COACHING - Doctoral PROGRAM IN LOS ANGELES

Sean is A Liar, crook, Thug,... meet the lawyer who's tearing the Met apart | Daily Mail Online

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ADVANCED WELLNESS: 14.70$ Your Quote Summary

AMAZON HOW TO MANUAL, Selling on AMAZON.com; MIHAI ALISIE THE INVENTOR OF THE BITCOIN

Dr Olga lazin is the heart and soul behind Dr OLGA ESSENTIAL OILS store. Check out the wonderful health related products, and Essential Oils Blends… | Pinterest