Book-Cooking Lawyers Violated Cardinal Tenet: Don’t Email Fraud Plans

In e-mails spanning nearly four years, former leaders of Dewey & LeBoeuf discussed “fake income,” “accounting tricks,” and their “clueless auditor” in an elaborate scheme to keep the firm afloat while the economy hit the skids. The four men involved were charged March 6 with 106 counts of larceny and securities fraud, arising from an alleged scheme to mislead lenders and creditors as the firm was staging a $150 debt offering meant to get the firm out of a deepening financial hole. .  Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said his office has already secured guilty pleas from seven other people who had worked at the firm, which filed for bankruptcy in May of 2012.