Federal Judge Implicated In Love Triangle With Lawyer And Client

Another wild set of allegations -- love, lawyering, and judicial vengeance.

UPDATE: 7/31/15 12:32 p.m. — Check out the new update to this story here.

Here’s a doozy of a lawsuit. A prominent businesswoman, facing federal criminal charges for defrauding Medicare out of $30 million, alleges that her former hotshot lawyer committed malpractice when the two kicked off an affair. Adding to the salaciousness, her lawyer’s wife signed off on the warrants that sent the FBI storming her offices.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to secure some side tail.

First, the alleged crime. Lisa Crinel operated Abide Home Health Services — among other businesses — in eastern New Orleans. In March 2014, her offices were raided by the FBI as part of a federal probe into Medicare fraud. At the time, Crinel alleges in her new lawsuit, she was already in the throes of a year-long affair with attorney Clarence Roby, who represented her in multiple matters:

Crinel and Roby carried on “an intimate, romantic relationship” for about 12 months, starting in September 2013, according to her lawsuit. In January, she also hired him to serve as her lawyer as she negotiated the purchase of another business.

On March 24, 2014, the couple were together at Crinel’s house “until late in the evening as their romantic relationship continued,” the lawsuit states. The next day, federal agents raided Abide’s headquarters.

“As their romantic relationship continued,” eh? According to Crinel’s timetable, this rendezvous may have been the last straw for the third leg of this amorous association, federal Magistrate Judge Karen Wells Roby, who issued warrants to search Crinel’s business the next day and “may even have driven past Abide’s offices while investigators were carting out files.” Really? That sounds way too dramatic for real life. On the other hand, New Orleans rarely disappoints on that count.

But the prosecutors swear they had no idea about the affair when they approached Judge Roby with their search warrants. Indeed, they claim they never knew what was going on until after the search:

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Prosecutors say they became aware of the Roby-Crinel affair after reviewing records seized during the search, but that what they found shows that Roby took pains to hide the affair from his wife.

In court records, federal prosecutors refer to numerous personal emails between Crinel and Clarence Roby that “discuss an intimate relationship, Judge Roby, and many details of their physical and emotional relationship,” and that a cooperating witness told them after the search that said Crinel called Roby “her boo.”

I don’t want to cast aspersions on Judge Roby’s intuition, but it would seem that — if true — considering Clarence Roby kept the FBI in the dark, he surely kept his wife out of the loop. But we’ll see how this matter shakes out.

Lawsuit spells out love triangle involving lawyer, client and judge [Times-Picayune]

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