Crime, Law Schools, White-Collar Crime

How Not To Use Your Berkeley Law Degree

Making license plates just isn't a J.D. advantage job.

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Gerti Muho

Prospective law students don’t always want to graduate and practice law. One of the great myths that helps to perpetuate a J.D. as the panacea of graduate degrees is that you can do “anything” with the degree. However, one thing you cannot do — or at least should not do — is commit fraud.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what a federal jury decided Gerti Muho, 33, did with his degree. Last week he was convicted of 40 counts of bank and wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering.

Muho is a 2012 graduate of Boalt Hall and worked at a hedge fund, Fletcher Asset Management. After he was fired in 2013, Muho took a cue from the movie Office Space, and began a scheme to defraud his former employer and their clients, as the Daily Business Review reports:

When Muho was fired in 2013 from his Wall Street hedge fund job, prosecutors charged he pulled a real-life “Office Space,” stealing all the information on the company’s computer server and trying to siphon millions of dollars from hedge fund bank accounts. (The company, Fletcher Asset Management, faced separate accusations of defrauding investors.)

Using the identities of former employees and interns at Fletcher, Muho created fake identities, according to prosecutors. He defrauded a Monaco bank into wiring him $2 million and also lied his way into a $500,000 business loan, ultimately blowing the money on gambling and luxuries including a 2013 Maserati and a unit at the Marquis building on Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami, according to the charges.

He also used stolen identities to fraudulently apply for credit cards and a variety of loans.

Though Muho isn’t scheduled to be sentenced until September 26th, it is likely he will spend some time behind bars. Not the best use of an expensive degree, because making license plates just isn’t a J.D. advantage job.

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headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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