Last fall, Tara Lenich, a prosecutor who had been working with the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office since 2005, was fired after becoming involved in what was referred to as a “love triangle gone wrong.” Lenich was arrested for using forged wiretap orders to eavesdrop on a love interest, NYPD detective Jarrett Lemieux, who she believed was seeing one of her coworkers, ADA Stephanie Rosenfeld.
Lenich originally faced 20 counts of possession of a forged instrument and two counts of eavesdropping, and last spring, pleaded guilty to two charges of illegal wiretapping, for which she could face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Lenich has yet to be sentenced in her criminal case, but a panel of the New York Appellate Division dropped the hammer on her legal career just before the new year began.
The New York Law Journal has the details on Lenich’s disbarment:
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Tara Lenich
In a ruling issued Friday, a panel of the Appellate Division, Second Department said the federal felony is similar to the New York charge of eavesdropping, a class E felony.
Under New York law, an attorney is automatically disbarred upon receiving a felony conviction, thus Lenich was effectively disbarred April 3.
Justices Randall Eng, William Mastro, Reinaldo Rivera, Mark Dillon and Colleen Duffy joined the unanimous decision.
While Lenich awaits her sentencing in February, she gets to deal with a civil suit that was filed by Rosenfeld earlier this month. In a victim impact statement in Lenich’s criminal case, Rosenfeld said Lenich had “poisoned [her] workplace against [her],” but that’s just the beginning of the ADA’s allegations. Invoking the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the First and Fourteenth Amendments in her civil suit, Rosenfeld claims she was forced to resign from the Brooklyn DA’s Office after working there for 11 years because of the “humiliating looks and behind-the-back comments” she received from coworkers due to Lenich’s actions. She seeks damages.
This is what happens when you give love — and legal ethics — a bad name. Best of luck to Lenich in her sentencing next month, because it seems like she may need it.
Ex-Brooklyn Prosecutor Convicted of Illegal Surveillance Gets Disbarred [New York Law Journal]
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Staci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.