DA: HE’S A LEGAL WEASEL
Fake-lawyer rap
He’s the lawyer version of “Catch Me if You Can” — a Manhattan con artist with a 30-year history of posing as an attorney to swindle New Yorkers.
James Chiarkas, 63, has used a slew of fake names and the charm of a snake-oil salesman to trick “clients’’ into thinking he was a lawyer and bilk them out of tens of thousands of dollars, court documents say.
In his latest scam, the phony attorney fleeced his former girlfriend, Sabrina Fierman, and her mom, Barbara Roche, out of thousands of dollars by promising to represent them in a legal battle, according to a Manhattan Criminal Court complaint.
The women, who run a high-end cleaning service called New York’s Little Elves, were locked in a legal fight over the sale of an apartment and paid Chiarkas $30,000 in lawyer fees between July and August 2016, according to the documents.
But Chiarkas’ bogus lawschool pedigree was soon exposed, and he was arrested at his Manhattan home two months later, police sources said.
“This defendant has a 30year history of engaging in frauds where he pretends to be an attorney,” said Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Diego Diaz at Chiarkas’ arraignment at Manhattan Supreme Court in June. Diaz added that there are additional victims, most of them neighbors.
Chiarkas’ lawyer, David Touger, called the notion hogwash, saying, “He vociferously denies all charges in the case.”
Chiarkas’ bail was set at $25,000. He has not posted it and remains on Rikers Island.
Through the years, Chiarkas went by fake lawyer names such as James Kaplan and once impersonated a real upstate attorney, according to prosecutors.
He also is accused of appearing in Brooklyn Housing Court and filing motions for a neighbor, according to court documents.
As with Leonardo DiCaprio’s con-artist character in the 2002 flick “Catch Me if You Can,’’ Chiarkas has allegedly been scamming victims for years.
And he was repeatedly arrested, law-enforcement sources said. In 1991, he was sentenced to two to four years in prison for unlicensed practice and second-degree forgery. He was also convicted in 1986, 1994, 1997 and 1998, according to law-enforcement sources.
As it became easier to prove he was a phony by searching his name on the Web, Chiarkas then claimed to be an “international lawyer,” prosecutors said at the arraignment.
His recent cases must now be reviewed because they could be tainted by the fraud, a court official said.
“Whatever cases he was involved in would most probably have to be reviewed, and the contracts could potentially be invalidated,” said Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the city’s Office of Court Administration.
Fierman and Roche did not return requests for comment.