LAWYER IN LOAN ‘SCAM’
Suit: Claims bogus
A bankrupt ambulancechaser scammed more than $200,000 from a cash-advance company that did business with her clients, a new Manhattan lawsuit charges.
Lawyer Marina Trubitsky, 45, would first file “bogus, inflated and/or contrived’’ personal-injury claims on behalf of clients, the suit says.
She then allegedly “induced’’ the cash-advance firm, Green Legal Funding of Queens, to work with at least four of those clients.
The company handed out cash advances to the personal-injury plaintiffs, who had pending cases, betting that the amount it gave them would be more than offset by their eventual settlements.
The company planned to charge Trubitsky’s clients 4 percent interest a month, plus principal, once their cases were settled — but if the plaintiffs lost in court, they didn’t have to make any payments, according to Green Legal Funding’s $5 million civil-fraud suit.
Three of the cases involving the lawyer — including one against the FDNY over an alleged motor-vehicle accident — were abandoned or withdrawn without payment, court records show. The fourth personal-injury lawsuit remains pending.
Meanwhile, Trubitsky pocketed commissions and other fees from her clients’ cash advances, which Green says were supposed “to fund purported medical services that were never performed.”
Trubitsky is even accused of setting up shell companies as part of the scheme, and called one Excel Plus “because its name closely resembles a legitimate medical billing company, Excel Medical Billing,” the suit claims.
In its Manhattan Supreme Court filing, the company says the lawyer’s “actions were wanton, willful, malicious and morally culpable, and were done in bad faith.”
The suit was filed just days after a state Senate committee hearing into the controversial legal-financing industry, during which one critic compared its business practices to mob loan-sharking.
The hearing also followed a Post exposé that revealed how legal-finance firms, including Brooklyn-based LawCash, were costing taxpayers millions of dollars a year by fueling questionable suits against the city.
Tom Stebbins, director of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, called the allegations in Green’s suit “shocking” and said the case “illustrates exactly why the lawsuit lending industry requires the attention of lawmakers.”
Court papers unrelated to Green’s suit show that Trubitsky filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection in March, citing as much as $500,000 in business debts.
Last year, Trubitsky paid $5,000 in sanctions after a Brooklyn judge blasted her for failing to appear at nine scheduled court conferences or depositions while representing two plaintiffs in a wage-and-hour suit against a Long Island sprinkler contractor.
Trubitsky declined to comment on Sunday.