THE FAKE LAWYER
Sara Grasso was a bogus barrister who tricked her family, friends and Melbourne’s legal profession. Grasso gathered her legal knowledge by crashing university law lectures and then awarded herself fake law degrees and legal qualifications. She celebrated her supposed admission to the Victorian Bar with an expensive party where she even donned a barrister’s arrister s robes and wig.
On the way to fulfil her life-long g dream, Grasso conned victims out of more than $660,000. Finding g herself on the wrong side of the e courtroom, the 29-year-old was jailed in 1995 for a minimum of 18 months.
Her case is similar to that of Lisa Marie Burch, who in 2014 was on the other side of the dock in WA when she was jailed for posing as a lawyer. She took $69,000 from families who believed she could help them.
Previously, Burch had also posed as a cancer victim and pocketed donations given to support her phony cancer battle.