OLD PALS AT WAR
IT WAS A full-service firm: extortion, drug abuse, betrayal, fraud, extramarital affairs — even racketeering.
Celebrity attorney Joseph Tacopina did it all, according to a bombshell complaint filed in Manhattan Federal Court on Tuesday night by his one time close friend and client, former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik.
The RICO complaint, amended from Kerik’s January lawsuit charging Tacopina with fraud and malpractice, seeks a judge’s order to dissolve Tacopina’s law firm and asks for treble damages and a jury trial.
The complaint says Tacopina, who recently represented Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez in an unsuccessful bid to escape a steroid ban, engaged in “a patter no fracketeering activity” beginning g in 2006 and continuing g through the present.
While the “primary purpose of the Tacopina firm was to generate money,” the suit alleges, the members, partners and associociates at times used the resources of the firm to settle personal grievances, manipulate the media and present a false public image to protect the reputation of the enterprise.”
Tacopina’s attorney, Judd dd Burstein, called the claims “outrageous” and “tremendously shocking” and vowed to fight them in court. “It’s false in respect to his personal life. . . . It’s a ridiculous legal theory, more ridiculous thanh is previous theories.”
The suit, filed by Kerik’s attorney Tim Parlatore, also claims that Tacopina became a prosecution witness against Kerik in the former top cop’s federal criminal case in 2007, allegedly costing Kerika 16-count indictment and three years in federal prison.
“Ultimately, defendant Tacopina’s testimony, whether true or not, provided federal prosecutors with the vital elements that they needed to be able to proceed against Mr. Kerik, as the prosecution would have been time-barred by the statute of limitations,” the suit says. “Thus, but for defendant Tacopina’s cooperation, Mr. Kerik would not have faced a federal conviction.”
Kerik says the complaint is not a collateral attack on his convictions and adds that nothing in the complaint should be “misconstrued as a recantation of this or any other plea allocution entered.” It says Tacopina met with prosecutors in at least five proffer sessions and secretly gave them information about Kerik “solely in order to avoid prosecution for his own misconduct.”
Tacopina had previously represented Kerikina related case.