A Charlotte, North Carolina, attorney accused of having sex with several of his immigration clients has been disbarred, officials said.
Court documents show the clients he targeted were "especially vulnerable."
According to the court filing, attorney Chris Greene voluntarily surrendered his license after he agreed that he could not defend the charges against him and that he had inappropriate contact with some of his clients.
Greene's clients, most of them Latinos, have walked up to Greene's office off Albemarle Road daily for the last few weeks, only to find it closed.
"Yesterday, a guy and his wife came (to the office)," Shonda Davis, who works in an office down the hall, said. "They were asking about him and I said, 'That guy hasn't been here in about three months.'"
A court filing said that starting in 2011, Greene sent electronic messages to clients containing sexual subject matter and had sexual relations with some of them.
All the clients were immigration clients and were especially vulnerable, investigators said.
"They are probably the most vulnerable individuals in our society right now," said Jose Hernandez-Paris, who heads the Latin-American Coalition.
Latinos, many of them desperate and many of them women, seek help from the coalition in finding lawyers to represent them in immigration cases, Hernandez-Paris said,adding that it might explain why they would go along with anything that an attorney suggests.
"The prospect of having to go back to the situation they left is very scary, and most of them are willing to do whatever they need to do to stay in this country," Hernandez-Paris said.
Greene is not under criminal investigation. His attorney wouldn't comment on the case.
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