A former lawyer in Marietta has pleaded guilty to stealing money from clients.
Romin Vincent Alavi, 38, pleaded guilty Wednesday afternoon to three counts of forgery and two counts of theft. He was sentenced to 10 years, with two years to serve in custody, according to authorities.
The charges stem from two civil cases Alavi was involved in between 2010 and 2012.
In one case, he accepted a settlement in a personal injury case without his clients’ knowledge or permission, then forged the couple’s signatures on the $25,000 settlement check and kept the cash for himself, according to Cobb District Attorney Vic Reynolds.
In the other case, Alavi took $20,000 from a client in a contractor-dispute case, but never filed a lawsuit and kept that money. He showed his client a purported court order bearing the forged signature of a judge, Reynolds said in an emailed statement..
Gregory Epstein, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case, said Alavi’s clients had trusted him to protect them.
“He treated that trust with about as much consideration as you would a cockroach scuttling across your kitchen floor,” Epstein said.
Cobb Superior Court Judge Mary E. Staley then sentenced Alavi to 10 years, with two years to serve in custody. He was ordered to pay restitution of $45,000 and he may not seek reinstatement of his law license in Georgia – which he voluntarily surrendered – or seek to practice elsewhere for the duration of his sentence.
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