A Marietta fantasy author accused of bilking his lovers out of more than $4 million pleaded guilty Tuesday to those schemes as well as his role in a newly disclosed scam.
Federal prosecutors revealed that for more than a decade, beginning in 2000, Mitchell Gross took millions of dollars in legal fees from a couple who thought they had retained him to represent them in a lawsuit involving the sale of their real estate business.
Gross lulled the couple, identified only as R.W. and L.P. in court filings, into believing he was litigating the case by supplying them fake court filings and a phony opinion from the federal appeals court.
Gross falsely told the couple that the company they were suing was tapping their phone lines, according to the new federal charges. For this reason, Gross forbid them from discussing the case with anyone.
Until the couple uncovered the scheme last July, they had paid Gross $2.2 million in legal fees, which he used to finance a lavish lifestyle and travel abroad, including a trip to Argentina, Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Grimberg said.
“In fact, the litigation did not exist,” Grimberg said. “He is a professional con man.”
When he first befriended the couple, Gross told them he was a lawyer who had made millions by selling a company that put law library books on CD. He also falsely claimed to be a former judge, had a doctorate in clinical psychology and was a former U.S. Olympics fencer, the new federal charges said.
Gross, who used the pen name Mitchell Graham, made similar false claims on the jackets of his books. These included a fantasy trilogy and some murder mysteries, including one titled, “Circle of Lies.”
Grimberg noted that Gross was disbarred from the practice of law in the early 1990s for dishonesty, fraud and deceit.
Gross, 61, is to be sentenced in May. He also pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges for swindling two of his former lovers. He took $2.9 million from Robbie Johnson, a Florida real estate agent whom he met on Jdate, the online dating service for Jewish singles. He also conned Jane Schlachter, an Atlanta lawyer, out of $1.4 million, federal prosecutors said.
Gross convinced the women to invest their savings into a “Merrill Company” account run by investor “Michael Johnson,” saying he had a special bond program with safe, profitable returns. In fact, court records show, no such company existed, nor did Johnson. Gross wrote fake letters under Johnson’s name and, on at least one occasion, talked on the phone as if he were Johnson using a device that disguised his voice, prosecutors said.
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