The TV shanking of fictional lawyer Dan Wachsberger at Breaking Bad’s 54th episode.  In the 53rd episode, Wachsberger hid monies in safety deposit boxes & became a DEA informant.

shutterstock_213220519Say My Name” is the 53rd episode of AMC’s Breaking Bad series & it showed fictional lawyer Dan Wachsberger hiding illicit drug monies in at least nine safety deposit boxes for his clients.  After DEA Special Agents catch Wachsberger hiding monies, he became an informant for the DEA & was held in prison.  In the 54th episode “Gliding Over All”, drug kingpin Walter White then hires a gang of white supremacists to kill Wachsberger along with 9 others held in 3 separate prisons.

How many lawyers in the real world hide their clients’ assets like fictional lawyer Wachsberger had done?  I do not know the answer but speculate it is a relatively small number of lawyers.  Meanwhile, some beneficial owners including divorcing spouses; tax cheats; judgment debtors; narcotraffickers; etc. undoubtedly employ lawyers to hide assets.  These beneficial owners hire their lawyers to act as intermediaries/nominees.  The beneficial owners may then transfer their monies into nominee bank accounts titled in the name of the lawyers or titled in the name of shell companies formed by the lawyers.  When these transfers occur there can be red flags indicating the lawyers were involved.  You can sometimes spot the red flags during: an asset search of a person or business entity; the pretrial discovery phase of a litigation; or other times.

There can also be a variety of red flags indicating that a lawyer might have been employed to wrongfully conceal assets.  For example, one divorcing wife supplied me with copies of letters she found in the marital residence she shared with her husband. The letters were from an offshore lawyer to the husband and they revealed the husband possessed a secret offshore bank account worth millions of dollars.  In yet another ultra-high net worth divorce, the red flags were an informant’s tips.  According to these tips & the corroborating evidence I collected, the divorcing husband and his lawyer laundered assets through offshore bank accounts & other elements located across the globe.

Video: Courtesy of AMC Network Entertainment, LLC

Breaking Bag Image: CarmenKarin/Shutterstock.com

Copyright 2015 Fred L. Abrams