How, class action lawyers wondered for decades, did the firm now known as Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman consistently beat its competitors in the race to find lead plaintiffs in securities suits?
If you believe L.A. federal prosecutors, the firm's secret — which let Milberg get lucrative lead counsel status in scores of cases — resided in the bowels of name partner David Bershad's New York office.
Specifically, a Thursday indictment charging Bershad, partner Steven Schulman and, most notably, the firm itself with illegally paying clients to be lead plaintiffs, said the firm "kept cash used to make such payments in a safe located in a credenza in Bershad's office at Milberg Weiss, to which access was strictly limited."
In charging the firm and its two partners with using that stash as part of more than $11.3 million paid in illegal kickbacks to lead plaintiffs, the L.A. prosecutors made the argument that a plaintiff firm that's made its name — and earned Republicans' ire — by suing America's biggest companies for fraud was itself a corrupt operation.
Details here from The Recorder via CalLaw.com.