SUNSET PARK — A 70-year-old man who posed as a highly qualified lawyer was sentenced to two to four years in prison Wednesday after he was caught charging more than $3,000 for fake immigration services, District Attorney Ken Thompson announced Wednesday.
Howard Seidler was sentenced by a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge after he pleaded guilty to charges of grand larceny and immigrant assistance services fraud.
For six months between November 2014 and May 2015, Seidler, of Sunset Park, pretended to be a licensed attorney and claimed to work out of the Brooklyn Bar Association's office in Downtown Brooklyn.
Posing as a lawyer offering immigration services, he distributed advertisements and business cards with the titles "Esq.," "PhD" and "J.D." on them, the DA's office said.
An undercover detective paid Seidler $3,085 to help him get a green card and Social Security number on April 8, 2015, officials said. The investigator was also given a written retainer contract.
A little more than two weeks later on April 24, Seidler met the undercover detective again and gave him a Social Security card and paperwork that he claimed had been filed with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.
But Seidler had forged the Social Security card and the number belonged to someone with a different name, the DA said. Subsequently no application had been filed with federal immigration authorities.
Seidler, who is not licensed to practice law in New York or accredited by the Board of Immigration Appeals, "preyed on some of the most vulnerable members of our society – undocumented immigrants looking for legal help," Thompson said in a statement.
