Had Many Clients : 2 Brothers Facing Charges of Theft, Phony Law Practice

Two brothers were charged Tuesday with impersonating lawyers and defending nearly 200 people in Santa Ana Municipal Court in an operation that allegedly brought them more than $100,000 in fees since April, 1984.

John Vescera, 28, and his brother Frank, 34, were charged with two counts of conspiracy--one to practice law without a license and another to commit grand theft--and 192 counts of theft. The two conspiracy counts and 153 of the theft counts are felony charges; the remainder are misdemeanors.

John Vescera has been serving a 35-day jail term for civil contempt of court since Feb. 6, when he was whisked from the Central Municipal Court room, where he was representing clients, into the chambers of a suspicious judge.

Frank Vescera, a Mission Viejo resident who was not arrested, was expected to surrender today and be arraigned with his brother.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan Nolan, who filed the charges, said some of the 192 defendants who investigators have determined paid money to the Vesceras already have pleaded guilty to crimes, and some of them “have even done substantial jail time.” One man served 120 days for driving while under the influence of heroin, she said.

Those who have pleaded guilty are “absolutely entitled to have the plea withdrawn if they want to because they weren’t represented by a lawyer,” Nolan said. John Vescera “has created havoc with the legal system,” the prosecutor said.

At least half of the defendants the brothers represented were Latinos. Most had been arrested on suspicion of drunk driving, Nolan said.

Investigators said both brothers have served jail terms for burglary, and John also served a term for forgery.

They said that in October, 1983, John Vescera wrote to the Bar of California, identified himself as an attorney named John Helmick, and said he had changed his name to John Vescera and wanted a Bar card in the new name. The Bar, apparently unaware that the John Helmick who held a Bar card (first issued in 1922) had recently died, issued the new card in the name of Vescera.

The investigators said that when Frank Vescera tried the same thing several months later, state Bar officials became suspicious because he had supposedly changed his name from Burton R. Cohn to Frank Vescera. They checked and, on learning that Burton Cohn had died in January, 1984, refused to issue the new card. Nolan said there is no record of the state Bar having alerted law enforcement about Frank Vescera’s attempt to get a card.

Nolan said files in the Vescera brothers’ office, at 600 W. Santa Ana Blvd., showed that 201 people had paid them money. Investigators opened a safe deposit box the brothers kept in a bank in the building and seized $25,900 in cash, which they said was money from clients. Searchers found a list of another 96 names, “but we don’t know if they actually gave them money,” Nolan said.

The brothers’ office directory identifies the law firm of Vescera, Chancellor, Lawford & Hill. The other members are listed in the building’s office as Richard Chancellor, Stephen Lawford and Arthur Hill.

A state Bar spokeswoman, Jeanne Baker, said there never was a licensed lawyer in the state named Richard Chancellor or Stephen Lawford, and the only two lawyers named Arthur Hill were a father and his son, who practiced law in Eureka. She said the elder Hill died in 1952 and his son died in 1963.

Thomas D. Weaver, a lawyer and partner in a corporation that leases the seventh floor of the Santa Ana Boulevard building, said John Vescera told him when he rented office space from the corporation last July that the other three partners in the Vescera firm were part of the main office in Los Angeles, and he and his brother had just moved to Santa Ana to start a practice there.

Plausible Situation

“That’s not unusual at all,” Weaver said. “It was a perfectly acceptable story. There are lots of law firms around that we don’t know.”

“Only the two of them were ever here, and they were the only two who were ever represented to us as the lawyers who would be here,” he said.

Judges said they remembered the Vescera brothers, especially John, practicing before the court since last year. Jacquelyn D. Thomason, presiding judge of the Central Municipal Court, said she thought John Vescera “did a good job” when he appeared before her.

But she said she called him into her chambers after she received a complaint that he was soliciting clients improperly. The judge said that when Vescera handed her his Bar card, she checked with the state Bar and found it was originally issued 62 years ago. She said when Vescera claimed to have graduated from USC Law School, she checked with school officials and was told they had no record of him.

Judge Caught On

The judge then found Vescera in contempt “for misrepresenting himself to the court as an attorney when he’s not” and ordered him jailed for 35 days--five days for each of the seven clients he was representing in her court that day.

Thomason said that since Vescera’s arrest, “numerous attorneys have contacted the court to volunteer their services without charge” to defend clients who had paid Vescera or his brother to represent them.

She said that the computer printout of defendants’ names, which the brothers apparently used as a tip sheet to lead them to people who might need lawyers, no longer is kept on the counter of the court clerk’s office, but now must be specifically requested.