Los Angeles Times, Disbarred in Ohio, He Tricked a California Law Firm Into a $250,000 Job Offer:

When he applied for a job at a California law firm last September, he identified himself as Christopher “Rich” Miller-Williams and claimed to be an ex-Marine who attended the University of Michigan School of Law.

He said he had played football at the University of Michigan, worked as in-house counsel at Bristol Myers Squibb, a biopharmaceutical company, and was licensed to practice law in New York and Washington, D.C.

Impressed, the Irvine firm hired him as an attorney to the tune of $250,000 a year. The only problem? None of it was real.

The month after he was hired, federal agents arrested Miller-Williams under his real name: Richard Louis Crosby III.

This week, Crosby, of Mason, Ohio, pleaded guilty in Cincinnati to three counts of Social Security number fraud tied to false identities he used to obtain employment with at least seven law firms, including three in California, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Ohio. The office did not provide the names of the hiring law firms.

Throughout his scheme, prosecutors say, Crosby used identifying information belonging to his elderly father, his girlfriend, a dead man and others. Between 2021 and 2023, operating mostly from the Cincinnati area, he broke the law so he could practice law in three states and the District of Columbia. …

According to a plea agreement Crosby signed last month, the 37-year-old actually graduated from the University of Dayton School of Law and was admitted to the Ohio bar in May 2014.

The Cincinnati Bar Assn. on Nov. 6, 2020, filed a complaint against Crosby, alleging he had violated numerous rules of professional conduct while employed at a law firm in the city, according to the plea agreement. …

Crosby later applied to a California law firm in June 2022 — at which point he’d been disbarred and arrested — identifying himself as Rich Williams and using his father’s Social Security number. The firm offered him a position as an associate attorney with a salary of $150,000. He worked there for about three months and was paid $37,500. …

Crosby then used his alias to apply for an attorney position with a Miami law firm in September 2022, according to the agreement. He met with one of the firm’s hiring managers in Florida and was offered a job with a starting salary of $185,000 per year with a $5,000 signing bonus. He used his girlfriend’s Social Security number, passport number and banking information to complete his paperwork, he admitted in the plea agreement.

The following year, in April, the firm received an inquiry from an investigator with a Child Support Enforcement Office in Ohio. As a result, the firm learned of Crosby’s true identity and fired him.

• ABA Journal, Former Attorney Who Used Fake IDs to Get Jobs Pleads Guilty to Federal Fraud Charges
• Law.com, Disbarred Ohio Attorney Pleads Guilty to Social Security Fraud

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