By Mark E. Vogler
mvogler@eagletribune.com
July 06, 2009 02:34 am LAWRENCE — A state appeals court has upheld the April 2006 conviction of suspended Lawrence attorney Charles L. Lonardo, the area's one-time top personal injury lawyer for auto accident victims who went to jail after being linked to insurance fraud scams. In a 13-page opinion released last week, the court ruled that prosecutors for Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett "offered sufficient evidence to show the defendant's knowledge of, and agreement with, a fraudulent scheme." A jury convicted Lonardo, 48, of Salem, N.H., of misdemeanor fraud after prosecutors presented evidence he paid so-called runners to plan accidents and bring him supposed victims who would then file insurance claims for their pain and suffering. Lonardo never denied paying for client referrals, which wasn't illegal until the passage of a 2005 law. But his lawyer argued he did not know he was buying into fraudulent insurance schemes. "Particularly persuasive in support of the verdict was the evidence of what occurred following news concerning a 'staged' accident that resulted in a fatality," the appeals court noted in its ruling. The court was referring to the September 2003 death of Altagracia Arias, a 65-year-old great-grandmother from Lawrence who was killed in a staged car crash that police said she helped plan to scam an insurance company. Soon after publicity about that crash, Lonardo instructed his office to call a runner "to say that he was to 'come and get (his) clients' for whom he had not been paid, to take them 'somewhere else,' and not to bring any new clients," the court noted. "The evidence of what transpired during a meeting between the Lawrence police chief and the defendant also supports a conviction," the ruling continued. "(Lonardo), while maintaining his innocence, offered to give up his license to practice law in exchange for the police stopping an investigation regarding the defendant's office; when the chief asked why he would do so, the defendant said, 'What if I told you I paid runners?' ... While the defendant contends that this evidence suggests only consciousness of guilt about his breach of legal ethics, it was also probative of a guilty conscience about criminal acts because he would likely know that the police do not investigate violations of the rules of professional conduct." The strongest part of the prosecution's case against Lonardo was testimony about a conversation he had with Lawrence Police Chief John Romero, who assembled the task force that investigated the involvement of Lonardo's office with runners. One testified at the trial about being paid by Lonardo's office to set up phony accidents. From offices in a converted brown-and-white, wood-shingled Victorian home, Lonardo attracted enough clients to bring in $10.4 million in Lawrence car-related injury claims settlements over the decade before his indictment in 2004. His firm won a combined total of $20.8 million on all auto accident injury claims over that period, almost $7 million more than any other local law firm over the same period. Lonardo's law office on Winthrop Avenue in South Lawrence ranked as the state's seventh busiest in 2003 for auto accident injury settlements, handling 1,179 injury claims while collecting more than $3 million from insurance companies. Prosecutor James P. Gubitose asked the judge to charge Lonardo with a felony, which would have carried a maximum five-year prison sentence because auto insurance fraud became a felony in September 2003. But Superior Court Judge Howard Whitehead settled on a misdemeanor charge instead, saying much of the evidence used against Lonardo came from events that preceded the change in the law.
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