State Bar accuses L.A. lawyer of misleading inmates and their desperate families

The State Bar of California has filed disciplinary charges against Aaron Spolin, a West Los Angeles attorney who signed up hundreds of prisoners as clients by convincing their desperate families he could free them.

In a filing Monday, the bar accused Spolin of 18 violations of the rules of professional conduct for attorneys and the state business code, including moral turpitude and unconscionable fees. If found culpable, he faces possible penalties ranging from probation to disbarment by the state Supreme Court.

“Offering false hope to those in dire straits for one’s own financial gain is contrary to a lawyer’s responsibilities,” Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona, the bar’s top prosecutor, said in a statement in response to the charges.

Spolin, a 39-year-old Princeton-educated former McKinsey consultant, seized on the 2019 passage of landmark criminal justice reform laws to market himself to the incarcerated. In mass mailings to prisons, he told inmates serving decades behind bars that they might be eligible “for sentence shortening under various new laws.” He bought up online search terms so loved ones googling the reforms were directed to his website. In subsequent phone calls, he offered a rosy picture of inmates’ chances at freedom.

He eventually accumulated nearly 2,000 incarcerated clients, becoming a virtual celebrity on California prison yards. Families, many of limited resources, forked over fees starting at $3,000 and ranging upward of $30,000.

But, as The Times revealed last year, Spolin’s claims of success were false or overblown, and many of the legal strategies he urged families to pursue had no chance of succeeding. The work his firm performed was underwhelming and cookie-cutter. He relied on low-paid contract lawyers with little or no experience in criminal appeals, including some in the Philippines and other developing countries making about $10 an hour.

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An attorney for Spolin, Erin Joyce, said in a statement, “Mr. Spolin has been fully cooperative with the State Bar and will continue to cooperate. He looks forward to resolving this matter in the near future.”

Interviewed last year, Spolin acknowledged giving some clients overly optimistic assessments of their chances at freedom, but predicted the justice system would eventually come around and embrace greater reforms.

“All these clients who feel like they’ve been hoodwinked, and then they’re gonna win. And they’re gonna say, ‘Oh, wow. You know, Mr. Spolin was right,’” he said.

Ellen J. Eggers, a retired state public defender who works to free wrongfully convicted inmates, was one of several criminal defense attorneys to raise concerns about Spolin to the bar.

“He pushes people and tries to give them hope when there is no hope and he knows there is no hope,” Eggers said. She called the violations brought by the bar “really only the tip of the iceberg.”

Those allegations concern four clients, three men from L.A. and one from Orange County, whom he represented between 2021 and 2023. Spolin told the men, who were serving sentences for murder, kidnapping and other serious crimes, that they stood a good chance of being freed under a law that allowed county district attorneys to recommend prisoners for release. In reality, they did not meet guidelines for consideration, and the D.A.’s offices in L.A. and Orange County had sent Spolin numerous letters informing him of their policies.

Bar prosecutor Gail Mullikin wrote in the filing that Spolin “intentionally and dishonestly sought and obtained legal fees … without regard to whether the legal services he marketed to those individuals would be of any meaningful benefit.”

One client identified by the bar, Karl Holmes, has been on death row since 1997 for three Pasadena murders. Spolin charged Holmes’ fiancee $3,000 for a case review in 2022 in which he “strongly recommended” she pursue Holmes’ release through the D.A.’s office — for an additional fee.

“The case review did not inform Holmes or [his fiance] that based on Holmes’ violent and serious felony convictions, Holmes fell outside the ‘priority criteria’ applied by the LADA in determining which, if any, cases it would consider for resentencing,” the bar alleged.

The family of another client, Thomas Stringer, who is serving 160 years to life for kidnapping and other crimes, paid Spolin $14,700 in 2022. After Stringer’s sister consulted the L.A. district attorney’s website last year and learned the criteria for consideration, she confronted Spolin. He continued insisting that Stringer had a shot.

“We have been in contact with the District Attorney’s Office, and they stated they would like more information about you and your case,” Spolin wrote to Stringer. No one from the D.A.’s office had made such a request, according to the bar filing.

In the case of another client, John Poe, serving 64 years to life for murder, the L.A. district attorney’s office chided Spolin for wasting their time and resources.

“Please keep in mind that contacting our office to provide unsolicited information regarding a particular individual or to ask for an update is not helpful and, in fact, severely detracts from our ability to review these cases in a fair, orderly and expeditious manner,” the office told him in 2022.

Spolin did not tell Poe or his sister, who had paid fees of $26,700, about the response.

Holmes’ fiancée, Vanessa Holley, said she was gratified by the bar’s action. She recalled how overjoyed she initially felt by Spolin’s talk of a clear path to bring Holmes home.

“It gave me hope and that is what I needed,” Holley said. “But after a while, I started noticing how pushy they were about the money. And I thought, ‘Why, if you have such a good success rate, are you so focused on that?’”