Disbarred Greenburgh lawyer held on new charges (MORE, CLICK HERE)

Disbarred Greenburgh lawyer held on new charges
The Journal News - Rebecca Baker - February 28, 2008

A judge postponed sentencing a Greenburgh lawyer for bilking two clients yesterday, but sent him to jail after new charges of another bilking surfaced.

Disbarred lawyer Chase Caro was led from the courtroom in handcuffs in White Plains after he was held without bail by Westchester County Judge Susan Cacace.

She adjourned his sentencing on the previous case to April 2. Caro, 49, had been free on $50,000 bail.

In June, he pleaded guilty to felony grand larceny after admitting he stole from a Peekskill man he represented in a 2006 home sale. Herbert Newkirk received $480,000 from a litigation settlement involving his home, but saw none of it. Caro sent Newkirk a check but stopped payment.

He also stole just over $300,000 from the sale of Francesca's Pizzeria in Shrub Oak in 2006. Francesca Salvi said she gave Caro checks the day of the closing, but he ducked out without paying them.

The June plea covered both cases, and Caro agreed to repay both clients. He has not so far. His law license was revoked in November.

He is now charged with stealing more than $300,000 from a trust fund set up for a New Jersey couple.

Sol and Hazel Sloshberg hired Caro in November 2006 to set up the fund with three certificates of deposit totaling $310,000, according to the felony complaint.

Prosecutors say Caro liquidated the three CDs without the couple's permission and set up a trust fund in his name and their name. He then began withdrawing money from it for his own expenses.

Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the Westchester District Attorney's Office, knew little about the couple other than they live in an assisted-living center.

The Lawyers Fund for Client Protection, based in Albany, has paid each of Caro's earlier victims $300,000 - the maximum allowed, prosecutors said.

If Caro repays the full amount, - about $780,000 - he would be sentenced to shock probation, which means he will serve some time in jail. If he pays Newkirk the $180,000, prosecutors said, he would serve one to three years.

Caro is the only son of Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Robert Caro, who wrote "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York" and "Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson."