Mark Mofid
1/5
Charles La Bella, presently Of Counsel at Barnes & Thornburg and a former deputy chief of the US Dept of Justice Fraud Section, represented a client opposite me in litigation between 2016 and 2017. On April 26, 2017 and again on May 1, 2017, Charles La Bella met with my attorneys from the Duane Morris law firm and another attorney from the Alexander law firm and demanded a $6.5 million settlement package for his client. Each of the meetings lasted several hours. Regrettably, his client was lying about a certain key allegation and made multiple other false allegations that were being used as a threat for a global settlement. Shortly after the second meeting, one of my attorneys alerted a local city prosecutor that Charles La Bella was using the threat of a criminal charge to exert financial leverage in the settlement of an associated civil dispute. That evening, on May 3, 2017, Charles La Bella emailed a partner attorney at the Duane Morris law firm from his personal email account that the parties were not in settlement discussions, that there were no ongoing negotiations and that if this was being represented to anyone it would be untrue. Charles La Bella, a veteran of the Justice Department and former Ethics Commissioner for the City of San Diego was lying. Charles La Bella sent a falsified electronic message from his personal email account to the Duane Morris law firm to conceal the existence of his outrageous settlement demand from the City Attorney's office and this was exposed through a sworn statement from one of the attorneys at the meeting and supported by billing records and correspondence from the Duane Morris law firm.
Ultimately, Charles La Bella's client was found not to be a credible witness at a San Diego Superior Court trial in 2018. My attorneys argued that the substance of La Bella's client's allegations were a "fraud on the court". After several more years of litigation, I received a six figure judgment at trial and a portion of my legal fees from Charles La Bella's client for my representation by the Duane Morris law firm. There is a certain amount of trust invested in the truth of statements made by and electronic messages sent by current and former government officials including those from personal email accounts, especially that of a US Attorney tasked with prosecuting criminal investigations in the public service. Charles La Bella, a dishonest, dirty, twisted and arrogant little man, is unfortunately not worthy of that trust. The Barnes & Thornburg bio sketch extols Charles La Bella's "unique wisdom and sound judgment to craft informal resolutions to complex problems." Perhaps this bio should be re-written to commend Charles La Bella for his reprehensible greed and his willingness to lie in his emails for the unjust financial enrichment of his clients and/or himself. La Bella's "informal resolution" was for me to give his client $6.5 million but that it had to be done secretively and he had to lie about it to conceal it. Disgusting and corrupt. Chuck La Bella, an embarrassment and a liability to any law firm that might associate with him, is professionally unfit to have ever served as a US Attorney, unfit to practice law and ethically unfit to have ever served the government of the United States in any capacity. Any future client of Chuck La Bella should know that while he and/or his client was abusing the criminal justice system and the legal system in an effort to bilk me out of millions of dollars, La Bella was also being paid for this failure by a client that was funding this hoax. A con man and a moral degenerate, an entitled narcissist like La Bella is the worst form of hypocrite, smart enough to know how to conceal his lies and corrupt behavior and dumb enough to think that he deserves to get away with it.
