Indian-American lawyer convicted in US for lies in Britain

New York - An Indian-American lawyer, who lied about her work experience and shaved nearly 20 years off her age in an effort to be admitted to the British bar, has been convicted by a New York judge.

The lawyer, Soma Sengupta, 52, was convicted Friday of nine deception charges in a Manhattan court, where Justice Thomas Farber of State Supreme Court decided the case without a jury at her request, the New York Times reported.

"One could not help but be struck by the sheer magnitude and the intensity and breadth of the defendant's lies and schemes and deceitful behavior," Farber was quoted as saying.

Sengupta, who now lives in New Jersey, was convicted of eight felony forgery and false instrument counts and one misdemeanour conspiracy charge.

The most serious count carries a maximum prison sentence of seven years.

Farber scheduled her sentencing for March 22.

"For 10 years, this defendant piled lie upon lie until the tower of deception she built finally fell in upon itself," Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, said in a statement after the verdict.

Sengupta graduated from Georgetown Law School in 1998 and passed the bar exam in New York State in 2000, according to the Times, and worked as a paralegal for the Manhattan district attorney's office and as a volunteer for the Legal Aid Society.

Sengupta never appeared in court or wrote court briefs in either job. But when she applied for admission to the British bar, she claimed to have been an accomplished trial lawyer in both posts, which allowed her to avoid one year of class work, Times said.

She also forged reference letters, transcripts from Georgetown that inflated her academic achievements and a birth certificate.

Sengupta's scheme began to unravel after a clerk in the British law firm doubted a claim on her application that she was 29. She was actually then in her late 40s.

During the trial, Sengupta's lawyer, James Kousouros, acknowledged that his client had forged documents, but he challenged the case on technical legal issues, according to the Times.

He said Sengupta would appeal the verdict.