Thread: IA: Clients assail immigration lawyer

Clients assail immigration lawyer
Ex-Windsor Heights attorney misled us, botched cases, took our money, they say; he denies any wrongdoing

BY JENNIFER JACOBS
and SHIRLEY RAGSDALE
REGISTER STAFF WRITERS

There's not much left in immigration lawyer William Shaw Carpenter's office but an overflowing garbage can and a vacuum sweeper.

Clients say he packed up and closed his Windsor Heights office a couple of weeks ago - after complaints stacked up that he had misled them or mishandled their cases.

"He has disappeared. He doesn't answer. He doesn't call," said Gloria Banks, a Story County nurse's aide.

Banks said Carpenter failed to file documents or attend a critical court appearance for her son after she paid Carpenter $5,000. Her son, whose student visa expired when he graduated from college, is now being detained pending deportation from the United States.

Carpenter, 32, said through a lawyer last week that he was aware of all the allegations, but he denied doing anything wrong.

However, state records show that Carpenter is not licensed to practice law in Iowa, even though he identified himself on his office door, his letterhead and in his advertisements as an attorney.

More than 40 immigrants, mostly Hispanic workers, said Carpenter charged them $600 each for a special labor permit application, then failed to file the document.

Other lawyers say that if he had sent in those applications, immigration officials would have been tipped off to the workers' illegal status and probably would have arrested them.

At least a handful of immigrants in the United States legally have filed complaints with the Iowa Attorney Disciplinary Board, according to federal immigration court documents and copies of the complaints provided to The Des Moines Register.

Such investigations are confidential and do not become public record unless public discipline is imposed.

Immigration lawyer James Benzoni of Des Moines said he has taken on at least four clients who said Carpenter botched their cases. Benzoni said he has also filed complaints with the state discipline board, as well as with the Iowa Unauthorized Practice Commission.

The complaints date to 2005 and include a statement from a former employee who said Carpenter paid her only in cash, records show.

On Wednesday, a postman delivering mail to the Sherwood Forest shopping center on Hickman Road, where Carpenter's office was located, said the post office did not have a forwarding address for the lawyer.

The Register was able to contact him through his uncle, Patrick Carpenter, a Des Moines lawyer.

Will Carpenter said that he wanted to respond to the complaints but didn't know whether he should. "The board will see the truth," he said. "The truth will just flush out."

Carpenter said he moved a week ago to the Twin Cities because "there was a dispute about my ability to practice law in Iowa."

Because he is licensed in Minnesota, he said, he can practice in federal court in any state, "but that's not something a lot of clients and attorneys are understanding."

His lawyer, Mark McCormick of Des Moines, said Carpenter denied that any of the cases were mishandled but would not be commenting further about the complaints.

"They are all being processed in the appropriate forum," McCormick said.

Former legal assistant Melissa Ochoa said she quit working for Carpenter because she did not feel comfortable with his behavior.

"It got to the point where I couldn't look clients in the face anymore," said Ochoa.

Ochoa said Carpenter would charge clients $1,500 for driving to Council Bluffs for a five-minute federal hearing even though the immigration judge allowed the meetings to take place by telephone from Des Moines.

She grew weary of translating Carpenter's request that clients pay him, when she knew "he hadn't even touched their case," she said. Some clients got very upset with Carpenter, she said.

Ochoa said two men paid $2,000 each for his help after their wives were detained during a raid.

"He did nothing for them," she said. "And these guys had me scared because they were demanding to speak to him and would sit there in the office and say, 'We're not leaving till we talk to him.' I'd call him on his phone ... and he'd say, 'I'm not meeting with them. If they don't leave, call the cops on them,' and I was like, 'I'm not calling the cops on two guys that want to talk to their attorney.' "

Ochoa said Carpenter paid her only in cash and withheld $80 a week for taxes. She said she was still having problems with her 2005 tax return because she was told Carpenter did not have a valid tax ID number for that year.

In one of Carpenter's cases, a Guatemalan couple, Jose Corado-Florian and Maria Melendrez-Ruano, had moved to the United States in the early 1990s after both lost close relatives to guerillas and other violence, federal court documents show.

The couple wrote in affidavits to the Iowa Attorney Disciplinary Board that Carpenter did not file a key document in their case - so the judge found that their applications for relief had been abandoned. Carpenter asked for $5,000 to file an appeal, then apparently took no action, they said. They paid him a total of $9,700.

He withdrew their applications for asylum without their permission, they said. They have two U.S.-born children, but both adults are now in deportation proceedings.

"We feel that Mr. Carpenter has not been honest with us and has taken our money under false pretenses," the couple wrote in their complaint in June 2006.

Ardith Miller of Charles City said people in her area encountered problems with Carpenter in 2005.

Carpenter asked her son, Jason, who attended Drake University with him, for client referrals. Miller, who helped immigrants through her church, sent more than 40 immigrants to Carpenter after he said he could help them with a "PERM" application.

That's the first step in getting a permanent residency card through an employment offer - but it's only for those who are in the country legally, said Lori Chesser, a Des Moines immigration lawyer.

Undocumented workers who file this paperwork are essentially turning themselves in, she said.

"It's like saying, 'Hi, I'm undocumented, arrest me,' " Chesser said.

Reporter Jennifer Janeczko Jacobs can be reached at (515) 284-8127 or jejacobs@dmreg.com

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs. ... 1/SPORTS06

Undocumented workers who file this paperwork are essentially turning themselves in, she said

Gee, she says this like it's a bad thing!