At 4 o’clock in the afternoon on Aug. 3, David Moskal—the attorney made infamous a decade ago for embezzling $2.5 million and receiving the fastest disbarment in Minnesota history—checked into a condo at a mountain resort in Keystone, Colo. He then backed his car into the garage, closed the door, and purposely—according to the Summit County coroner—left the engine running. At about 10 that night, the carbon monoxide detector alarm went off, triggering a 911 call. Moskal was found dead by asphyxiation.
He’d killed himself just months before he was set to have finally paid for his crimes—after five years in prison and another six on supervised release.
And while the reasons for Moskal’s suicide may have died with him that afternoon, the events of the six years he spent out west—away from the critical eye of the community that knew his crimes—shed some light on the mystery.
Moskal was released on probation to Colorado in 2003. It was a special request, made so he could care for his elderly mother in Longmont, and one the court did not take lightly considering the nature of Moskal’s crimes. As prosecutor Hank Shea pointed out, in Minnesota, members of the bar, media and public knew of Moskal, whereas in Colorado, he was anonymous.
Those who came to work with him or seek his advice wouldn’t know this was a man who had gone from being celebrated as one of “The Tort Kings” in the pages of this magazine in 1996—earning millions as an attorney while secretly stealing millions from his clients and firm—to pleading guilty to three counts of mail fraud two years later. They would never have heard that he used his devout Christianity as a marketing tool before being sentenced to 60 months’ imprisonment—an upward departure from sentencing guidelines due to the “vulnerable victims” he’d stolen from, including a mentally disabled person, a stroke victim, a disabled person, a homeless person, two clients who were HIV-positive or dying of AIDS, 12 elderly clients, two minors and eight dead people. They might not even know that he was not, nor had he ever been, a licensed attorney in Colorado.
Though Moskal would eventually be sent back to prison for a brief stint in 2006 and have his supervision extended for doing, as the federal judge put it, what “smells like [he was] doing before” (and then in 2008 be enjoined by the Colorado Supreme Court from the unauthorized practice of law), for a while he was able to go about his business unnoticed, beginning at the Mintz Law Firm when he first got out of prison and came to Colorado in 2003.
Aware of his criminal background and wanting to give Moskal a second chance, personal injury attorney David Mintz hired him in May 2003 to work for the marketing arm of his Lakewood, Colo., law practice, a company his wife owned called the Lawyer Connection that was housed in the same building.
As a liaison to the firm, Moskal received clients’ initial calls, met with them in Mintz’s office and was their contact person throughout the case. And unbeknownst to Mintz at the time, he says, some of those clients thought Moskal was their lawyer, as the Supreme Court of Colorado Attorney Regulation Counsel would later document:
In July 2003, after a car accident, Shawna Madsen met with Moskal. He told her he was Mintz’s partner and would be handling her case. She’d never met Mintz and thought Moskal was her lawyer.
That same month, James Snider was in a motorcycle accident. He called the Mintz Law Firm and spoke to Moskal, who told him he was an attorney with over 20 years’ experience. Snider had met Mintz once, but he thought Moskal was his lawyer.
A special condition was added to Moskal’s probation in September 2003 that he not be employed in a position where he had access to the names and personal information of individuals. If working in a legal position, he was not to have access to client files nor have the ability to review documents that contained individuals’ personal information.
But that didn’t stop him.
In October 2003, Jennifer Chambers called the firm after a car accident and talked to Moskal. They met and he gave her legal advice and referred her to doctors. Throughout her case, she thought Moskal was her lawyer. Michelle Tucker had the same story.
In the case of John Wray, Moskal asked him to bring documents to their first meeting in October 2004. He sold Wray with stories about past cases he had won and negotiated a fee agreement with him. Later his wife, Jan Wray, wrote the law office asking for clarification because the address on the fee agreement was different from where the meeting took place. She was confused about which David represented them, and a receptionist called to tell her that David Moskal was her lawyer. He met with her weekly, gave her legal advice and drafted conservator paperwork.
Just before a hearing in March 2005, Mintz called Jan Wray to say that Moskal would not attend and Mintz would instead handle the testimony by phone. Soon after the hearing, she received an e-mail from Mintz that Moskal no longer worked for him. It was only then that she learned Moskal was a disbarred attorney who had served time for stealing from his clients.
Mintz says he stopped working with Moskal when he realized he’d been representing himself as a lawyer. Moskal quickly found a new job, as the marketing director of the Mile High Medical Group—a network of medical practices with which Mintz was embroiled in a bitter dispute.
The Mintz Law Firm shared office space and clients with the Mile High Medical Group, owned by doctors Joseph Ramos (whose mother Moskal was then dating) and Steven Nadler. The doctors paid for advertising from the Lawyer Connection so that when people who had been injured called looking for an attorney, they would also be referred to one of the entities within the Mile High Medical Group for treatment. Because most of those patients were uninsured, the doctors were willing to wait for payment until any claims had been resolved by Mintz. They were then paid out of the settlements.
In 2004, that relationship became strained. Mintz says the dispute started because the doctors were submitting inadequate bills that failed to substantiate their claims. Mintz decided to pay himself and his clients from settlements, but to hold back payments for medical services. He argued he had an ethical obligation to his clients not to pay out to the doctors money that might actually belong to his clients.
A few months after Moskal left the Mintz Law Firm for the Mile High Medical Group, Ramos came into possession of confidential documents from the law office detailing settlement amounts. Mintz believes, and would allege in a subsequent court filing, that Moskal stole the documents and gave them to Ramos, though he could offer no evidence to support that accusation.
In November 2005, Mintz filed a Complaint for Interpleader in Jefferson County District Court asking the court to decide how to allocate the funds for 37 accident victims. The complaint alleged that the medical providers had engaged in illegal self-referrals, refused to provide bills, submitted inaccurate charges and overcharges, and failed to maintain accurate payment records. He argued that the medical entities were involved in a scheme to “bill ’em around the world”—as a former financial officer of the entity described in a sworn affidavit.
The defendants shot back with a counterclaim alleging Mintz had demanded kickbacks in exchange for referrals and that Mintz’s claim was really about the doctors’ refusal to pay those kickbacks. They said Mintz had previously threatened Ramos and Nadler that, if they didn’t pay the kickbacks, he would withhold the money from the settlements, file ethics complaints against them and force them to retain legal counsel to respond to Mintz’s actions.
Mintz named Moskal as a third-party defendant, accusing him of stealing the confidential documents. Moskal became even more entangled in the dispute with the affidavit of one of the patients named in the complaint. A homeless man who’d been in a serious accident, the patient was a Mintz client who had been treated by the Mile High Medical Group. He needed money, so rather than wait for the interpleader suit to be resolved, he tried to work something out with the medical group on his own.
He spoke to Brian Hugen, another disbarred attorney and convicted felon who handled all the billing for the Mile High Medical Group. Hugen told him he owed $6,600 but would not detail the expenses and told him he should talk to Ramos directly if he wanted the bills explained or reduced. Ramos told him he would see what he could do, but first he wanted to talk to his lawyer. A half-hour later, Moskal called. “He said they would accept payment of my bills for 75 percent of the check from Mr. Mintz, and give me 25 percent, but only if I would sign an affidavit accusing Mr. Mintz of all sorts of things,” the patient says in the affidavit. “He said he would prepare the documents and I should bring him the check.”
By this time, Mintz believed Moskal had also stolen money from him, and he hired a private investigator, Doug Vaughn, to tail Moskal, which led Vaughn to the front door of Bill and Tom Owens.
Tom Owens had suffered a brain injury in an accident in March 2005 and his father, Bill Owens, had been referred to David Moskal by a friend. At their first meeting in June, Moskal told them he had worked on O.J. Simpson’s case, graduated No. 1 in his law school class and was a former law school professor. According to the Attorney Regulation Counsel, Tom and Bill Owens had frequent contact with Moskal over the next few months: “[Moskal] gave them advice on insurance claims, negotiated with insurance agents, drafted affidavits for Dr. Ramos’ signature and generally handled all aspects of Tom Owens’ insurance claims.”
Moskal also gave others, including lawyers, the impression he was an attorney. A criminal assault case had been filed against the driver in Owens’ accident, and her defense lawyer, Iris Eytan, had several conversations with Moskal in which he negotiated on behalf of Tom Owens, whom he referred to as “my client.” Prosecutor Lee Harrell also believed Moskal was an attorney and negotiated a plea for the defendant with input from Moskal. “I remember I fell for it for a while and then a few things he said didn’t sound right,” says Harrell.
When Vaughn informed Bill Owens that Moskal was not an attorney, Owens called the police and an extensive investigation was conducted by Lakewood detective Mark Reeves, who turned his report over to the Jefferson County District Attorney’s office seeking a felony impersonation charge in October 2005. The case was not prosecuted. Pam Russell, spokeswoman for the D.A.’s office, said they did not believe they had enough evidence to secure a conviction. “Bottom line is some people believed he said he was an attorney, other people didn’t,” Russell says. “We did refer this to the FBI.”
The details of the investigation were also provided to the U.S. Probation Office, which in turn reported the matter to the federal court in Minnesota.
On Nov. 11, 2006, Moskal was back before Judge John R. Tunheim. Moskal admitted that he had violated his probation between June and September 2005 by working “in a capacity where [he] had direct access to personal information on individuals and access to client files with the ability to review documents which contained personal information.”
Ramos and Denver attorney Ron Wilcox, who was representing Moskal in the Colorado interpleader suit, came out to testify on Moskal’s behalf. Ramos explained that he had hired Moskal to do marketing. “We wanted Dave to make clear to attorneys, if he crossed paths with attorneys, that we treated people who had injuries, but we also expected to be paid,” Ramos said. “And then on the inside, we kind of expected to maybe steal a little knowledge from Dave because we’re doctors and not attorneys, and we don’t understand when they want to say ‘We can’t pay this bill and this is why.’ It’s nice to turn to a guy like Dave and say, ‘Why can’t they pay the bill? We did the surgery’ or ‘We did the care.’ We found Dave, his tremendous wealth of experience; he was kind and compassionate, and we thought for all those reasons he would benefit our practice.”
Moskal’s defense attorney Robert Sicoli argued that Tom Owens was represented, not by Moskal, but by Reno, Nev., attorney Jerry Wright after Moskal brought the case to Wright. “Unless the court assumes that Jerry Wright is a liar, that Dr. Ramos is a liar, and that the other people we have affidavits of are liars, as well as that the documents don’t tell the truth, Tom Owens certainly knew who he was represented by,” Sicoli said. “He was represented by Jerry Wright. We have a fee letter dated July 1st, which clearly indicates that Jerry Wright is representing him. It’s on his letterhead. It’s to Tom Owens. It’s with Jerry Wright’s signature. Right in the letter, it talks about the fact that the only way Jerry Wright will take the case is if Dave Moskal will intercede to get the medical records and provide those medical records to Jerry Wright, and right in the letter, it talks about the fact that Mr. Moskal is not a lawyer and had his license taken away.”
Sicoli explained that the reason Moskal got involved was because the Owenses were related to a friend of his and he wanted to help, and the reason why Wright and not someone in Colorado ultimately represented Owens was because it was a difficult liability claim and other attorneys wouldn’t take it, but Moskal knew Wright and got him to take it.
Moskal’s Colorado attorney, Wilcox, who said he wasn’t being paid or reimbursed to appear, testified that Mintz’s claims against Moskal and Ramos had no merit and it “offended his sense of justice” that they would be used to influence another proceeding—though the prosecution did focus the hearing just on the Owens issue.
Federal prosecutor Hank Shea introduced several e-mails written by Moskal during his cross-examination of Ramos. The excerpts included lines like, “If I can get Dr. Ramos to sign the necessary affidavit, then we should be able to bring this claim home,” and “Everything is clicking, and we are operating on all eight cylinders to convince American Family to tender as much of the $1.6 million in coverage as possible to you,” and “Dr. Ramos’ affidavit, which he will look at for the first time on Saturday, points out that time was of the essence and that every second was critical and because of the delay in proper care, you have a permanent brain injury.”
“Bottom line, Doctor: If David Moskal was holding himself out as a lawyer or practicing as a lawyer in your employment, that would have been unacceptable?” Shea asked.
“Unacceptable.”
“And to get right to the core of it, if he was doing it, you wouldn’t want him to come back in your employment, would you?”
“No.”
Shea reads more from e-mails: “I’m sending you by way of e-mail attachment a copy of Dr. Joseph Ramos’ affidavit and a copy of the hammer letter that has been delivered to American Family. I am turning up the pressure with American Family just like I did with Farmers Insurance Company. Dr. Ramos did a superb job in his affidavit, and I believe that his affidavit will both scare and convince American Family into settling this claim with you.”
“Is that what a marketing person does in your firm,” Shea asked Ramos, “have that type of communications with people who are injured and seeking redress in a court of law? Is that what the marketing person’s job duties are?”
“No.”
Shea told the court that Colorado would not take Moskal for supervision without extra conditions being imposed, including the one Moskal admitted to violating. “It was not that long ago that Mr. Moskal sought to have those conditions changed,” he said. “That is, the specific condition he admits violating today he sought to be relieved from and no longer be bound by. That didn’t happen. The probation office was not comfortable with it, and then he went and violated it intentionally anyhow …
“Mr. Moskal wants to still be sending out hammer letters, and he wants to be making demands, and he wants to be bringing home the bacon. And frankly, I’m not sure of how he can go back to work at this clinic and not be faced with the same issues, the same temptations. I think Dr. Ramos’ testimony actually supports consideration for further restricting the nature of his ongoing employment.”
As for the Colorado interpleader suit, Shea called it ironic and telling that Moskal had worked for both camps, “both who are making very serious allegations, both of a professional nature and of a lawful or legal nature against each other, and that, too, is disconcerting.”
Moskal told the court he had been trying his best to live a life that Tunheim and Shea would be proud of. “I admit that I crossed the line in this situation,” he said. “I accept responsibility for that. I was really trying to help a relative of one of the doctors. I’m sorry I tried to help him. I truly am. That’s all I tried to do, and I accept responsibility for what I have done.”
The judge decided to send Moskal to prison for 30 days and extend his supervision another three years. “I am very concerned about what happened here,” he said. “It appears as though you were, if not acting as a lawyer, you were coming pretty close to it. You clearly had access to confidential files, and that was the issue that we were concerned about. I hope this is not the tip of the iceberg. … You have been involved in two situations with this law firm and with this clinic where, as Mr. Shea correctly said, there is a great deal of temptation because it involves people who are injured and then dealings with insurance companies. I want to make it clear that this is the kind of work, even tangentially involved in this kind of work, you can’t do, and that was the reason for the condition, … It all kind of smells like what you were doing before.”
But Moskal chose not to avoid temptation. He continued to work for Ramos after serving his 30 days. And eventually they both were vindicated in the interpleader case.
Two bench trials were held. At the first, in October 2007, the court ruled that the medical providers were entitled to the money—$130,187—that Mintz withheld. Then in April 2007, at the trial on the counterclaims, the court found that Mintz had abused the interpleader process and breached fiduciary duties. He was ordered to pay the medical group $286,050.00 in attorneys’ fees and damages. Specifically, the court found that Mintz had used the interpleader process to accomplish a personal goal, which was avoiding further liability to the Attorney Regulation Counsel. ARC had already sanctioned Mintz once for withholding money for several months that a client had authorized be disbursed to the medical providers for health care treatment. In this case, the court found that, again, all the patients had authorized that that money be disbursed to the medical providers. “Plaintiff had been withholding that money as leverage for a separate dispute he had with medical providers about payments for referrals without informing patient defendants,” the court found.
Punitive damages of $1,000 were awarded because Mintz “had a vendetta against the medical providers and one of their managing principals, Dr. Joseph Ramos, at the time.”
Then in May 2008, the Colorado Supreme Court ordered that Moskal be enjoined from the unauthorized practice of law in Colorado. “David Moskal is not and never was a Colorado attorney,” says Jim Coyle of the Attorney Regulation Counsel. “After being disbarred [in Minnesota], he moved to Colorado and started working with a company and he assisted people in personal injury matters and held himself as an attorney to them in several cases. Therefore, we filed a petition for injunction with the Colorado Supreme Court against him and he was eventually enjoined. Should he violate that order of injunction, one potential remedy is contempt against him, which could include fines or imprisonment.”
The Petition for Injunction included details about a new law office Ramos was working with, Bell & Wright:
“According to Dr. Ramos, he grew weary of dealing with attorneys who hired his company on a lien basis and then always wanted to negotiate fees downward. He spoke to an attorney friend of his from Nevada, Jerry Wright, and asked him if he would be interested in handling some of these cases. Jerry Wright teamed up with Colorado attorney Robert Bell and formed Bell & Wright, a law firm in Denver. Dr. Ramos’ mother, who was then [Moskal’s] girlfriend, filed the original formation of the company with the Secretary of State. Wright is not licensed in Colorado. Robert Bell is licensed in Colorado but maintains a Nevada address with attorney registration.”
In April 2007, a private investigator visited the law office of Bell & Wright and later submitted a report about what he was told to the Colorado Supreme Court. The office shared a floor with several other businesses, and he asked the receptionist if he could speak to someone with Bell & Wright.
“Did you want Penny or Dave?” the receptionist replied.
“I’m not sure. Is Dave the lawyer?”
“Yes, and Penny is his assistant.”
Neither Dave nor Penny were in. The investigator returned a month later and spoke to Penny. She said Robert Bell was the attorney and they did most of their work over e-mail or phone because Bell spent most of his time in Nevada.
In July, I tried to find Moskal myself, starting with a trip to the office of Bell & Wright. The receptionist asked if my visit was about a case. “Actually, I’m looking for David Moskal specifically,” I said. “Is he in?”
“I don’t know. Let me check,” she replied. She called the office, and said there was a woman up front to see “Dave.” She said if I would wait a few minutes that Marcos would be up to see me. When I told Marcos Ronquillo, a legal assistant, that I was with Minnesota Law & Politics and looking for David Moskal, he told me that Moskal had never worked there; he worked for Joseph Ramos.
In response to a request for an interview about Moskal, Ramos offered the following: “Unfortunately, I probably don’t have a lot that I can help you with regarding David Moskal,” he wrote in an e-mail. “He has not worked for me for some time now and I am not sure what he is currently doing for employment. If the follow-up you would like to do is on the ‘Mintz case’ and David Moskal’s involvement/role with attorneys like Mintz, I can only tell you that Mintz’s allegations against Moskal (and myself for that matter) never bore any truth. … David Moskal denied all of Mintz’s allegations and the court never found otherwise. There were not repercussions against David Moskal.”
Asked if Moskal had worked with Bell & Wright, Ramos would later say: “He better not have. He just did marketing for our practice, and Bell & Wright is a law firm in town. It’s just one we do business with.” (Ramos & Associates is now another firm in town; Ramos was admitted to the Colorado Bar Association in February.)
Ramos said that he had terminated Moskal’s employment in late May or early June, for reasons he would not disclose, and he no longer knew how to contact him.
During those weeks after Moskal’s termination, and leading up to his death, he proved a difficult man to find. His federal probation officer said that where Moskal lived and worked was not public information, nor was the status of Moskal’s probation and whether he had any violations since those brought up in court. Wilcox, the Colorado attorney so eager to defend Moskal he flew to Minnesota on his own dime, said he hadn’t represented him in some time and didn’t know how to reach him. Calls made to the Colorado and Nevada offices of Bell & Wright were not returned. In an e-mail, a representative of the firm said, “Our ethical obligations preclude us from discussing the practices or procedures of our law firm, our business relationships, as well as the particulars of any client’s case.”
Moskal’s last known address was his mother’s house in Longmont. She was the reason Moskal was allowed to serve his probation in Colorado. But the house was sold in April of last year, a couple of months before his mother passed away. A condo owned by Moskal’s family in Fort Collins, and listed as his brother’s address, was vacant.
The only phone number available in a public record for Moskal—found in the Lakewood police report from 2005—was answered by Ramos, who reiterated that he didn’t know how to reach Moskal.
Then on Aug. 3, David John Moskal’s body was discovered in the Keystone parking garage.
The 54-year-old left behind a son and two daughters. His obituary in the Star Tribune included an online guestbook, with a final entry from his daughter on Aug. 14: “Thank you for being such a great dad and always being there with words of encouragement or advice. You were always so proud. I will think of you every day for the rest of my life and I promise to continue to make you proud. You have taught me so many things and I can’t thank you enough. I pray that you are at peace …” L&P
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