Lawyer Testifies He Committed Crimes with Judge Garson

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The New York Sun

Paul Siminovsky remembers once roaming Brooklyn’s courthouses like a “big shot” lawyer. The chubby-cheeked 45-year-old with curly salt-and-pepper hair had unfettered access to a sitting judge, state Supreme Court Justice Gerald Garson.


That feeling of status soon crumbled amid charges of a seedy conspiracy to manipulate divorce and custody cases before Judge Garson. The disgraced Mr. Siminovsky looked dour and diminished yesterday as he walked briskly to the witness stand at the bribery trial in Brooklyn of two of the judge’s former court employees.


Make no mistake, though: Mr. Siminovsky is still a courthouse big-shot, this time as a star witness for prosecutors in one of their most high-profile cases.


“Did you commit any crimes with a sitting judge here in Brooklyn?” a prosecutor asked.


“Yes,” answered Mr. Siminovsky. “Gerald Garson.”


Mr. Siminovsky quickly told jurors that he also “committed crimes” with the judge’s clerk and court officer, as well as with a Brooklyn electronics dealer whom prosecutors accuse of recruiting divorce litigants in an alleged scheme to manipulate cases with bribes.


Mr. Siminovsky did not specify what crime Mr. Garson committed and never said the judge took a bribe. He did describe paying “referral fees” of $1,000 to the judge for having sent him cases. Mr. Siminovsky said he left the money in the judge’s desk or slipped it into his palm during a handshake.


He also said that, between the late 1990s and the time of their arrest in early 2003, he bought the judge $10,000 worth of lunches and drinks.


“As far as he was concerned, this was the way it was,” Mr. Siminovsky testified. “I was a young attorney on the rise and I could take care of the judge.”


“And did you take care of the judge?” asked the prosecutor, Noel Downey.


“Yes I did,” said Mr. Siminovsky, who testified that he resigned from the bar and does not want to practice law again.


He told jurors that the judge eventually “doubled or tripled” his assignments as legal guardian for children in custody cases.


“I got a lot from the judge,” he said. “I wanted to get good law guardian assignments. I also had his ear if I needed adjournments.”


Mr. Garson is awaiting trial on a charge of felony bribe receiving for allegedly accepting gifts from Mr. Siminovsky that included free meals and a box of cigars.


A defense lawyer for Judge Garson has repeatedly said that the judge committed ethical lapses but no crime.


Mr. Siminovsky agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in February 2003 and wore a body wire to record conversations with Judge Garson and the court officials around him.


Retired court clerk Paul Sarnell and court officer Louis Salerno are on trial for allegedly taking bribes to steer divorce and custody cases to Judge Garson. They face up to seven years in prison.


Defense lawyers have called Mr. Siminovsky a manipulator out to save himself from prison by helping prosecutors ensnare their clients.


Mr. Sarnell apparently voiced concerns about Mr. Siminovsky long before his arrest. Judge Garson’s former law secretary testified yesterday that Mr. Sarnell had protested that the lawyer had “free rein” in the courtroom.


“He complained that Mr. Siminovsky was acting differently from other attorneys,” said the former law secretary, Larry Rothbart.


Mr. Siminovsky told jurors yesterday that he had bypassed a random case assignment system by taking court filings directly to Mr. Sarnell. The cases then were assigned to Judge Garson.


“I don’t know the mechanics of it. I just know I was supposed to bring it to Paul Sarnell,” Mr. Siminovsky testified.


A central player in the alleged conspiracy was the electronics dealer, Nissim Elmann. Prosecutors say he recruited litigants – many of who were Israeli men he knew from a synagogue in Brooklyn – by assuring them that he had Judge Garson “in his pocket.” Mr. Elmann then sent the clients to Mr. Siminovsky and, prosecutors say, paid bribes to Mr. Sarnell and Salerno.


Mr. Siminovsky told jurors he never would directly ask the judge to take a case, because that would be “improper.” “And I didn’t need to have it done. I was a pretty good lawyer,” he said.


That testimony at least partly contradicts prosecutors’ argument that a broad conspiracy was afoot to get cases before Judge Garson.


Mr. Siminovsky told jurors that Mr. Elmann once paid him $1,500 to do nothing on a custody case in which he already had a client.


“I stole the money, but technically it was a bribe,” he told jurors.


The New York Sun

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