Fake Lawyer Wanted In Illinois Accused Of New Scam In Florida

MIAMI — A convicted con artist wanted in Illinois has moved to Florida and begun operating a new fake law firm, Patch has learned. After a string of allegations of various scams and frauds across Chicago's north suburbs, an arrest warrant was issued for the bogus attorney, according to court records, police reports and interviews.

John R. Ryan, Jr., 34, formerly of Mount Prospect, pleaded guilty to identity theft in May 2017 after Deerfield police investigated a trail of unpaid hotel bills, stolen credit cards and allegations he was operating a phony moving service, police records show. Prosecutors only pursued charges in Lake County, although Ryan faced a range of other allegations across the north suburbs, as well as several criminal convictions in Wisconsin.

"Ryan talks and lies so much that Ryan actually believes the things he is telling to people," an acquaintance of Ryan told a detective. He said Ryan was operating a phony law firm called Berkshire and Ross out of a Regus office space in Rosemont. Witnesses told police he would come in late at night and appeared to have disturbed other offices. A representative of a law firm that rented space next to Ryan's suites in the shared River Road offices told police he believed Ryan had stolen checks from the desk during the night.

Staff at a hotel in Rosemont told police Ryan had been a "difficult guest" and had claimed to be running for Senate. Police said after Ryan was taken to the Deerfield lockup during the investigation into hotel bills paid using other people's identities — a charge to which he ultimately pleaded guilty — Ryan asked police to make a deal.

"Ryan said he has been locked up in 'Max' and the FBI has major cases on him," a Deerfield detective reported. "Ryan said that the Deerfield police did not do a good enough job catching him, but he will give up some heroin dealers in the area if we let him go immediately." Ryan did not want to discuss the allegations against him but promised to provide the name of a heroin dealer in exchange for his release. The detective was not interested. Ryan told the investigators that police "were treating him like he was 'Pablo Escobar' or 'Bernie Madoff' and that when [police] saw the $2,000 he had on him [the officers] 'flipped out.' Ryan advised he had to carry that much cash on him because he knew he was wanted and could not leave a trail."

Despite many of his claims being provably false and claims from more than a dozen people that Ryan had defrauded them in one way or another, his claim that he knows a heroin dealer is a plausible one. Deerfield police say they were sent a video of Ryan snorting what appeared to be heroin while speaking with a "client" of one of his reportedly fraudulent ventures — U.S. Logistics, a "moving company" with an address listed in Evanston. Other witnesses reported that he often seemed high on drugs. During a recent phone conversation with a reporter, the sound of Ryan snorting could be heard throughout.

Police and court records show U.S. Logistics was investigated by the Boston Police Department because of claims Ryan would take money for moves he never completed. Deerfield investigators learned of a consistent pattern to his reported moving scam around the country. Instead of moving items to people, Ryan would either never show up or take the items to be moved and place them in storage. Then people who had scheduled moves with him would discover fraudulent charges on their accounts for things like Ryan's hotel bills.

Ryan said he hadn't heard of the firm.

His latest "law firm," Harding & Pierce, claims to have locations in Miami, Chicago, New York City, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Houston and Ridgeland, Mississippi. The company was registered last September in Mississippi, and all of its listed addresses correspond with shared Regus office spaces. Harding & Pierce claims to specialize in a variety of legal services, including "civil actions, criminal defense, immigration law, mergers and acquisitions transactions, banking, and certain types of corporate litigation," according to its website.

"The Harding & Pierce Law Firm is actively changing the landscape of litigation in America and, to a greater extent, redefining the scope of the Attorney-Client relationship," it said.

After getting out of jail in Wisconsin in August 2018 and violating the terms of his probation in Illinois, Ryan headed to Florida sometime before September of that year, according to accounts with his name and picture on social media and online review websites. Authorities in Miami-Dade County are currently investigating multiple complaints that Ryan has continued his pattern of fraud in the Sunshine State, according to a woman who accuses him of stealing nearly $17,000.

Milly Santana, of Miami, said she first encountered Ryan after someone crashed into her car on Thanksgiving weekend of last year.

"That following Monday, I come to work, and I'm telling the secretaries what happened. And he happened to walk by and he heard me," Santana told Patch. "And he said, 'Oh, I can help you with the claim because I represent different insurance companies.'" She said Ryan offered to represent her and made an arrangement involving a $1,000 "retainer" to file a claim with USAA, her car insurance company.

"So I start noticing that there's something off with this guy. He looks like he uses drugs and he's very erratic," she said. "Some days he calls me on the phone and he sounds like he's drunk. Like very, very, weird behavior." Around January 2019, she became impatient with the lack of any results, but Ryan claimed he was planning on filing a lawsuit because the insurance company was being uncooperative. Santana said she demanded to see any complaint or claim he was going to send, but Ryan never sent it and Santana suspected something fishy was going on.

"I sent the contract that he and I signed to another lawyer, and they tell me this is not a real legal contract — this guy's a scammer," she said. After she fired Ryan and told the insurance company she was no longer being represented, the company informed her it had already paid out a settlement. Santana provided a copy of the check for nearly $16,000 that USAA wrote to Ryan's phony firm in December, which she said he never told her about.

"He pretends to be a lawyer, he represents people, he's very aggressive, he portrays an image of a very confident professional, so if the cases go to settlement he doesn't need to file anything in court," she said. "This is the way that I believe he's operating. As long as he doesn't have to show up in court and file actual legal documents, anything that he can settle he's cashing in on."

Santana said after firing Ryan he repeatedly threatened her, claiming he was going to charge her $30,000 in billable hours because he had spent so much time working on the case and "would often brag about the people he hangs out with and how dangerous they are."

Facing the threat of repossession of the leased car and damage to her son's credit, since he was also on the lease, Santana started a GoFundMe campaign Wednesday to raise money to pay the repair shop where her car has sat for nearly two months.

Santana said she reported Ryan to police, prosecutors and the Florida Bar Association in January. A spokesperson for the Miami-Dade County State's Attorney's Office said a search shows there are currently no filed criminal cases against Ryan in the county. A representative of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections said the department is investigating the circumstances of Ryan's most recent incarceration. The Miami-Dade Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for more information about complaints against Ryan or his firm.

When reached by phone, Ryan continued to maintain that he was indeed a lawyer and that his firm had "quite a few" attorneys around the country. Before hanging up on a reporter, he said he was unaware of the warrant for his arrest in Lake County and had never heard of the moving company scam or fake law firm he was accused of operating in Illinois.

Ryan declined to provide any evidence that Harding & Pierce is not a fake law firm and that he is not pretending to be a lawyer as part of a financial fraud. When presented with allegations of a fake attorney scamming the Miami woman out of the car insurance payments, Ryan suggested he would face little criminal liability as an individual.

"People are afforded a lot of protections behind a corporation," Ryan said.

Earlier: Fake Senate Candidate, Attorney Gets Probation For ID Theft »