New Chicago Bears DB Antrel Rolle Suing Former Lawyers for $1.8 Million

Antrel Rolle made headlines when he revealed that an email alert from Orbitz about travel deals to Chicago is what made him sign with the Bears. While he is glad to be calling the Windy City his new home he probably wishes that he had similar divine intervention year ago when he needed to choose a tax attorney.

Maybe then he wouldn't have picked a firm that ended up defrauding him of $1.8 million.

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According to the law suit he recently filed against Hiram Martin, of Martin Law & Associates and Harold Sterling of San Fernando Valley he is seeking $1.857 million in damages and his suing his lawyers for breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, misrepresentation, conspiracy and other counts.

According to papers filed with the court:

With his mother Armelia's help, Rolle says he hired Martin to file his taxes after the attorney said he could save Rolle millions of dollars. According to Rolle, Martin and Sterling conspired to steal more than $1.2 million of his withholdings in the 2005 and 2006 tax years by forging his signature on tax documents. In addition, Martin filed Arizona state tax returns under the NFL player's name for the tax years 2005 to 2009, pocketing more than $600,000, Rolle says.

They also made some sizable donations to a chapel that Sterling happened to be the president of. To make matters worse for Rolle they didn't even do a good job of filing his taxes. In 2010 the IRS came after him for $2.2 million in back taxes.

Rolle finally fired Martin in 2012 after the IRS sent him a lien. His new accountant and the NFL's investigating service discovered the fraud.

[NJ]

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