Lawyer accused of fraud by U.S. in BP oil
spill case is acquitted
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[August 19, 2016]
By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) - A prominent Texas lawyer was
acquitted on Thursday of charges he made up thousands of fake clients to
sue BP Plc for damages that the oil company caused in the 2010 Gulf of
Mexico spill, court records show.
Mikal Watts was among five defendants found not guilty by a Mississippi
federal jury of charges related to an alleged scheme to defraud a
program set up by BP to compensate people who suffered economic losses
from the spill. Two other defendants were found guilty.
The U.S. Department of Justice had accused the defendants of submitting
claims on behalf of more than 40,000 people who had not agreed to be
represented by Watts' firm, or else were identified with stolen or bogus
Social Security numbers and other personal information.
According to the indictment, one alleged victim, named Lucy Lu, who
supposedly was a deckhand on a commercial seafood vessel, was actually a
dog.
The convicted defendants were Gregory Warren and Thi Houng "Kristy" Le,
who prosecutors said helped collect names and information.
Also acquitted were Watts' brother David Watts and Wynter Lee, who both
worked for Mikal Watts' San Antonio law firm, and field representatives
Hector Eloy Guerra and Thi Hoang "Abbie" Nguyen, who was Le's
sister-in-law.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for
comment. Mikal Watts, who represented himself at trial, and lawyers for
Warren and Le did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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![](../images/081916PICS/news_J17.jpg)
An exhausted oil-covered brown pelican sits in a pool of oil along
Queen Bess Island Pelican Rookery, 3 miles (4.8 km) northeast of
Grand Isle, Louisiana June 5, 2010. REUTERS/Sean Gardner
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BP last month estimated it would incur $61.6 billion of overall
liabilities for the April 20, 2010 spill, including for cleanup
costs, damages claims and regulatory penalties.
The case is U.S. v. Watts et al, U.S. District Court, Southern
District of Mississippi, No. 15-cr-00065.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York)
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