Montco lawyer gets 5 years in prison for running $3.4 million fraud

A disbarred Montgomery County lawyer was sentenced Thursday in federal court to five years in prison for running a $3.4 million scam while working for a Philadelphia law firm, U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain said Thursday.

Craig A. Cohen, 55, of Blue Bell, pleaded guilty to mail fraud in November after he was accused of deceptively collecting payments in dozens of cases involving water damage caused by allegedly defective products.

Cohen, who worked at White & Williams in Center City, was voluntarily disbarred in December by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Disciplinary Board.

Prosecutors said Cohen represented insurance companies that had paid claims for water damage, and were seeking recoveries from product manufacturers and class action settlement funds.

From 2015 through 2019, Cohen filed fraudulent claims that funneled the money to his personal use.

In the September filing that charged Cohen, prosecutors said he sometimes fabricated paperwork by using photographs he took of defective plumbing that he kept in storage. In some cases, he physically damaged plumbing products before photographing them.

Prosecutors said he sometimes took unresolved claims and convinced clients and his law firm that they were not viable, but then pursued them to collect the money.

U.S. District Judge Eduardo C. Robreno also sentenced Cohen to three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay more than $3.4 million in restitution.