Iowa lawyer auditions for position as contract attorney

Unfortunately for him, he might be too stupid even for this mindless line of work. A reader emailed me a link to this story about a month ago, and I have been trying to figure out what to do with it ever since. It isn't about contract attorneys, and this isn't a blog about the legal community generally, except when it is. So here you go:

An Iowa lawyer who believed his client was due to inherit $18.8 million from a long-lost Nigerian cousin has been suspended for tapping clients for loans in a failed effort to reap the windfall.
The Iowa Supreme Court suspended lawyer Robert Allan Wright Jr. for a year, according to the Legal Profession Blog, the Business Record and KCCI.com. According to the opinion (PDF) issued Friday, Wright believed his lucky client had to pay $177,660 in Nigerian inheritance taxes and additional cash for an “anti-terrorism certificate” before receiving the money.
Wright charged a 10 percent contingency, which would amount to $1.8 million if successful, to help his client obtain the Nigerian inheritance.

I remember when I moved to the DC area in 1995 after graduating from law school and seeing an article in The Washington Post about people who had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Nigerian scam. It was well-known to law enforcement even then. How the fuck does anybody fall for it nearly 20 years on?

Well, this bozo borrowed hundreds of thousands from other clients and promised them huge returns once the inheritance came through. How did that work out?

Wright apparently transferred all of the loan proceeds to the scammers, but his client’s inheritance was not forthcoming. During the course of his work, Wright spoke with people he believed to be lawyers, bankers and even the president of Nigeria. His client traveled to Spain in hopes of securing the inheritance (for an additional fee), said to be stashed in two suitcases in Madrid.
The Iowa Supreme Court Attorney Disciplinary Board had concluded that Wright “appears to have honestly believed—and continues to believe—that one day a trunk full of ... one hundred dollar bills is going to appear upon his office doorstep,” according to the Iowa Supreme Court decision.

I'm sorry, but this guy might actually be too stupid to be a contract attorney. And that's saying something.