Disbarred attorney Hyun Lee, also known as Michael Lee, was sentenced to 54 months in prison for wire fraud by U.S. District Judge Pamela Chen in federal court in Brooklyn on Feb. 4.
Lee, who had previously operated out of Queens, N.Y., until his disbarment, pleaded guilty to a scheme to defraud his real estate clients and their counterparties in December 2023. In addition to his prison sentence, he was also ordered to pay the government $3.27 million in forfeiture and restitution to the victims in the amount of $3.29 million.
“The defendant was disbarred from the practice of law for reprehensible misconduct, but that severe penalty did not deter him from continuing to abuse the trust of clients, so it is my hope that he will get the message after serving a term of imprisonment for his crimes,” U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York John Durham said in a press release. “It is particularly egregious that Lee committed these crimes by holding himself out as a trusted lawyer to clients within the Korean-American community in Queens, where many immigrants have little experience with the legal system and place an enormous amount of trust in the hands of individuals like the defendant who profess to represent their interests in legal proceedings.”
Lee was an attorney licensed in New York since 2003, working primarily in Flushing, Queens. His primary area of practice was assisting clients with real estate transactions. He was disbarred on March 11, 2020, after the Grievance Committee found that he misappropriated client and third-party funds. This ruling meant he could no longer accept any funds from clients or others.
According to court filings, from February 2018 to May 2023, Lee convinced clients to give him money for real estate purchases by falsely claiming he would release those funds from his escrow account. Instead, he took this money for personal use, including gambling and expenses for a restaurant he co-owned. Even after his disbarment, Lee pretended to be a legitimate attorney authorized to handle real estate transactions and maintain an escrow account.
To support his deception, Lee misled clients about their funds by creating fake documents that suggested their money was safe. While he showed clients a balance of nearly $3 million in his escrow account, the real balance was only about $25,000. He ignored clients’ requests for their funds, falsely stating he was arranging a fair distribution when he had already spent almost all the money.