Huntingdon Valley Lawyer Imprisoned For $4.2M Fraud

HUNTINGDON VALLEY, PA — A Montgomery County attorney who made millions on cases he diverted from his law firm has been fined and sentenced to prison.

Neil I. Mittin, 64, of Huntingdon Valley, will spend the next five years behind bars, U.S. District Court Judge Michael M. Baylson ruled Thursday. He also must pay $3.4 million to restitution.

Mittin worked as a personal injury lawyer for 38 years at Gay and Checker, a Philadelphia law firm located Spring Garden Street. He pleaded guilty to mail fraud in Sept. 2019, and had his law license suspended for a year by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in Nov. 2019.

"He cheated his colleagues, misled and poached his clients, and pocketed the proceeds in the form of referral fees," Tara A. McMahon, acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia Division. "He’ll now be held to account for this decade-long, multimillion-dollar fraud."

Beginning in 2008, Mittin began putting aside a number incoming clients — some personal injury matters, some other types — and then referring them to attorneys in other firms, officials said.

He did so without the clients asking, and often without them even knowing or understanding that they'd been referred elsewhere. He was able to keep it under wraps from his employer by closing the files on those clients, making it appear that a settlement or resolution was impossible, and the case therefore not one that should be taken on by the firm.

The outside attorneys, in turn, paid Mittin a referral fee of around 33 to 40 percent of the fees received by the attorneys if the case in question was resolved successfully, officials said. All told, the personal injury matters that Mittin sold made about $10.80 million in settlements and recoveries, and Mittin himself made about $4.2 million the US Attorney's Office said.

The scheme continued for a full decade, up through 2018, authorities said.