The Baltimore County man repeatedly accused of ripping off people with disabilities and the elderly is scheduled to appear in Howard County Circuit Court next week ? but his attorney won?t be with him.
“I may be his latest victim,” said Lutherville attorney Joseph Murtha, who once represented Linda Tripp, one of the parties involved in the Monica Lewinsky scandal during President Clinton?s second term in office.
Murtha filed a motion in Circuit Court last week to drop Paris G. George, 52, of Timonium, as a client after George wrote him a bad check.
Murtha wrote in court documents that George approached him and “appeared desperate” for counsel, but then wrote a check to an account without sufficient funds and failed to make any effort to make a substitute payment.
“The defendant has failed to make any effort to satisfy the financial obligation that he agreed to … .” Murtha wrote.
He also asked for the court to strike from the record an earlier appearance on behalf of George, the first time Murtha has ever made such a request.
George is scheduled for a June 27 trial on charges that he lied under oath and forged documents during a May 2005 trial.
In that trial, prosecutors alleged that he committed felony theft and failed to install a wheelchair lift for a Clarksville couple who paid him $6,300 to do the work, charging documents state.
During the trial, George said he was not responsible for not installing the lift, because another company never delivered the device to him after he ordered it, prosecutors said.
George presented records at the trial to show that he ordered the lift and was acquitted of the charges, but those records were later found to be “fictitious,” according to a Howard County grand jury indictment.
“The testimony of Paris George was willfully and corruptly false …” the indictment states.
Now charged with multiple counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, George could face up to 10 years in prison on each perjury charge, and up to five years and a $10,000 fine on the obstruction of justice charge.
The May incident was not George?s first run-in with the law.
The Circuit Court for Baltimore County in 2004 ordered George to pay a $75,000 fine for violations of the Consumer Protection Act, according to the office of Maryland Attorney General Joseph Curran.
The court ruled that George cheated residents out of medical equipment, including wheelchairs and stair lifts, by selling the items and then failing to provide them, according to the attorney general.
George could not be reached for comment.
