The blinders are off the marks in the scam run for too many years in American courtrooms and boardrooms by plaintiffs lawyers like William Lerach and his fellow felons at Milberg Weiss. For years, these people told us they were courageous white knights armed with legal pads, nobly protecting defenseless shareholders against the massive corruption and deception of the executive criminals running America’s biggest corporations. They further told us that they alone, as private litigators driven solely by the desire to right wrong and expose injustices, could defend shareholders because the government was the tank for the evil corporate interests. But this week Americans were reminded that truth is not found in such fairy tales.

On Monday, Lerach stood before Judge John F. Walter and was sentenced to two years in prison and two years of probation, the maximum possible under the disgraced former Milberg Weiss partner’s plea agreement the Justice Department. He was part of a kickback scheme that netted the firm more than $200 million in legal fees from at least 150 cases, going back to 1979. Walter called the scheme “breath-taking” and said it “corrupted the firm and corrupted it in the most evil way.” In his sentencing papers, Lerach was quoted saying he had done it because “everybody was paying plaintiffs.”