Suspended Boston attorney held on $1M bail for allegedly stealing from clients, co-workers

A suspended attorney was ordered held on $1 million bail in Suffolk Superior Court on Tuesdayafter pleading not guilty to stealingtens of thousands of dollars from clients and other individuals.

Wassem Amin, 31, faces 26 charges, including six counts of credit card application fraud, four counts of larceny, three counts of witness intimidation, money laundering and check forgery, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office said.

Amin allegedly stole funds from clients andopened credit cards in his colleagues’ names in order to “fund an extravagant lifestyle,” which featured gambling trips, luxury apartments and multiple vehicles.

Amin startedhis practice, Amin Legal Group, last year, convincing a college acquaintance and a law school intern to join him,officials said. He then opened several credit lines in their names without their knowledge, prosecutors said, charging nearly $35,000.

Amin is also charged with embezzling nearly $50,000 from a client, according to the DA’s office. That client wired the money to Amin expecting it would be transferred into an account Amin said he had created fo the client’s new business venture.

Instead, Amintransferred the money into his own corporate account and used most of it for a lease on a Mercedes S-class sedan, prosecutors said.

When the client repeatedly demanded the money back, Aminreportedly wrote a check on an account that had already been closed for two months.

Amin also allegedly charged$9,000 to a client’s credit card when the charges were not related to legal services, as well as altered a paycheck from a former employer to try to take more than $22,000 from the company.

He is accused of applying for a lease on a $10,000 per month Canal Street penthouse by providing false information, then failing to pay rent.

As a condition of his bail, Amin is barred from having any contact with his alleged victims, must wear a GPS monitor and not travel outside of Massachusetts without the court’s permission.

He is scheduled to return to court Jan. 12.