A former Manhattan District Attorney’s office paralegal who lied about her past to get into a prestigious lawyer training program was sentenced to five years probation and fined $5,000 today in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Georgetown Law School grad Soma Sengupta was convicted last month on four counts of felonies for forgery and using a false instrument and a misdemeanor conspiracy count after lying to get into the One Inner Temple Lane program.
The New Jersey resident’s web of deceit unraveled when a British clerk doubted her claim that she was only 29 years old and began digging into her history.
It was soon discovered that she forged reference letters, transcripts, birth certificates and email correspondences to obtain numerous jobs for which she wasn’t qualified even claiming to have been a prosecutor for the Manhattan DA’s Office
Sengupta, 52, was hired by the Manhattan DA as a paralegal after telling them that she wasn’t an attorney. She also fabricated other portions of her work history to get the gig.
She was eventually arrested in 2011, and even though she knew she was being investigated in London and New York, she was caught with a letter claiming to be a prosecutor on a work assignment in a scheme to get a hotel discount.
Prosecutors argued for a jail sentence but Manhattan Supreme Court judge Thomas Farber called Sengupta’s offense a “relatively minor fraud” that didn’t merit jail time.
“It doesn’t seem to me that the defendant takes responsibility for her actions,” Farber said. “It strikes me that there’s a perplexing lack of remorse throughout this entire trial.”