El Paso Lawyer Marco Antonio Delgado Gets 20 Years For Laundering Money For Mexican Drug Cartel

Let’s hope the public perception of the legal profession is not shattered.

Marco Antonio Delgado, a prominent 46-year-old lawyer from El Paso, TX who once was a Carnegie Mellon University trustee, has been sentenced to 20 years in a federal prison after getting convicted of conspiring to launder $600 million for the now-defunct Milenio cartel or Cártel de los Valencia as reported by Daniel Borunda for the El Paso Times.

Lawyers breaking bad long has been a problem within the bar, and several once high-flying legal eagles have had their wings recently clipped by criminal convictions.

September 2013:  Federal-prosecutor-turned-defense-lawyer Paul Bergrin was sentenced to six life terms and then some added time for good measure after his conviction on 23 counts which ranged from trafficking cocaine, pimping hookers and murdering witnesses as reported by Jason Grant for The Star-Ledger.

April 2013:  Jerry “Angel” Peteet was sentenced to 23 years in a federal prison after he was convicted in a racketeering trial targeting several members from the Wheels of Soul motorcycle club in St. Louis, MO as reported by the Post-Tribune.

January 2013:  A federal judge sentenced Isaac Guillen to seven years in prison following his conviction on racketeering and money laundering charges for his role with the 18th Street gang which was controlled from inside prison by Mexican Mafia member Francisco “Puppet” Martinez as reported by Victoria Kim for the Los Angeles Times:  “prosecutors said Guillen was an instrumental part of the gang’s operations rather than an unwitting marginal character who had been sucked into its criminal activities.”

Four lawyers currently are on trial with reputed Lucchese soldier Nicodemo S. Scarfo a/k/a Nicky Jr. in Camden, NJ for their alleged roles in the extortionate takeover and systematic looting of the publicly-traded mortgage company FirstPlus Financial Group, Inc. as reported by Julia Terruso for the Inquirer:  “New York City attorneys Gary McCarthy and David Adler, Texas attorney William Maxwell, and Scarfo’s longtime criminal defense attorney, Donald Manno, will aim to prove they were working in a legal capacity – representing mobsters – and not working with them.”

And last fall Phoenix defense lawyer Carmen Lynn Fischer was charged for her alleged role with prison gang New Mexican Mafia purportedly headed by incarcerated husband Angel Lopez Garcia as reported by Brian Skoloff for The Associated Press:  “investigators say she has defended several previous gang-related clients before becoming Garcia’s attorney and that in 2011, he persuaded her to marry him to help further his criminal activities from outside prison using her resources and access to information.”

The so-called legal profession is full of criminals masquerading as lawyers.  If citizens cannot expect better from supposed officers of the court then perhaps the American experiment which depends upon a legal system beyond reproach is over.