Kudos to Atlanta lawyer Nathan Hardwick IV.. that’s some pretty serious activity on the embezzlement front
His federal trial continues, an ex-girlfriend and an FBI fraud investigator testified Friday about Hardwick’s lavish expenditures, which prosecutors allege were fueled by money he embezzled from his now-defunct firm, Morris Hardwick Schneider.
Law.com report
Prosecutors claim Hardwick stole $26 million from his residential real estate firm and spent $18.47 million of it on gambling, private jet travel and women from 2011 through August 2014, when escrow account shortfalls came to light.
Hardwick spent $4.39 million of the allegedly stolen money on women, according to the government, which submitted as evidence two binders of documentation on Hardwick’s expenditures for “female social companions” that together measured roughly 8 inches thick.
U.S. Northern District of Georgia prosecutors indicted Hardwick, 53, in February, 2016 along with the former controller for MHS’s residential real estate closing side, Asha Maurya, as a co-conspirator.
Maurya pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud last year and is cooperating with the government. Hardwick’s defense team, led by Ed Garland of Garland Samuel & Loeb, has maintained that Maurya was the culprit, not Hardwick. She has admitted to stealing $900,000 from MHS.
Hardwick owned 55.5 percent of MHS, and brothers Mark and Gerard Wittstadt owned 22.2 percent apiece. Hardwick ran the closing operation from Atlanta while the Wittstadts ran the default operation from Baltimore.
