Suburban attorney sentenced for stealing millions

A former real estate attorney with offices in Oak Brook was sentenced Tuesday to nearly six years in prison for stealing $2.34 million from her clients.

Kathleen Niew, 59, of Burr Ridge was also ordered to pay restitution in that amount to the victims and forfeit assets she obtained as a result of her crime, federal authorities said.

U.S. District Court Judge Harry Leinenweber ordered Niew to report to the Federal Bureau of Prisons on April 14.

Niew, who operated Niew Legal Partners in Oak Brook, was charged with 10 counts of wire fraud in 2013 and was disbarred that same year. She pleaded guilty last June to all the charges, federal prosecutors said.

The victims were Niew's clients, a married couple who transferred more than $2 million into an account Niew said would be used for closings on commercial real estate transactions.

Instead, Niew used the funds to purchase gold mining operations, not commercial property as the victims' intended, authorities said. Niew received a 20 percent finder's fee from the mining operation in exchange for providing it with $1.5 million of her clients' money, prosecutors said.

Leinenweber also found Niew defrauded another client by telling the client she needed to borrow $500,000 for her pending divorce proceedings. However, Niew was not getting divorced and instead she sent that victim's money to the same gold mining investment operation.

"Niew blatantly stole $2.8 million of her clients' money, and then lied to cover up the scam. When confronted and caught, Niew undertook acts that can only be described as shocking for an attorney licensed by the bar - creating false cover-up documents, lying to her clients, and lying under oath," argued Assistant United States Attorney Sunil Harjani in the government's sentencing memorandum.