A Democratic lawyer who once had dreams of elected office is facing prison time for allegedly stealing money from a disabled client and then doctoring evidence.
He’s the second New Hampshire Democrat to be hit with news of potential jail time in the past 24 hours.
Police arrested Justin P. Nadeau Wednesday on charges of theft by deception, forgery, multiple counts of falsifying physical evidence, and financial exploitation of an elderly, disabled, or impaired adult.
The charges stem from information that came out during Nadeau’s ethics case before the state Professional Conduct Committee. Nadeau was ultimately disbarred after he was allegedly caught falsifying evidence during the PCC investigation.
“It’s difficult for me to imagine something worse for a lawyer to do,” one PCC member said, according to the court records.
Nadeau went before the PCC after he allegedly got a client who was impaired by a traumatic brain injury, Exeter woman Shawn Fahey, to give him close to $300,000 in loans in 2018. Nadeau allegedly secured the loans with a condo he did not own, and the anticipated proceeds from a pending defamation lawsuit he had against the Portsmouth Police Department.
Nadeau allegedly told Fahey that until the defamation lawsuit was resolved he was “strapped for cash.”
It was a tough 24 hours for New Hampshire Democrats.
Portsmouth’s Nadeau was the Democratic nominee in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District in 2004, losing to incumbent Republican Jeb Bradley by nearly 30 points.
Nadeau’s defamation lawsuit against the Portsmouth police arose from an arrest of Portsmouth man Christian Jennings. Jennings was allegedly found with quantities of marijuana, Ecstasy, amphetamines, a loaded gun, and $42,000 in cash. According to police, Nadeau was handling an $85,000 marina investment for Jennings before the arrest, though the marina deal never closed. Nadeau brought the lawsuit when police opened an investigation into whether or not he was laundering drug money. The defamation case was settled in 2019.
Nadeau also allegedly hid the $165,000 he collected after he sent Fahey to a Massachusetts attorney to handle her injury case, according to the PCC investigation. Nadeau reportedly collected referral fees from the Massachusetts attorney as well as other money related to Fahey’s case.
Nadeau slow-walked producing documents related to the case for the PCC. The Democrat even destroyed his computer before the hearing, according to court records. Nadeau claims he made all the appropriate conflict of interest disclosures and eventually produced printed copies of the letter he claimed he sent her.
However, James Berriman, the computer expert hired by the PCC, looked through Nadeau’s office server and found the dates on the documents Nadeau gave to the committee were fake, and the documents were created well after he took the money from Fahey.
“As a member of the PCC observed at oral argument before the PCC, ‘the Berriman Report and the spoliation of evidence, in my mind . . . is one of the most significant violations I have seen in decades of practice before the ADO before joining this committee,’” a New Hampshire Supreme Court ruling states.
Nadeau appealed his disbarment, but the Supreme Court ruled in April that he crossed too many lines to be let back into court, at least not as an attorney.
Nadeau is due in Rockingham County Circuit Court in Portsmouth for an arraignment on Sept. 9.
