California Attorney Disbarred for Deceiving Prisoners Seeking Resentencing
Los Angeles attorney Aaron Spolin pleaded no contest to misconduct on June 17, 2025, agreeing to be stripped of his law license because he “promoted false hopes in his clients and their families that the clients’ sentences would be reduced when in fact that was highly unlikely.”
As PLN reported, the California bar filed disciplinary charges in August 2024, accusing the 39-year-old attorney of moral turpitude, charging unconscionable fees and 16 other violations of professional conduct rules and the state business code. That followed an investigation begun the year before, after some of Spolin’s clients accused him of filing botched pleadings missing crucial elements, like sworn declarations from potential alibi witnesses or expert witnesses whose testimony is crucial in habeas corpus petitions. Deputy Los Angeles County Public Defender Karen Nash accused him of “getting rich off the most vulnerable people” with “false hope that could really hurt them.” [See: PLN, Sep. 2023, p.63; and Oct. 2024, p.43.]
After California enacted two criminal justice reforms in 2019—SB 2942, expanding review of sentence lengths, and SB 1437, ordering resentencing for anyone convicted of felony murder who did not directly participate in the killing—Spolin bought up Google search terms to direct families looking for relief under the new laws to his firm. He quickly signed up some 2,000 clients, beginning with a nonrefundable $3,000 consultation fee. That could be applied to their bill if they signed up, but when they did their tabs climbed to as much as $30,000.
Spolin then used fill-in-the-blank legal document templates, bar investigators found, contracting much of the actual legal work to foreign attorneys overseas, who were paid as little as $10 an hour. Meanwhile, Spolin rarely appeared in court or met with clients, who only later learned how dubious his testimonials were; a statement on the firm’s website claimed credit for client James Heard’s sentence commutation, but Heard told the Los Angeles Times that he filled out most of the paperwork himself. He called Spolin’s website boast “intentionally misleading.”
In interviews with clients, Spolin was upbeat about their chances to successfully petition for sentence reductions, though he had been told repeatedly by prosecutors in Los Angeles and Orange counties that those clients did not meet the criteria under the new laws. “He’s a con artist,” said former client Wisner Charles, Jr. The 42-year-old was serving 27 years to life when Spolin’s firm took $19,000 from Charles’ sister with a promise to get her brother out in six-to-eight months. When Spolin failed to deliver, the family hired another attorney, who worked pro-bono to free Charles in 2024 and is still working to win a formal declaration of innocence.
In his agreement to most of the charges, Spolin admitted misleading eight clients, all current and former state prisoners or their family members. His sanction is harsh for a first-time offense—before charges were filed against him, his bar record had been clean since it was granted in 2016. But “California attorneys are sworn to a duty to act in the best interests of their clients,” said the bar’s Chief Trial Counsel, George Cardona. “Mr. Spolin failed in that duty by misleading inmates and their families and charging them unconscionable fees for his own personal gain. This was serious misconduct justifying disbarment.” See: In the matter of Spolin, Calif. State Bar Court (Los Angeles), Case No. SBC-24-O-30656.
Additional source: Los Angeles Times
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