New Hampshire Attorney Who Tried To Get Restraining Order On Turtleboy Has License Suspended After Mishandling $100K In Client’s Funds
Editor’s Note: If any of Robert Fojo’s clients he scammed would like to come forward and talk about their experiences please email [email protected].
Breaking News: Metrosexual Attorney Robert Fojo, (AKA Bootleg Avenatti) has had his license to practice law suspended for “mishandling” over $100K in client’s money.
Robert Fojo, a Bedford-based attorney who has been involved in multiple failed legal efforts to thwart mask mandates in school districts across New Hampshire and Massachusetts, has been temporarily suspended from practicing law for allegedly mishandling client money in unrelated cases. According to recently filed court paperwork, Fojo is alleged to have mishandled nearly $100,000 in client funds, including payments for personal injury claims and a contract dispute. On December 21, the New Hampshire Supreme Court temporarily suspended Fojo’s license to practice law in the state, writing that the move was “necessary to protect the public and to preserve the integrity of the legal profession.”
Fojo didn’t respond to requests for comment, but in a legal filing, admitted to “certain errors in his bookkeeping.” Through his attorney, Fojo is challenging his temporary suspension.
“There is no emergency, no immediate harm to the public, and no justification for an immediate suspension,” attorney William Saturley, who is representing Fojo, wrote in court paperwork. Fojo will appear before a specially appointed judge on January 4 for a hearing on his temporary suspension.
Fojo has been practicing law in New Hampshire since 2010, and is licensed to practice in Massachusetts. His law license in Florida has been suspended for failing to pay dues.
Along with his personal injury work, Fojo has been the state’s most pugnacious lawyer on issues related to mask mandates in schools, remote schooling, and the governor’s emergency orders during the pandemic. He has filed lawsuits on behalf of dozens if not hundreds of parents challenging mask mandates at schools including in Hollis/Brookline, Bedford, Londonderry, Timberlane, Epping, Derry, Dover, Somersworth, Rochester, Durham and Exeter, along with at least 18 school districts and the state department of education in Massachusetts. In September, he filed a suit against the Catholic Diocese in Florida over the use of masks in its private schools.
In New Hampshire courts, Fojo has repeatedly argued that school districts lacked authority to issue mask mandates, and that face masks violated a law prohibiting physical restraint that obstructs a child’s breathing.
“Masks for children do more harm to their development than provide effective safeguards against spreading COVID-19,” Fojo alleged in an October lawsuit involving eight New Hampshire schools.
Some of Fojo’s lawsuits have been forcefully rejected by New Hampshire judges, including his case against the mask mandate in Hollis/Brookline schools. In dismissing the suit, Judge Charles Temple called Fojo’s argument a “twisted and tortured” reading of state law regarding the use of restraints.
“Attorneys have a professional obligation to present accurate information to the courts in which they appear, or at the very least, to not present information they know is misleading,” Judge Temple wrote in an order.
On December 17, the Attorney Discipline Office filed a 33-page complaint outlining Fojo’s alleged mismanagement of funds on behalf of three clients. In one instance, Fojo failed to properly hold a $40,000 settlement check in a slip and fall case in what’s known as an IOLTA account. In another claim, he’s alleged to have used funds allocated for one client to pay taxes following a settlement payment for a different client.
“There is a danger that Mr. Fojo will continue this course of conduct if he is not suspended from the practice of law,” lawyers for the Attorney Discipline Office wrote.
In his rebuttal, filed less than a week later, Fojo admitted to failing to properly handle client money and said he was willing to “accept some form of discipline,” but argued a suspension wasn’t necessary, in part, because he had cooperated throughout the investigation.
“There is no public emergency here. While unfortunate, errors in IOLTA accounts are not
as rare as comets,” Fojo’s lawyers wrote.
The temporary suspension will complicate Fojo’s ongoing anti-mask lawsuits. An attorney from the state’s Attorney Discipline Office has been assigned to take possession of Fojo’s files and notify his clients and any financial institutions of his law suspension, but will not take over his legal cases.
“Finding other counsel to handle his clients’ ongoing matters, particularly during Christmas week, is an insurmountable task,” his attorney wrote.
Gee whiz, who could’ve seen this coming? Oh right, Turtleboy. I warned all the gullible and vulernable people out there who didn’t want their children to be forced to wear masks in school NOT to pay this con-artist a retainer for lawsuits that would ultimately go nowhere. I warned them here, here, and here. I was kicked out of parent Facebook groups where concerned parents were pooling their hard earned money together to give to this man right here:
Never give your money to an attorney with a haircut like that. You will never see it again.
Robert Fojo is an incompetent attorney and a predator. Every lawsuit he filed involving COVID mandates lost. This sort of incompetence isn’t surprising since Fojo attempted to get a restraining order against me and 2 fake Facebook accounts he attributed to me after mocking him for a poorly worded email he sent me demanding that I remove a blog about his shady client. Despite not being an attorney myself I still defeated him in court.
Those are stock images he uses, his partner left him, he can’t get legitimate work, and he has to prey on desperate people in order to pay his bills.
He sued a Manchester bartender for sharing the blog about him on Facebook, then withdrew the lawsuit days later.
In 2017 Fojo was hired by a landscaping company to file a frivolous defamation lawsuit against a woman for voicing her opinions about the company’s prices on a Mommy Facebook group. The lawsuit was thrown out before getting to trial, he wasted the client’s time and money, yet on his blog he says that the judge ruled incorrectly and vowed to take the frivolous lawsuit to the Supreme Court.
I also published his previous arrest reports for domestic violence and DUI.
He was upset because she called him gay, and then attempted to weaponize her previous suicidal feelings against her.
He also threatened to sue his ex-wife for defamation, and attempted to get a court order to force both his ex-wife and ex-girlfriend to hand over their text communications because he believed they were “speaking ill of him.”
He allegedly intimidated his ex-wife by threatening to use litigation tactics to drive up her attorney’s frees and make her life a “living hell.”
Fojo was arrested again on December 1, 2017, for alleged simple assault and preventing the reporting of a crime. He had to waive his arraignment because it would’ve interfered with another scheduled court date.
He was arrested yet again in 2019 for DUI and refused to cooperate with officers.
This man is not only an incompetent attorney, he’s a predatory criminal. Turtleboy was the only media outlet to call him out for that. I was attacked by right wingers for this because it seemed like I was “going against the cause,” but in reality I was protecting them from a predator.
No judge in New Hampshire or Massachusetts takes Robert Fojo seriously. Any ethical attorney wouldn’t touch the vaccine and mask mandate cases because they know they couldn’t win, and they wouldn’t want people to get their hopes up. Every parent who kicked me out of their groups or attempted to silence me for speaking the truth about this man owes me and all of his victims an apology.
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