Divorce Attorney's Career Annulled By Wiretap, Tax Rap

A former divorce attorney was sentenced by a federal judge in San Francisco to two years in prison for evading income taxes and hiring an investigator to hide a wiretapping device in the car of a client's husband.

Mary Nolan, 62, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in September to four counts of evading more than $400,000 in taxes over four years by understating her income and one charge of illegally intercepting communications.

[Related article: Divorce Attorney Mary Nolan Pleads Guilty to Wiretapping Car…]

In the eavesdropping count, she admitted to employing former private investigator Christopher Butler, of Concord, to place a concealed listening device made from a cellphone in the car of a divorce client's husband between Aug. 9 and Sept. 9, 2007.

Breyer told Nolan during the sentencing today, "To eavesdrop on conversations that clearly weren't intended for an adversary to hear is a very unfair thing to do."

But he said he was especially concerned about the failure of Nolan, as a lawyer, to pay the taxes due.

"What I find most troubling is the fact that you were a lawyer. Lawyers have that special responsibility not just to know the law but to follow it," he told Nolan.

Nolan admitted during her guilty plea to evading more than $400,000 in taxes for the tax years 2005 through 2008. She agreed to pay the U.S. Internal Revenue Service $469,000 in restitution, which she has now done, according to prosecutors, and resigned from the State Bar.

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