Fort Lauderdale attorney William Scherer sat through all 10 days of Scott Rothstein’s secret deposition behind closed doors in Miami, and he was both riveted and astounded by what he heard.
”His testimony was shocking. It’s beyond what I expected,” Scherer said of the testimony of the convicted Ponzi schemer. “I was just riveted to my chair in the jury box, watching what was going on.”
Transcripts released Wednesday reveal that Rothstein dropped tens of thousands of dollars per month on escorts and kept a condo across the street from his Fort Lauderdale law office for trysts with them for himself as well as friends and business associates.
"There were probably times when we spent $50,000, $60,000 a month on escorts," Rothstein said in the unsealed testimony, obtained by the Sun-Sentinel. "It just depends. When there were political things in town, more. Big functions, conventions, more. People in town to entertain, more money. But it was a lot of money just for the law partners that were using escorts. Some of them had fairly voracious escort habits."
The escorts were part of the "rock-star lifestyle" at Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler, the now-defunct law firm where he perpetrated the $1.2 billion scam.
“How it relates to me and my clients, is they did it with my clients’ money, with the innocent victims’ money,” said Scherer, who represents investors who lost a combined total of nearly $200 million, and are suing two banks and two hedge funds for allegedly enabling Rothstein’s Ponzi scheme.
Scherer said it was “pretty astounding” how Rothstein used the escort rendez-vous “as a litmus test to sort out who would be a player and who wouldn’t be a player.”
But he adds of the deposition, "I believe Rothstein was completely truthful for the first time in his life."
The lurid testimony was part of Rothstein's questioning last month by attorneys seeking to claim money from the firm. Rothstein, 49, is serving a 50-year prison sentence at an undisclosed location as part of the federal prisons' witness protection program.
Several other revelations were made over the two weeks of Rothstein testimony, including drug dealing at RRA and links to organized crime.
In addition to friends and investors in his scheme, Rothstein claims he provided the escorts to two police officers, though he refused to name them. He also claims he provided escorts for law partners Stuart Rosenfeldt and Russell Adler, as well as the firm's general counsel David Boden.
"We had a condo in 350 Las Olas right across the street from the office," Rothstein said. "That's where Russ and Stu and me and Boden, we would send a girl up there, and then we'd go up there and do our business and come back to work."
Rosenfedt's attorney, Bruce Lehr, told the Sun-Sentinel he wouldn't dignify Rothstein's claims with an answer and said his client is "happily married." Boden's attorney called the claims "ludicrous," while Adler's attorney called them "delusions."
As for himself, Rothstein claims he had relationships with two escorts and that his wife caught him cheating "on more than several occasions."
