Woman sentenced in phony lawyer case

A woman who misrepresented herself as a lawyer and conned several victims out of more than $58,000 for legal services was sentenced Friday to nearly 14 years in jail.

Giuliana Bosco, 39, was convicted last month of 24 criminal counts including grand theft, forgery and identity theft. She is a law school graduate who worked for several firms as a paralegal, but was not licensed to practice law, according to prosecutors.

She has previous convictions for fraud-related crimes and was sentenced to prison twice.

On Friday, San Diego Superior Court Judge Laura Halgren sentenced Bosco to 13 years and eight months in county jail. State law allows certain nonviolent offenders to serve prison-length sentences in local custody.

Bosco will likely serve about half of her jail term.

According to a pre-sentence report, the defendant created bogus legal documents using real attorneys’ State Bar numbers and phony court case numbers to convince her victims she was legitimate. She also claimed that real attorneys and judges were helping her with various legal processes.

Among the 10 victims identified in the case was a man who had a daughter with Bosco’s wife, whom she married in 2014. The wife worked at the Las Colinas Correctional Facility in Santee, where Bosco served time. Bosco was released from the jail in 2013.

Bosco told the man she was a corporate attorney and offered to help him with multiple legal matters, including forming a legal liability corporation for his bakery business and establishing a trust for his daughter. On one occasion, Bosco took the man to a downtown attorney’s office, claiming it was her own.

His mother became suspicious while babysitting at Bosco’s home where she saw paperwork containing Bosco’s real name, which was different from the one the victim knew. A records check revealed that Bosco was a convicted felon.

Court records show the defendant took checks adding up to more than $40,500 from that particular victim. (Bosco’s wife was not aware that she was taking the money, nor that the checks were made out to her, prosecutors said.)

Another person, who met Bosco while working at the jail, reported losing $18,500 because of the defendant.

Prosecutors said Bosco collected money — more than $900 — in 2014 for a fundraiser at the St. Rose of Lima school n Chula Vista to benefit a local organization called Life Perspectives, but didn’t give the school any of the money. That same year, she also collect more than $1,800 for another school fundraiser, but only gave the school $25.

Deputy District Attorney Hector Jimenez referred to the defendant in court documents in as a “psychopath who has proven that she is unwilling or unable to stop defrauding people.”

According to court documents, Bosco told a probation officer she was “sorry this whole thing occurred,” but maintained that she was innocent.

“It destroyed my family,” she said.