Assistant U.S. Attorney Miles Ehrlich, who prosecuted the case, said Tehin had taken nearly all the $2 million settlement to put toward the mortgage on his Pacific Heights mansion, pay for upkeep on his yacht, buy pricey meals and bottles of wine at Le Central restaurant in San Francisco and supplement other bills he had run up over the years while living beyond his means.
Then, he stole money from the children's accounts to pay back the Vintage Ranch clients after they threatened to sue Tehin.
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Rosenthal begged the court to see his client as a man who had built an honorable, altruistic and prosperous life from hard work, but when faced with financial problems, simply snapped.
"Mr. Tehin has lived 58 years, and this court has seen a particularly ugly part of that life, which was an aberration," he said in an effort to persuade the judge to give his client a lesser sentence of five years and three months.
The defense painted Tehin, who was born to poor Russian emigres, as a man who worked his way out of the back roads of the Central Valley and through college and law school to build one of the most respected law firms in San Francisco. Once he was at the top, he couldn't afford to stay there.