Legal Question in Business Law in New York

Re: fraud commitited by officers of a s corp

You may have a number of rights. A review of the corporation's bylaws will lay out some of your initial options, such as doing an audit of the company finances etc. You may also have some legal claims you can bring via a law suit and depending on what was done there may also be some criminal liability as to the other two shareholders. Please contact my office if we can be of further assistance to you in this matter.

Re: fraud commitited by officers of a s corp

Another path is to file criminal charges against them for fraud, get the criminal case proved by the District Attorney (at no cost to you), THEN proceed against them in civil court (beware of the statute of limitations, if any, for filing the civil suit, though). Assuming the DA wins and gets a conviction against them, the civil case (wherein you get a judgment to get your money back) becomes a piece of cake to win. If the DA loses, then no harm is done to your civil claim.

The best example of this sort of strategy is the OJ Simpson case. The DA lost (OJ was found not guilty by the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt criminal standard of proof) but OJ still lost the civil case (which has a lower standard of proof) and, I believe, is still paying that wrongful death penalty.

Good luck.

Re: fraud commitited by officers of a s corp

Depending upon the circumstances, one can bring an action, either seeking an accounting or some form of damages - or both.