A St. Paul lawyer who filed as many as 1,800 fraudulent tax returns and bilked the state and a retailer out of millions of dollars was disbarred by the Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday.
In 1996, William J. Morris Jr. and his mother started a company called CyberStudy to provide free online tutoring to mainly low-income minorities. Students were promised a free computer and Internet access, the court's order said. Morris forged power-of-attorney forms and filed state tax returns for students, claiming an education credit, the order stated. About $2.35 million in tax credit payments were sent to the company's bank account. When the state rejected a tax return, Morris would try to get the student to pay him directly and would threaten to have the student deported if he or she didn't pay, according to the order. The business also failed to pay Kmart for 2,284 computers worth about $1.2 million. In February 2010, Morris was convicted of 12 felonies and sentenced to 132 months in prison.
