All liquor licensed up

Theoretically, the cost of a Boston liquor license is not prohibitive. A couple thousand bucks? Something like that. You can make that up in a night or so.

Problem is there's not all that many available liquor licenses "minted" to begin with -  maybe 1,400 across the entire city. So if you want to open a bar or restaurant, you will likely need to buy a license on the open, secondary market, where the licenses are now going for up to $600K. That's an awful lot of liquor flowing.

I'm not 100% sure how the system works, but for some reason,  that Massachusetts state government sets the number of licenses in Boston, not the city itself. This gives the state oversight over city, a situation that I suppose dates back to the time when the bluenoses in charge thought that the Irish immigrants overrunning Boston would be setting up licensed shebeens in every other building. And if nothing else, those bluenoses wanted to exercise tight control over those rampaging Irishman. At least I'm guessing that something like this is at the root of the reason the Commonwealth regulates Boston's ability to regulate liquor licenses. 

And every time overthrowing oversight and letting Boston create more licenses comes up, those who own the existing licenses scream bloody blue murder, as additional license will dilute the value of the ones they hold, and may have paid $600K for.

Not surprisingly, the systems lends itself to a bit of corruption.

A while back, a state senator was caught accepting a bribe of $23,500 to help a business nab a liquor license. She ended up doing a few years in federal prison. (This was a very notorious case that featured an FBI video capture of the pol taking a wad of cash and stuffing it into her bra. The incident took place in one of the highest-end restaurants in the city.)

This time, the miscreant isn't a state senator. It's an attorney with a niche practice in liquor license work, an attorney who had also served as the general counsel of the Boston Licensing Board. So a true insider who will now be on the outside looking in, as she "was recently fired by her firm for allegedly falsifying a liquor license for an Allston-Brighton food hall."

Lesley Hawkins was terminated by Boston law firm Prince Lobel several weeks ago after a client alleged that the liquor license she arranged for them was invalid, said Tom Elcock, a partner at Prince Lobel and the firm’s in-house counsel. The decision to fire Hawkins followed an internal investigation. (Source: Boston Globe)

Oopsie!

The scheme allegedly involved Hawkins giving Craft Food Halls "a liquor license with a fake serial number." Things fell apart when Craft Food Halls tried to use the number to make a 

liquor purchase from a wholesaler. The sale couldn't go through because the number was fabricated. 

Craft Food Halls has shuttered its Allston site, and Prince Lobel has stated their belief that Craft Food Halls is fully innocent here, and were in the dark -not in cahoots with Hawkins. The firm also believes that this fake license issuance was a one-off, with no other clients involved. 

Maybe there's some sort of explanation here, some sort of defense here. Unlikely, given that Prince Lobel conducted a presumably thorough investigation. But maybe, just maybe there's an explanation, a defense. Maybe there's an underling to blame. Maybe someone went a bit dyslexic and transposed a number. Maybe, just maybe.

Hard to believe that a well-educated, barely-fortyish lawyer with a good reputation and track record would throw that repuration and track record away for a few bucks. (No bribe amount has been mentioned. Is it possible that she did it for nothing, and just made an illegal shortcut out of sheer laziness???)

And not that I'm any expert in legal ethics, but I'm guessing that Leslie Hawkins may be facing another type of bar licensing problem. This sure sounds to me like something that could get your law license suspended, or even end you up disbarred.

Why would someone who went to the trouble of passing the bar get caught up in trying pass off a fake bar license?