Infamous Classmates

Law School always attracts a diverse student body. I just had now idea how diverse our class was until I read this interesting news in my law school alumni email. The email, written by our diligent class agent, calls our attention to a former classmate, about a former classmate of ours, Spiros Zorbalas, featured in the recent City Pages cover story as a slumlord extraordinaire. What amazes me is the way he kept one foot in the criminal world, and the other foot on the more legit side of life:

While waiting for the charges to be filed against him, Zorbalas decided to become more acquainted with the legal system, enrolling at the University of Minnesota Law School. In October 1989, just two months into his first semester, Zorbalas was served with a federal indictment. Charged with five counts of mail fraud, he copped to one, admitting to filing a false insurance claim. Pleading guilty in state court to possession of stolen property, Zorbalas acknowledged an added deception: In order to maximize his insurance check, he'd altered the sales receipt of the car from $21,500 to $24,500.


Zorbalas was sentenced to nine months in the Duluth federal workhouse. While there, he did his best to keep his education from suffering. He got permission for a weeklong transfer to a halfway house in Minneapolis to take his finals. (Zorbalas claims he never served time, though in a June 27, 1990, letter he wrote that "I am presently in custody" in Duluth.)
Perhaps recognizing that his rap sheet would make getting admitted to the bar something of a long shot, Zorbalas soon shifted his career focus. After getting out of prison, he quit law school and focused his attention instead on the U of M's Carlson School of Management.

Shortly after graduating with an MBA in 1993, he took a consulting job at Arthur Anderson, the now-shuttered firm made infamous by its pliant Enron audits. Zorbalas eventually opened his own consulting firm based in Atlanta, but by 1999, Zorbalas recalled in an interview with a Florida paper, he was burned out from the traveling. He decided to try his hand at real estate.

Whew! While my life will never be profiled in City Pages, I’m leading a more “boring” life.