The court's supervising clerk, Steven Singer, pleaded guilty on Friday to bribery charges. Prosecutors said that he had accepted tens of thousands of dollars over seven years to forward papers to a judge for signing, without verifying the authenticity of the papers, as required.

The cases that were expedited, court officials said, would likely be allowed to stand. But divorces that involved fraud would probably be thrown out. As a result, people who believed they had been legally divorced and then remarried may be unwitting bigamists, officials said.

Mr. Singer, 50, of Bronxville, N.Y., was arrested in June and pleaded guilty on Friday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to three counts of accepting bribes. He is scheduled to be sentenced by Justice John Cataldo on Jan. 10 and faces up to seven years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

State law allows New York residents to apply for divorce in any county, and Manhattan's courts have a reputation for quickly processing uncontested divorces, the officials said. The Manhattan court processes by far the most divorce cases, between 12,000 and 15,000 a year, or more than half the state's uncontested divorces. Court officials attributed that caseload to the concentration of divorce mills in Manhattan and the reputation for quick processing.

Prosecutors said Mr. Singer ignored clear signs of fraud in exchange for the bribes and was caught in a series of sting operations by the District Attorney's office between 1997 and this spring.

The fraud varied from case to case, one prosecutor said. "But for the most part it was to get the divorce quickly and with no questions asked."

The investigation began in 1997 after a woman complained to court officials that she had received a copy of an uncontested divorce settlement to which she had never agreed. The settlement included far less child support than she wanted.

Court officials said they have also long suspected the shops of submitting false forms declaring their clients to be impoverished and unable to pay the $275 in filing fees, but then charging the client anyway and pocketing the money.

Mr. Bookstaver and other court officials predicted that the fraud would be low because judges and court-appointed referees also screened the cases. But prosecutors expressed surprise at how easily the shops delivered whatever undercover investigators requested. Mr. Burmeister said male investigators presented them with papers that listed fictitious wives, but did not have the women's signatures. "Next thing you know, the divorces are being filed," he said, with the signatures. "But there was no wife. It was just a name we made up."

New York Times, September 22, 1999 

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