TRENTON – Acting Attorney General John J. Hoffman announced that a prominent Atlantic County, N.J., attorney who specialized in elder law was sentenced to state prison today for defrauding elderly clients of millions of dollars and laundering the funds through various accounts, including her attorney trust account. Last week, the Division of Criminal Justice obtained an indictment charging the owner of an in-home senior care company, her sister and three other defendants in connection with the fraud.Barbara Lieberman, 63, of Northfield, was sentenced today to 10 years in state prison, including 3 ½ years of parole ineligibility, by Superior Court Judge Michael A. Donio in Atlantic County. Lieberman pleaded guilty on Nov. 3 to an accusation charging her with first-degree money laundering. As a result of her guilty plea, Lieberman forfeited $3 million that the state seized from her, which will be used to pay restitution to her victims. She also forfeited her law license in New Jersey and a BMW.

By Lena Adams Kim

It all started Thanksgiving Day 2013, with my daughters frantically yelling, \”The basement is flooding!!!\” A visit from the plumber, yards of ruined carpeting, and $900 later, it was clear that cooking oil clogging my kitchen drain was the culprit. And so I did what many do after experiencing the horrors of home damage – I complained to everyone who would listen.

My tale of woe reached Indah, a parent in my kids’ schoolyard. Indah, a journalist of Indonesian descent, mentioned how families in her immigrant Indonesian community in South Philadelphia were grappling with the same clogged pipes and costly repairs, yet unlike me, were often unaware of the cause.

She described how many had emigrated from rural areas of Indonesia, where every drop of precious oil is used, re-used, and then re-used again. Very little oil, if any, was discarded. And those first-world kitchen drains and sewer systems? Non-existent in the 17,000 largely undeveloped islands that comprise Indonesia. Those huge jugs of oil, available at low cost at grocery stores in the U.S.? Unheard of on smaller islands where budgets and resources are limited.