Charges of failure to pay child support may have been what police went to arrest suspended Putnam, Conn., lawyer Paul Mpande Ngobeni for earlier this month. But now he's facing additional charges of forgery, larceny and the unauthorized practice of law, as well.

Paul Mpande Ngobeni, a former attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Hartford County, has posted a $5,000 cash bond in connection to the latter charges, but is being held at Hartford Correctional Center on $5,000 bond for his child support matters. Charges against him include one count of third-degree forgery and three counts of larceny in the third-, fourth- and sixth-degrees. He is scheduled to appear in Danielson Superior Court on Oct. 31.

Ngobeni, who also has 10 presentments and five new grievance cases against him, was admitted to practice in the state in December 1989. His indefinite suspension last December, ordered by Judge Vanessa L. Bryant for failing to appear at a presentment, kick-started suspensions in Massachusetts and in federal courts where he routinely represented clients in immigration matters.

But the suspensions didn't keep him from allegedly collecting attorney's fees and filing paperwork for a client base that visited him at his two-story Cape Cod house at 182 Fox Road in Putnam. Prior to Ngobeni's arrest, clients would wait in their vehicles outside of his house to seek his counsel, according to a client's story told to Ngobeni's court-appointed trustee, attorney Nancy E. Martin of Collins & Martin in Wethersfield.

"Attorney Ngobeni had developed a pattern of neglecting his clients' cases and either not communicating with them at all or misrepresenting the status of their matter," stated Division of Criminal Justice Investigator Richard E. Weiss in Ngobeni's arrest warrant affidavit.

Weiss discovered that Ngobeni had represented a client who wished to change her visa status due to her marriage. The woman paid Ngobeni $1,500 in attorney fees to file a petition with the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. On July 26, the woman discovered through a telephone conversation with immigration officials that the agency didn't have her petition on file.

On Aug. 15, the woman requested a photocopy of the money order she made payable to the USCIS after learning that it had been cashed three months prior. The woman "observed that the 'pay to order' line had been changed to 'Paul M. Ngobeni' and the other writings had been traced over in order to help conceal the altering. ... ," Weiss stated.

Ngobeni couldn't be reached for comment last week.