Craig A. Tank

I retained Mr. Tank after my son was charged with purchasing about $12,000.00 worth of goods that were paid for with stolen money orders. My son was set up to make this purchase some older men that took advantage of his learning disability by sending him to a merchant with money orders they themselv...es had stolen. He brought the property back to them and was paid about $200.00. These cowards duped him into helping them steal the property. I had never retained a criminal lawyer before and I did not really know what to expect. Mr. Tank was a lot different than any of the lawyers I had ever dealt with. I went and interviewed a variety of attorneys and actually hired one before we found him. What I found was that a lot of the lawyers that I interviewed and the one I retained before Mr. Tank really talked a good game. I could make appointments with them, they were on time and they all wanted to talk about their connections and what kind of a deal they could get for my son. The first attorney I hired collected his fee up front and I could never get in touch with him. When we got to court he started to explain how he could not get my son the deal he told me he would get when I paid him the money. When we got to court nobody knew him contrary to what he previously represented. My meetings with Mr. Tank were entirely different, he never talked about his previous cases, but he was real knowledgable about the law. He told me from the day he met me that he would guarantee me nothing. When we got to court it was a different story. On the way into the district court it seemed that everyone knew him, from street vendors, to court staff, the police that arrested my son and even the homeless people who were for reasons I did not understand on a first name basis with him. (I found out later he had represented most of the homeless people we saw in court years ago when he worked at the public defenders office.) Rather than waive my son's preliminary exam he held it, something our first attorney wanted to do. After we got started, you could start to see that the prosecutor could not show that my son had knowledge that the money orders were stolen. My son's case was dismissed!! When I was listening to the testimony, I could hear the lawyers talking behind me. One of them made the comment "He is an *&%^&^ hole but he can really cross examine!" I don't think that Mr. Tank is an &*%$&* hole. He's far from it, the difference between him and the lawyer that I first hired and those that I saw in court is that he really understood what he was doing. He didn't need to brag or pretend he was something or somebody he wasn't to get my money he knew who he was and what he was capable of. In the end, I think that the first attorney that warned me about going to Mr. Tank and those in the court room were uncomfortable with him because he was what they pretended to be!