A week after his trial was over, Dinesh Shah's own attorney Michael Phillips severed ties with his client and told him he was writing a book about the case. That book would come out last year bearing the title Monster in River Oaks. (See "Telling All.")
With a $20 million verdict, a tell-all book penned by his own lawyer, and a ten-year prison sentence dangling over his head, it would appear that Dinesh Shah's career as a con man was over. But as Jennifer Estopinal, Jonathan Davidsson, Ray Rush Brown and Dave Martin, among others, would find out, he was just getting started. And Jim Perdue would see a reprise of Shyam Shah's wounded-animal act in court, only this time performed by Dinesh Shah.
"When Dinny was finally getting his ticket punched in the criminal case, he was saying, 'I'm in a wheelchair, I've just had surgery, I'm on so many painkillers I can't keep my head up...' I turned immediately to the guy next to me and said, 'I've seen this act before.'"
And soon enough, fresh victims would see more of Dinesh Shah's act, too.
Next week: With his grandest scam in tatters and his life under the microscope of the Harris County probation department, Shah nevertheless goes right back to work. By 2010, he would be officially charged with beating his lover and posing as Kenneth Jackson's attorney in the most ghoulish of ways.
