Call them the Milberg Three.

When the securities class-action law firm Milberg L.L.P. recently reached a $75 million settlement with federal prosecutors to defer prosecution on charges over decades of kickbacks, the law firm submitted a statement of "admitted facts."
 
Current management, led by Sanford Dumain, took responsibility for the crimes of seven former partners. Four, including Melvyn Weiss and William Lerach, were named in the statement, but three were identified only as "Partner E, Partner F, and Partner G." They were described by the firm as "conspiring former partners." 

Portfolio.com has learned who those partners were. Two of them, Jared Specthrie and Robert Sugarman, remain in good standing as registered lawyers with the New York bar. The third was Lawrence Milberg, the founding partner of Milberg Weiss and the name that firm has chosen to stake its re-emergence on. The three were identified by lawyers involved in the case.

The Milberg Three were never charged, much less identified publicly by the government. But their involvement was significant. The law firm and its former partners were accused of illegally paying more than $12 million to people to serve as plaintiffs in shareholder class-action lawsuits over more than 25 years. Prosecutors have described how cash was kept in a special credenza in the office of a former partner, David Bershad, who was the first to plead guilty. According to the firm's statement of "admitted facts," Bershad, Weiss, Lerach "and the other conspiring former partners pooled their personal finds into a fund Bershad maintained at his office at the firm, which was used by the conspiring former Partners to supply cash for secret payments to be paid to plaintiffs and others."
 
In 1965, Milberg, a 1936 graduate of Harvard Law School, took on young lawyer Melvyn Weiss, who had just returned from a stint in the Army. Milberg died while playing tennis at his home near Great Neck, New York, in December 1989. Milberg was 76, and the obituary in the New York Times called him a "specialist in cases involving shareholder rights and class actions."
 
Weiss took on another young lawyer, William Lerach of Pittsburgh, in 1976. From his office in San Diego, known as Milberg West, Lerach sued so many technology companies that he became feared and hated by Corporate America. Lerach, who pleaded guilty, is now serving a 24-month sentence, while Weiss will begin a 30-month sentence in August.
 
How can the firm go on with the name of a tarnished former partner?
 
Milberg L.L.P. declined to comment about Partners E, F, and G through spokeswoman Barbara Schrager.
 
And why should someone who has been dead for nearly two decades be cited, if not identified, in a criminal investigation?
 
The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, Thomas O'Brien, says, "This case is about a long-running scheme that goes back several decades, a scheme that compromised the justice system and involved the highest levels of Milberg Weiss."
 
Another of the Milberg Three is Jared Specthrie, who was a name partner in what was known as Milberg Weiss Bershad Specthrie & Lerach in the 1990s. Specthrie appears to be listed as "of counsel" to Milberg on www.lawyers.com, the website maintained by Martindale-Hubbell, an industry standard for lawyer listings. A receptionist at Milberg said he was "retired."
 
Specthrie's lawyer, Edward McDonald of Dechert, says the "of counsel" relationship ended "years ago." He declined to comment further.
 
The third is Robert Sugarman, who was a partner in the firm's New York office, now in Oyster Bay Grove on Long Island, the same town that Mel Weiss will soon depart to begin serving his prison sentence. Sugarman, who still maintains a solo law practice in Uniondale, New York, did not return calls for comment. His lawyer, Michael Ross of Manhattan, also did not return a call for comment.
  
Sugarman and Specthrie's standing as lawyers could change, according to Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University School of Law. Gillers says a plea agreement by any of the Milberg Three could form the basis for a disciplinary action seeking their disbarment.

Even in the absence of such a deal, the disciplinary  authorities could seek sanctions against, or to disbar, the Milberg Three, Gillers says.
 
Milberg L.L.P. clearly wants to put the investigations behind it and try to restore its status as the nation's most powerful securities class-action law firm. But collateral damage from the scandal may make that difficult.
 
Two former Milberg partners, Michael Buchman and Douglas Richards, are suing the four former partners who have pleaded guilty in the Federal District Court in Manhattan, contending "fraudulent concealment" and other wrongs.

The lawsuit seeks damages against Lerach and Weiss, as well as Bershad and Steven Schulman, two former partners who pleaded guilty last year and have been cooperating with the government.