Attorney Accused of Stealing More Than $140K

A longtime Elgin attorney faces prison time after being accused of stealing more than $140,000 from clients.

Elgin Police arrested William C. Chesbrough this week at his home in West Dundee.

The 56-year-old attorney faces two felony theft charges and one count of financial exploitation of the elderly, said Elgin police and the Kane County State’s Attorney’s office.

If convicted of the most serious crime, he faces between four and 15 years in prison.

Chesbrough is free after posting 10 percent of $30,000 bond and is due in court on Dec. 11.

It was unclear Friday whether he faced an investigation by the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission as a spokesman there could not immediately be reached.

Full Article and Source:
Elgin Attorney Accused of Cheating Clients

Lawyer Charged With Grand Theft in FL Suspended in CO

A Durango lawyer charged with grand theft in Florida has been suspended from practicing law in Colorado.

Mark Henderson Brady, 50, is suspected of signing checks on a business escrow account to pay his casino debts at the Isle of Capri Casino on Grand Bahama Island in the Bahamas. The alleged incidents occurred in August 2008.

The Colorado Supreme Court’s Attorney Regulation Counsel filed a petition last month seeking an immediate suspension of Brady, but the immediate suspension was subject to a review hearing.

On Nov. 6, the Colorado Supreme Court ordered the suspension.
Brady is charged with grand theft, misappropriating escrow account funds, passing a forged check and forgery in Florida, where he was allegedly living a lavish lifestyle with a multi-million-dollar house and several luxury cars.

In a previous interview, Brady denied any wrongdoing.

“Since practicing in Colorado, I have maintained trust accounts in strict accordance with my professional and ethical responsibilities as a Colorado practicing attorney,” Brady wrote. “I have been a practicing attorney since 1984, and have licenses in both Colorado and New Jersey and have an exemplary record.

“In my roughly 35 years of being a licensed attorney, I have never been grieved by a client, nor subject to disciplinary action,” he added. “This record clearly demonstrates there is no evidence of professional misconduct that I have always complied with my ethical obligations since my admission to the state bars in both New Jersey and Colorado.”

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Court Suspends Durango Lawyer:Mark Brady Accused of Improper Use of Client’s Escrow Funds

Feds Seizing Rothstein’s Properties

Federal authorities are seizing Fort Lauderdale attorney Scott Rothstein’s properties — sports cars, waterfront homes, power boats and bank accounts — as part of a criminal investigation into his alleged multimillion-dollar investment scam.

Shortly before 10 a.m. Monday, two FBI agents, an IRS agent and two truck drivers were spotted in downtown Fort Lauderdale seizing Rothstein’s fire engine red Ferrari Spider convertible.Authorities are able to obtain warrants to seize Rothstein’s properties — even before criminal charges are filed in federal court — because they have evidence to support that the lawyer acquired those assets with ill-gotten gains from his alleged investment scam. The U.S. attorney’s office is using the tool of a civil forfeiture action. Eventually, if Rothstein is indicted, prosecutors could transfer the inventory of his properties for criminal forfeiture.

Rothstein, who is staying at an undisclosed location under federal surveillance, has been accused by investors of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars and by his law partners of wiping out their firm.

Full Article and Source:
Feds Seize Embattled Lawyer Scott Rothstein’s Property

See Also:
Lawyer Facing Federal Fraud

Nine Months Combined Jail and Home Confinement

A Hemet lawyer who pleaded guilty to stealing from the trust account of a mentally disabled man has been given a nine-month combined jail and home confinement sentence.

Kevin Andrew Speir, 54, was taken into custody Monday after being given the sentence by Superior Court Judge Larrie R. Brainard, who also ordered Speir to pay about $69,000 in restitution to the victim, Fred J. Fox of Hemet.

Brainard ordered Speir to serve 90 days in jail, then the remainder of the sentence in home custody with a GPS bracelet on his ankle.

In a separate matter, a State Bar judge recommended that Speir be disbarred. The recommendation, filed Oct. 23, next goes to the state Supreme Court.

In that case, State Bar Judge Donald F. Miles sustained five of eight allegations that Speir had improperly taken money from clients’ trust accounts. The Fox case was not included in the State Bar action.

“The main thing we were concerned about was getting Mr. Speir disbarred,” Deputy District Attorney Elise J. Farrell said Friday in a phone interview. “He had been playing fast and loose with his clients’ money for years.” Farrell prosecuted the Riverside County criminal case.

Full Article and Source:
Hemet Attorney Sentenced for Stealing From Trust Account

Former Lawyer & Admitted Embezzler Sentenced for Tax Crime

Steven Krell, a 61 year old ex-accountant and Los Angeles lawyer who pleaded no contest to state grand theft charges in 2008, was sentenced on Monday to probation and house arrest. Krell was sentenced for filing federal false tax returns after embezzling nearly $1.5 million from two of his clients, including an elderly woman with dementia.

Krell, a former partner in the Los Angeles firm of Green, Hasson and Janks, pleaded guilty in June.

Krell admitted in his plea agreement that he embezzled $1,476,900 from the elderly woman, her trust and a physician starting in 1997 and continuing through 2003, says Michael Moriarty of the Internal Revenue Service.

Anderson sentenced Krell on Monday in downtown Los Angeles to three years of probation, including 30 hours of community service per month and eight months of house arrest, Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Rochmes said.

Krell’s attorney, Michael Proctor, told the court his client had already paid about $500,000 in restitution.

In February 2008, Krell was sentenced in Los Angeles Superior Court to seven years and four months behind bars for the same underlying conduct – grand theft.

The judge stayed the prison term on the condition that Krell comply with the terms of his probation and continue long-term psychiatric treatment after he made “significant” restitution payments, according to the District Attorney’s Office. Krell also served less than a year in county jail and was placed on supervised release for seven years.

In the state case, Krell, who was also once a licensed attorney, admitted helping himself to nearly $1 million from the trust of a 90-year-old woman, who was mentally incapacitated, and looting about $400,000 from the physician’s account he was managing.

As part of his plea, Krell agreed to file amended tax returns, reflecting $514,125 in illegally obtained proceeds, Moriarty said. In addition to the tax due, Krell is liable for the fraud penalty, which amounts to 75 percent of the tax due on the proceeds he embezzled.

Full Article and Source:
Former Los Angelas Lawyer Embezzles $1.5 Million Sentenced for Tax Crime

MA Lawyer Disbarred

Charles L. Lonardo, once the area’s top personal injury lawyer who went to jail after being convicted for auto insurance fraud, has been barred from practicing law in Massachusetts.

Convicted of conspiracy to commit auto insurance fraud in April 2006 and sentenced to 21/2 years in jail, the Board of Bar Overseers voted to disbar Lonardo on Sept. 14.

The judgment was processed Oct. 16 by the Supreme Judicial Court for Suffolk County.

A state Appeals Court upheld Lonardo’s conviction in July.

According to state prosecutors, Lonardo, 49, of Winthrop Avenue, paid so-called runners to plan auto accidents and bring him supposed victims who would then file insurance claims.

The disbarment is retroactive to June 21, 2006, the date Lonardo’s license to practice law was temporarily suspended.

Full Article and Source:
Lawyer Disbarred for Auto Insurance Fraud

Jailed Lawyer Seeks Help

A southwest Missouri lawyer is asking the state Supreme Court to intervene after he was sentenced to 120 days in jail for writing in a court document that a judge and prosecutors were potentially abusing their power.

A Douglas County jury convicted Carl Smith, 62, of Ava, of criminal contempt in August. He was sentenced Sept. 28 to 120 days in jail. He cannot appeal the sentence because the case was prosecuted under common law, as opposed to statutory law.

Smith’s attorney has asked the Missouri Supreme Court to intervene, saying that while Smith’s arguments may have been better expressed, the punishment is excessive.

“The key thing here is what is the appropriate sanction when an attorney overstates or inartfully drafts an argument,” attorney Bruce Galloway said. “My position is that the First Amendment right of free speech would prevent the use of a criminal sanction for an attorney who oversteps in his pleadings.”

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Jailed Lawyer Seeks Help From Missouri High Court

Disbarred Lawyer Confesses

An Erie lawyer known for his service to the poor walked into the Erie County Courthouse seven months ago and admitted to prosecutors that he had drained nearly $200,000 from an estate in his care.

It appears that the now-disbarred lawyer, J. Gregory Moore, will be making his final confession on the matter to a federal judge.

Moore, 62, was charged Friday in U.S. District Court in Erie with two felony counts of mail fraud stemming from his handling of five estates in his care.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Moore spent about $200,000 from estates in his care on his own expenses. It said he also used nearly $65,000 out of two estates to make disbursements from three others.

The charges were filed via a “criminal information,” in which the Attorney’s Office pursues charges without first presenting the evidence to a grand jury. Moore waived an indictment, which in federal court signals that the case will proceed on a fast track directly to a guilty plea. In return, Moore will receive credit for his cooperation with authorities.

Moore was not taken into custody with the filing of the federal charges. He has been free after posting $1,000, or 10 percent of the full bond of $10,000, related to state charges still pending against him.

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Disbarred Erie Lawyer Faces Federal Mail Fraud Charges

When Solo Lawyers Get Sick

Herb Dubin never thought he’d get sick.

The Rockville solo practitioner had always been in great health and had a strict no-doctors policy. But when he’d had the same painful cough for three months in March 2008, his wife diagnosed a cracked rib and made him go to the hospital for an X-ray.

Her insistence saved his life. He had double pneumonia and a nasty bacterial infection, which landed him in the hospital for 12 days and kept him out of the office for more than a month after that.

Dubin had no plan for what would happen to his practice if he were incapacitated.

“Does the shoemaker ever take care of his own shoes?” said Dubin, whose practice includes personal injury, legal malpractice and attorney discipline defense, criminal defense and commercial litigation.The other solos with whom he shares an office swooped in and kept things running until he got back, but he can’t imagine what would have happened had they not been there.

“The bottom line was, I just happened to be sharing space with a good bunch of guys,” he said. “Suppose I was practicing the way a lot of new, young lawyers are: from my house, by myself.”

Experts say too few solo and small-firm lawyers have made plans for what will happen to their practice if they suddenly get sick. Not planning can leave attorneys open to malpractice claims or the loss of money and clients.

“We’re trying to get attorneys to think about this more often so that they plan for retirement and plan for absences due to illness or the like, because these things happen,” said Maryland Bar Counsel Melvin Hirshman, whose office sometimes has to pick up the pieces of a practice when a lawyer fails to plan.

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When Solo Lawyers Get Sick

FL Bar Disbars A Dozen Lawyers

The Florida Bar, the state’s guardian for the integrity of the legal profession, announces that the Florida Supreme Court in recent court orders disciplined 27 attorneys, disbarring 12, suspending eight and placing five on probation. Some attorneys received more than one form of discipline. Seven attorneys were publicly reprimanded. One was ordered to pay restitution.

The following lawyers are disciplined:
• Frank Michael Costanzo
• Kenneth J. Dunn
• Justin Edward Gould
• Kurt S. Harmon
• Caswell Adington Hart
• Andrew William Menyhart
• Jerome David Mitchell
• John Michael Moody II
• Charles Houston Richards Jr.
• David Michael Scott
• William Francis Sullivan IV
• Jerrold Keith Wingate
• Jeffrey Scott Campos
• Jason Andrew Cobb
• Brian Alan Coury
• Guillermo Napoleon Lopez
• Lawrence Daniel Montekio
• Michael A. Moulis
• Donald Joseph Murray
• Joel Lee Sherman
• Carl Roland Hayes
• Martin Ralph Mallinger
• Margaret Blot
• Julio Ricardo More
• R. Eric Rubio
• Marc Stuart Schiller
• Robert H. Springer

Full Article and Source:
A Dozen Disbarred by Courts, None From Area