Attorney Gets Five Years For Snatching $500K+ In Foreclosure Surplus Funds Generated From Forced Sales Of Former Owners' Homes

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:

• A Brookfield lawyer who scammed more than $500,000 from the Milwaukee County clerk of courts was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison, but the question of how much restitution he might pay, and who'll get it if he does, remains partly unanswered.



• Thomas Bielinski, 52, was charged in August with a scheme stretching back years in which he purported to represent the rightful owners of unclaimed money kept by the clerk. He falsified notarizations, created fake companies, stole identities and forged altered court records. Though prosecutors said he committed dozens of crimes, they agreed to charge him with a single count of theft by fraud of more than $10,000 saying all the illegal acts were part of the single overarching crime.



• Milwaukee County Circuit Judge J.D. Watts said the enormity, length and complexity of the fraud, and the fact that it relied on the trust extended to lawyers within the system, called for the maximum penalty, despite Bielinski's lack of prior crimes and solid record as a father of six. He ordered five years of extended supervision to follow Bielinski's prison term.



• Watts also ruled that the county was Bielinski's primary victim, and the many people who had claims to the surplus funds were only secondary, though he did let three of them speak at the hearing.



• Michael Krueger said the $83,000 could have provided more accommodations for his son, who endured several reconstructive surgeries after being wounded in Iraq during military service.



• John Slomanski said the $36,000 his father had coming might have saved his business back in 2003, and kept him out of the depression that led to further health complications and his death last year.



• Janice Echols said she wanted Bielinski to know that she has a face and a name, and that it took her 17 years to build up the credit he destroyed by stealing her identity to take $2,000 she had coming.



• Watts read briefly from written statements he received from several other victims, many of whom were in desperate straits, even homeless, after losing their homes to foreclosure. All the unclaimed funds Bielinski stole were surplus funds from foreclosures.



• After the hearing, Slomanski said he doubts any of the individual victims will ever see a penny of their money. He also wondered how many of the victims would have agreed to spend five years in prison later if they could have had $542,000 to address their family's needs over four years. "I'd take that deal," he said. Tina Wood, who lost $4,500 to Bielinski, called his sentence "a slap on the hand."

For more, see Lawyer gets 5 years for defrauding county.