Ohio Attorney Ripoff Reimbursement Fund To Shell Out $36K+ To 13 Ex-Clients Of Attorney Who Failed To Refund Unearned Fees For Unperformed Legal Services

In Columbus, Ohio, The Columbus Dispatch reports:

• Thirteen former clients of a Dublin lawyer serving a federal prison sentence for a kickback scheme involving the state treasurer’s office will be reimbursed $36,420 for legal services they failed to receive.
  
  The Board of Commissioners of the Lawyers’ Fund for Client Protection(1) voted to award the money to former clients of Mohammed Noure Alo at a meeting on Friday, court officials announced on Tuesday.
  
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  Alo did not provide adequate services to some former clients and failed to return unearned fees largely connected to immigration cases, court disciplinary officials said. His law license was indefinitely suspended on Aug. 17.
  
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  The board also awarded $2,500 in compensation to a former client of suspended Columbus lawyer Javier H. Armengau for failure to provide services for which he was paid. The money comes from attorney registration fees.

Source: Dublin lawyer’s victims to be reimbursed $36,420.

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(1) For similar "attorney ripoff reimbursement funds" that sometimes help cover the financial mess created by the dishonest conduct of lawyers licensed in other states and Canada, see:

• Directory Of Lawyers' Funds For Client Protection (now includes Canadian recovery funds, courtesy of the American Bar Association);
• Check the USA Client Protection Funds Map;
• Check the Canada Client Protection Funds Map.

Maps available courtesy of The National Client Protection Organization, Inc.

See generally:

• N.Y. fund for cheated clients wants thieving lawyers disbarred, a July, 2015 Associated Press story on this Fund reporting that the Fund's executive director, among other things, is calling for prompt referral to the local district attorney when the disciplinary committee has uncontested evidence of theft by a lawyer injuring a client or an admission of culpability;
  
  When Lawyers Steal the Escrow, a June, 2005 New York Times story describing some cases of client reimbursements ("With real estate business surging and down-payment amounts rising with home prices, the temptation for a lawyer to filch money from a bulging escrow account and later repay it with other clients' money has never been greater, said lawyers who monitor the thefts."),
  
  Thieving Lawyers Draining Client Security Funds, a December, 1991 New York Times story that gives some-real life examples of how client security funds deal with claims and the pressures the administrators of those funds may feel when left insufficiently financed as a result of the misconduct of a handful of lawyer/scoundrels.