Add One More To Parade Of Thieving Attorneys Admitting To Ripping Off Unwitting Clients Who Hired Them For Representation In Real Estate Matters; Two Clients Fleeced Of Over $1 Million

In Nassau County, New York, Newsday reports:

• A disgraced former attorney admitted [] to stealing more than a million dollars from two former clients, one severely disabled and the other elderly,(1) in schemes Nassau prosecutors said included having an impostor pose as one of the victims.
  
  Janice Jessup, 68, of Baldwin and Charlotte, North Carolina, pleaded guilty in Nassau County Court to first-degree and second-degree grand larceny charges.
  
  Jessup spent the “ill-gotten gains” on herself and her family, including buying a vintage Corvette and supporting her then-husband’s limo company, Nassau District Attorney Madeline Singas said in a statement.
  
  As part of a plea bargain, Jessup admitted that in 2010 she’d stolen more than $1.1 million from a client -- a woman who’d owned land the government seized in an eminent domain case and used for a New Cassel community center.
  
  Authorities said Jessup also pleaded guilty to taking about $85,000 from a woman who was 85 when she hired Jessup in 2008 to help get a reverse mortgage on her Roosevelt home.
  
  The ex-lawyer’s April 2015 arrest followed a 2010 appellate court decision disbarring her after she’d faced more than a dozen professional misconduct allegations.
  
  Acting State Supreme Court Justice Jerald Carter told Jessup he’d sentence her March 16 to 3 to 9 years in prison and she’d have to repay what she stole.
  
  Defense attorney Ira Weissman told Newsday that Jessup had “great remorse,” adding: “I think to the day she dies, she’s going to try to repay what she’s taken.”
  
  Prosecutors said Jessup never gave the client from the eminent domain case the money the government paid out after convincing court officials the physically and mentally challenged woman wanted Jessup to collect it for her.
  
  They had alleged Jessup had someone impersonate the client to fool a court official during home visits aimed at investigating the woman’s health and whether she had consented to the money’s release to Jessup.
  
  In the other case, prosecutors said Jessup got a power of attorney document “purportedly bearing the signature” of the reverse mortgage client, and in 2012 stole more than $47,000 from a bank credit line and other money from the victim, who was in a nursing home.
  
  Jessup remains free on $50,000 bond, but has to wear a GPS device. Carter first set her bond at $150,000, but lowered it later in April after Jessup’s attorney at the time said she hadn’t gotten her diabetes medication until the sixth day she’d been in Nassau’s jail.

Source: Janice Jessup, ex-attorney, admits to stealing more than a million dollars from two former clients.

For the Nassau County DA press release, see Disbarred Attorney Pleads Guilty to Stealing More than $1.1 Million from Elderly & Disabled Clients (Janice Jessup faces up to three to nine years in prison).

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(1) Clients found to have been victimized by a theft by a New York attorney may be able to seek some reimbursement for being screwed over by turning to the The Lawyers’ Fund For Client Protection Of the State of New York, which manages and distribute money collected from annual dues paid by members of the state bar to members of the public who have sustained a financial loss caused by the dishonest conduct of a member of the bar acting as an attorney or a fiduciary.

For similar "attorney ripoff reimbursement funds" that attempt to clean up 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 a listing for Canadian client protection 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.