Elder Law Attorney Gets 45 Months in Federal Prison For Fleecing Dead Client's Estate Of Over $1.8 Million; Client Security Fund OKs Ripoff Reimbursement - Could Make Victims "85-90% Whole"

In New Haven, Connecticut, the Connecticut Post reports:

• For years, Peter M. Clark used Miriam Strong’s $4 million estate as his personal checking account.
  
  When he needed money to repay other client accounts, he just reached into Strong’s while serving as its co-executor.
  
  “All you needed to do was look at the checks,” said Clifford D. Hoyle, the retired probate judge appointed to untangle the estate of Strong, who spent 35 years as a chemist at Anaconda American Brass. Hoyle said some of the checks Clark drew on the Strong estate “practically matched those” paid into his other client accounts.
  
  And that’s what Clark, a Woodbury elder lawyer did, taking from one account to pay back what was stolen from another, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Karwan said.
  
  The money Strong willed to Oxford to build a new library, buy open space and fund scholarship for high school students; to the Ansonia Congregational Church for a new boiler; and to other charities, cemeteries and friends, was gone.
  
  “The court needs to send a message to fiduciaries, attorneys, people in trust,” that these actions have to stop, Karwan told Senior U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton in seeking a lengthy sentence for Clark. “We need to restore confidence to the general public that when an attorney breaks the law, he or she suffers severe consequences.”
  
  Arterton sentenced Clark to three years and nine months in federal prison, beginning Feb. 24.
  
  “In light of the position as an attorney and fiduciary, one should pray for their clients and not (prey) on them,” Arterton said to 58-year-old Clark. “You caused injury to real people and not institutions.”
  
  Once released from federal prison, Clark is to spend three years being supervised by the U.S. Probation Department. During that time, Arterton ordered him pay restitution at the rate of $500 per month. The amount of restitution — expected to exceed $1.8 million — is to be determined during an April 7 hearing.
  
  Afterward, Clark said he was “a little disappointed” with Arterton’s sentence, but “understood her position.” In court, he apologized to his family, friends, Oxford, the court and the bar.
  
  “There was no justifiable excuse,” Clark said. “My actions led me to become something I abhor — a failed, disgraced attorney.”
  
  Since Clark’s guilty plea to mail fraud in October, Hoyle was able to convince the state bar’s Connecticut Client Security Fund to refund the victims more than $1.8 million.(1) He said that money is expected in about eight weeks. With it, Hoyle said, he hopes to make each of the 22 victims “85 to 90 percent whole.”
  
  Clark will have to repay the fund, plus the $60,000 he took from Strong in legal fees, as well as Hoyle’s expenses.
  
  But even Arterton conceded that, because of the “huge amount stolen,” there is a “dim likelihood” that the stolen money would be repaid.

Source: Lawyer sentenced to prison for theft from dead woman’s estate.

For the U.S. Attorney (New Haven, Connecticut) press release, see Attorney Who Stole $1.8 Million from Oxford Woman's Estate Sentenced to 45 Months in Federal Prison.

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(1) The Client Security Fund is a fund established by the rules of the Connecticut Superior Court to provide reimbursement to individuals who have lost money or property as a result of the dishonest conduct of an attorney practicing law in the State of Connecticut, in the course of the attorney-client relationship. The fund provides a remedy for clients who are unable to obtain reimbursement for their loss from any other source.

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.