Legal Secretary Gets 137 Years For Fleecing Nearly $600K From Law Firm's Clients While On Probation For Earlier Unrelated Theft From Another Attorney's Clients ($152K); Lawyer-Employer's Bar Ticket Suspended; Widow Who Lost Home To Foreclosure After Being Fleeced Of $183K Life Insurance Proceeds From Her Late Husband's Death Among Latest Victims

In Decatur, Alabama, The Decatur Daily reports:

• Former Hartselle legal secretary Tami Hinkle gasped and turned to her family when a judge announced [last week] the sentences totaling 137 years in prison he had just handed out would be served consecutively.
  
  “Oh, my God, he just gave me life,” Hinkle said in Morgan County Circuit Court. She had pleaded guilty to 20 counts of theft. Hinkle, 49, began crying uncontrollably, and her family and supporters gasped and sobbed when Marshall County Circuit Judge Tim Riley, who handled the case, announced the consecutive sentences.
  
  Prosecutors argued Hinkle stole nearly $600,000 from clients of the Long and Long law firm from when she was hired in April 2008 until her arrest in February 2014. The defense contended the thefts totaled about $350,000.
  
  Hinkle will be eligible for parole in 10 years, according to the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles website. The board said a person is eligible for parole after serving the lesser of 10 years or one-third of the sentence. Hinkle pleaded guilty to 17 counts of first-degree theft, which is a Class B felony, and three counts of second-degree theft, a Class C felony.
  
  Riley, who heard the case because all of the Morgan County judges recused themselves, also ordered Hinkle to pay $350,000 in restitution. He gave her credit for 23 months she has served in prison after her probation was revoked on a 2009 conviction of stealing money from a lawyer she worked for in Madison.
  
  Assistant Morgan County District Attorney Jerry Knight asked Riley to sentence Hinkle to life in prison. “It’s probably heavier than life,” Knight said of the sentences handed down by Riley after an all-day hearing.
  
  William White, Hinkle’s attorney from Birmingham, said state sentencing guidelines call for a range from one year and 10 months to five years and nine months in prison. “I’ve never seen a life sentence in a property crime,” White told Riley. “We think that too extreme to the Nth degree.”
  
  Several of the state’s nine witnesses described how they gave Hinkle checks at the law firm of Bob Long and Jack Long, who are not related, that were supposed to be deposited into Bob Long’s law firm’s trust account. Instead, she deposited them into the firm’s operating account, from which she had authority to write checks.
  
  Knight recounted the significant losses the victims suffered from Hinkle’s thefts when he asked Riley for a life sentence. He asked that Riley send a message to would-be thieves. “You steal money from people who put their trust in you, you go to the penitentiary for a long time,” Knight said.
  
  Hinkle did not testify during the hearing but was allowed to make a statement before hearing Riley’s sentence. “I take full responsibility for what I’ve done, for the pain and suffering I’ve caused,” she said tearfully.
  
  Hinkle said she’s spent two years in prison trying to do the right thing and be a better person.
  
  Before announcing the sentence, Riley said some of the victims have been “totally devastated” by the harm Hinkle caused. He said Hinkle could have been a successful business person had she used her talents in the right way instead of plotting how to take the victims’ money.
  
  Riley said Louise Harris was left “totally destitute” because of Hinkle.
  
  Hinkle was accused of taking $183,318 from Harris from a $250,000 life insurance payment Harris received after the death of her husband, George Harris. George Harris was the minister at Somerville Church of Christ where Hinkle, of Hartselle, and her family attended church.
  
  Hinkle told Louise Harris, a South African citizen, the money could be held in Long’s trust account until the estate was settled in probate court, according to Knight. Louise Harris wrote checks totaling $183,318 to Long that Hinkle deposited into Long’s operating account and then withdrew.
  
  Louise Harris, 66, testified she lost her house to foreclosure and had her car repossessed because of Hinkle’s theft. “I have nothing,” she said. “I trusted her completely,” Louise Harris testified Tuesday. “My husband trusted her completely.”
  
  Louise Harris said she has quit taking her heart medicine because she has no insurance, cannot get Medicare or Social Security because she is not a United States citizen, and lives with her daughter in Kansas City, Missouri.
  
  Angela Aldridge, a special agent with the Alabama Department of Revenue, testified about her investigation of bank records belonging to Long, Hinkle and the business owned by Hinkle’s husband. She testified about checks and wire transfers from Long’s operating account deposited into Hinkle’s accounts from 2010 through 2013.
  
  Hinkle’s husband, Louis Jack Hinkle Jr., 45, of Decatur, has been indicted on a first-degree receiving stolen property charge related to the money stolen from Long’s clients, Knight said.
  
  Testimony by Bob Long, whose law license has been suspended, revealed his lack of oversight of Hinkle’s control of his trust account and the checks that clients gave her. Long is the defendant in a lawsuit filed by the estates of Robbie Morris and Edith Simmons to recover $286,939 that the estates said should have been deposited into Long’s trust account, but instead went into the operating account and was withdrawn by Hinkle.
  
  Long testified Hinkle was giving the heirs of the two estates “the runaround” about why they were not receiving their disbursements in a timely manner.
  
  On another occasion, Long said, Hinkle was to meet him in Decatur on Jan. 21, 2014, to give him a check, but instead gave him an envelope containing a letter. She told him she had been raped in the law office on Jan. 6, but didn’t report it to the police.
  
  Hartselle police investigator Tania Burgess testified Hinkle reported the rape to her Jan. 21. Burgess said she became suspicious of Hinkle’s story because of Hinkle’s demeanor and because Long came in about an hour later to report checks stolen from the law office. She said Hinkle and Long “used some of the same verbiage.”
  
  Burgess said her investigation showed that Hinkle was in Chicago on Jan. 6.
  
  Hinkle pleaded guilty to first-degree theft in Madison County in 2009. She was charged with stealing $152,984 from clients of a Madison lawyer for whom Hinkle worked, court records show. Hinkle made $500 monthly restitution payments in that case until she was arrested in Hartselle.(1)

Source: Former Hartselle legal secretary sentenced to 137 years to run consecutively.

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(1) According to another media report (Morgan Co. woman pleads guilty to stealing hundreds of thousands from legal clients):

• Hinkle was on probation for stealing $152,000 while working for a Madison County attorney when she committed the crimes in Morgan County. She is serving a ten-year sentence for violating that probation.