Now-Disbarred NYC Attorney Gets 3 To 9 Years In Slammer For Fleecing Over $2 Million From Three Clients

In New York City, DNAinfo (New York) reports:

• A disbarred Midtown lawyer will spend between 3 and 9 years in prison after pleading guilty last month to stealing millions of dollars from clients,(1) including missionaries working in South Africa.
  
  A judge sentenced Philip Teplen, of Fairfield, Conn., for pillaging clients of more than $2 million when Teplen operated a law office out of the Empire State Building.
  
  In April 2011, a client named Teplen his agent in order to finalize a $3.5 million loan from a financing company, according to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. Instead of helping his client disburse the money, Teplen stole more than $2 million from him, using the cash to pay for personal expenses and investments and to reimburse clients he had previously stolen from, Vance said.
  
  Teplen’s misdeeds continued in March 2012, when he was working out of a law office at 708 Third Ave. in Midtown East, according to the DA.
  
  A client asked Teplen to deposit a check for about $135,000 to a Christian missionary group working in South Africa, but instead Teplen stole more than $100,000, Vance said.
  
  The disgraced attorney has paid the client back some of what he stole but still owes her about $82,000, according to Vance.
  
  In May 2014, Teplen then represented the seller of a co-op apartment in Harlem and was supposed to hold a $69,500 deposit paid by the buyers in an escrow account until the sale closed, Vance said. When the buyers canceled the purchase and became entitled to the deposit in July of that year, the money had vanished.
  
  Teplen was already in the process of resigning from the bar in response to another theft complaint against him when the 2014 incident occurred, said Vance.
  
  “For years Philip Teplen lied to his clients and stole their money for his own personal gain,” Vance said in a statement. “He even had the audacity to continue this pattern of theft while his resignation was pending with the First Judicial Department.”
  
  Teplen pleaded guilty to first and second degree larceny on Jan. 22.
  
  Vance encouraged anyone who thinks they may be the victim of a financial crime to contact his office’s financial frauds hotline at 212-335-8900.
  
  A lawyer for Teplen did not return a request for comment.

Source: Midtown Lawyer Who Stole More Than $2M From Clients Sentenced, DA Says.

For the Manhattan DA press release, see Former Attorney Sentenced To 3-To-9 Years In State Prison For Stealing More Than $2 Milliom From Three Clients.

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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.