Closing Attorney/Title Agency Owner Gets 33 Months For Siphoning Over $2.2 Million From Real Estate Escrow Account; Among Victims Were Homeowners Left w/ Two Mortgages Due To Defendant's Failure To Appropriately Apply Funds To Satisfy Outstanding Loans

From the Office of the U.S. Attorney (Nashville, Tennessee):

• Garry Christopher Forsythe, 42, of Hendersonville, Tenn., was sentenced [] to 33 months in prison to be followed by two years of supervised release, [...]. U.S. District Court Judge Aleta A. Trauger imposed the sentence, and also ordered Forsythe to pay $2,249,294.80 in restitution and to forfeit the proceeds of his crime.
  
  Forysthe pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in December 2015 in connection with a scheme involving escrow funds held by his real estate closing company, Forsythe Title and Escrow. During the sentencing hearing, evidence established that the company’s escrow accounts developed shortages of more than $2.2 million because Forsythe made inflated or unsupported transfers of funds from the escrow accounts to the company’s operating accounts.
  
  Testimony during the hearing also established that, contrary to Forsythe’s position, the escrow shortages were not inadvertently caused by the failure to deposit checks or by bank errors. The evidence demonstrated that, in one instance, funds were transferred from an escrow account at Forsythe Title & Escrow and used for the down payment on a boat purchased by Forsythe.
  
  Evidence also demonstrated that the escrow shortages resulted in bounced checks, delays in scheduled real estate closings, and instances in which borrowers were left with two mortgages because Forsythe Title & Escrow failed to pay financial institutions with funds that had been provided for that purpose.(1)

Source: Hendersonville Attorney Sentenced to 33 Months in Prison in Real Estate Closing Scheme.

See, generally, Frederick Miller, "If You Can't Trust Your Lawyer .... ?", 138 Univ. of Pennsylvania Law Rev. 785 (1990) for more on the apparent, long-standing tolerance for deceit by many in the legal profession:

• This tolerance to deception is encouraged by the profession's institutional civility. Seldom is a fig called a fig, or a shyster a shyster. No, our euphemisms are wonderfully polite: "frivolous conduct," or a "lack of candor;" or "law-office failure;" or, heaven forbid, a "peculation," a "defalcation," or a "negative balance" in a law firms's trust account.
  
  There is also widespread reluctance on the part of lawyers --- again, some lawyers --- to discuss publicly, much less acknowledge, that they have colleagues who engage in deceit and unprofessional conduct.
  
  This reluctance is magnified when the brand of deceit involves the theft of client money and property, notwithstanding that most lawyers would agree that stealing from clients is the ultimate ethical transgression. [...] The fact is, however, that theft of client property is not an insignificant or isolated problem within the legal profession. Indeed, it is a hounding phenomenon nationwide, and probably the principal reason why most lawyers nationwide are disbarred from the practice of law.

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(1) The Tennessee Lawyers’ Fund for Client Protection was established by the Tennessee Supreme Court to reimburse claimants for losses caused by dishonest conduct committed by lawyers duly licensed to practice in the state.

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.