Disbarred Lawyer Finally Gets Shipped Out To State Prison To Serve 3 To 9 Years For Pilfering Over $1 Million From Mentally/Physically Disabled Woman, 85-Year Old Client In Separate Real Estate Matters Dating Back To 2008

From the Office of the Nassau County, New York District Attorney:

• Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas announced that a disbarred attorney was sentenced to three to nine years in prison [] for stealing from former clients who were elderly or disabled.(1)
  
  Janice Jessup, 68, of Charlotte, N.C., pleaded guilty [...] to one count of Grand Larceny in the 1st Degree (a B felony) for stealing more than $1.1 million from a mentally and physically disabled woman whom she represented in an eminent domain action. Jessup also pleaded guilty to Grand Larceny in the 2nd Degree (a C felony) for stealing approximately $84,000 from an 85-year old former client from Roosevelt whom she helped obtain a reverse mortgage on her property.
  
  ***
  DA Singas said Jessup was retained in 2007 by the family of a mentally and physically disabled woman to represent her in a $1.2 million eminent domain action involving property that was subsequently developed into the Yes We Can Community Center in Westbury. Jessup received the funds by court order as the attorney for her client in September 2008, and thereafter stole the funds through in or about March 2010, by spending the money on various unauthorized personal, business and other expenses that included direct payments to herself and members of her family, as well as payments to other law clients of hers.
  
  Prosecutors became aware of the scheme in 2013 when a complaint was filed with the Nassau DA’s Office, which investigated the case, and Jessup was indicted in January 2015 for the criminal activity.
  
  In a separate case, Jessup was retained in 2008 by a then-85-year old woman who sought to obtain a reverse mortgage on her home in Roosevelt. The defendant obtained the reverse mortgage that year, allegedly to help raise money to pay for the elderly woman’s care in a nursing facility the woman resided in.

For more, see Disbarred Attorney Sentenced to Three to Nine Years for Stealing More than $1.1 Million from Elderly.

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 Lawyers’ Fund For Client Protection Of the State of New York manages and distributes 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 New York 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.