Among Attorney's Last Words To Judge Before Being Shipped Off To Serve 46-Month Sentence For Fleecing Clients Of Over $300K: "I'm A Thief!"

In Brunswick, Georgia, The Florida Times Union reports:

• A lawyer who admitted to stealing hundreds of thousands from clients was sentenced [] to nearly four years in prison and ordered to pay restitution.
  
  Before Chief U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood sentenced him, Donald Carlton Gibson told Wood that he had tried his very first case in the courtroom where he stood before her with a “surreal sense of shame...”
  
  “Instead of that man full of promise,’’ Gibson said, “I am here to be judged for what I am. I’m a thief.”
  
  Wood sentenced Gibson to the maximum 46 months under the federal advisory guidelines, ordered him to pay $312,432.19 restitution and to serve five years on probation once he’s released. Gibson lived in Savannah and had a law practice in Brunswick but has voluntarily surrendered his license.
  
  ***
  Gibson had pleaded guilty in December to a single count of bank fraud for taking an $80,000 check one his clients had written in the settlement of a suit. Gibson forged the name of his law firm onto the front of the check and deposited it into his own account. He then lied to Vince Sowerby, the lawyer representing Cindy Taylor, who was supposed to have gotten the money. He told Sowerby that his client was refusing to pay and that Sowerby would probably have to sue.
  
  Taylor ultimately got her money because the bank had cashed a forged check.
  
  But Taylor was not the only victim, and one of them, the owner of a Brunswick convenience store made sure Gibson heard his victim impact statement.
  
  Given the choice of speaking from a lectern with his back toward Gibson or the witness stand, David Patel opted for the witness stand so he could look Gibson in the eye.
  
  Gibson had the guts to look him in the eye and lie when he stole from him, Patel said. “Now have the same guts to look at me and look at me in the face,” Patel said.
  
  Having his money stolen by Gibson was worse than losing it to an armed robber because he had trusted Gibson, Patel told the court.
  
  “You didn’t become a lawyer to help people,” but instead to prey on people when they were vulnerable, Patel told Gibson said.
  
  After the sentencing, Patel told the Times-Union that through “lies and deceit,” Gibson had stolen from him for 10 years. Gibson had forged others’ signatures on official-looking documents to explain why he wouldn’t be getting money he was due, Patel said.
  
  Patel said that many of his relatives who don’t speak English had needed a lawyer and he had referred them to Gibson only to have them lose money, too.
  
  “They still blame me,” he said.
  
  When Gibson was escorted into the courtroom, retired Army Maj. Edward Canady of St. Marys stood and stared him in the face. “He took my retirement money I had saved up for 32 years,’’ Canady said later.
  
  Gibson collected legal fees but never did anything in a suit and, as a result, Canady said he lost a valuable piece of property, all the improvements he had made to it and his legal fees. In all, Gibson probably caused him to lose $500,000, Canady said.
  
  Although Gibson got the maximum under the guidelines, Canady and Patel said it wasn’t nearly enough.

For the story, see 'I'm a thief,' Brunswick lawyer says before getting 46-month sentence for taking clients' money (Donald Carlton Gibson also must pay more than $312,000 restititution, judge orders).