Another Lawyer Gets Bar Ticket Pulled For Fleecing Since-Deceased Clients; Currently Sits In State Prison Doing 30 Months For Pilfering Approx. $500K From 86-Year Old & Dementia-Stricken 98-Year Old Victims
- A Belfast lawyer in prison for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from two elderly clients can no longer practice in Maine.(1)
The Maine Supreme Court [] disbarred William Dawson, Jr., 62. He was also ordered to pay than $10,000 to the Board of Overseers of the Bar for disciplinary proceeding costs.
Dawson was sentenced in March to two-and-a-half years in prison. He has to pay $520,000 in restitution, too. Dawson pleaded guilty to theft and failure to pay income taxes for three years, starting in 2011.
Court documents say it was during that time, Dawson paid himself from the bank accounts of an 86-year-old woman and a 98-year-old woman. He over-billed them, too.
Both women have since died.
See also, Belfast lawyer gets 30 months in prison for bilking elderly clients:
- In one case, William L. Dawson Jr. placed an 85-year-old Belfast resident in a nursing home for four years while he looted her bank accounts, according to court records.
***The theft was uncovered in March 2013 when a teller at Key Bank noticed Dawson was writing large checks to himself on at least a weekly basis from the account of Veronica Pendleton. She alerted her supervisor, and a review of the account was undertaken, as well as that of another customer, 97-year-old Doris Schmidt. In that case, Dawson also was writing large checks on her account, according to Assistant Maine Attorney General Leanne Robbin.
***Pendleton had told [her friend Anne] Cilley she felt like she had been incarcerated for four years and missed seeing the birds and squirrels in her yard, according to Cilley’s letter.
Schmidt suffered from dementia and was in the same nursing home as Pendleton. Dawson had given himself power of attorney over Schmidt’s finances without going to probate court, according to the prosecutor.
- 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.
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