Two Years After Pleading Guilty & Getting Four Years Prison Time For Fleecing Dead Client's Estate (& Its Beneficiaries) Out Of About $2.3 Million, Another Aging Attorney Finally Gets Formally Disbarred By Pennsylvania Authorities (After He Voluntarily Surrendered His Law License)

In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Business Journal reports:

• A Bucks County lawyer sentenced to prison almost two years ago for defrauding a client’s estate of more than $2.3 million was disbarred by consent.(1)
  
  Randolph Scott, 74, of Doylestown, Pa., had been practicing law since 1969 and was placed on retired status by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2012. The court made its latest decision Friday [June 9], retroactive to Nov. 25, 2015 after Scott voluntarily surrendered his law license.
  
  Scott pleaded guilty on March 26, 2015 to one count each of mail fraud, tax evasion, attempting to interfere with administration of internal revenue laws and three counts of failure to file income tax returns. He was sentenced to four years in prison in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia on Sept. 12, 2015.
  
  Scott, who maintained his own law firm in Warrington, Pa., was indicted four years ago.
  
  According to the indictment, between December 2005 and October 2011, while representing the estate of John C. Bready, Scott diverted about $2.3 million of estate funds to his law office accounts. Because the estate was valued at more than $6 million at the time of Bready’s death in 2005, federal law required that a federal estate tax return be filed that would have resulted in $520,351 being paid to the Internal Revenue Service.
  
  The indictment alleges that Scott purposely failed to file the required form in order to keep enough money in the estate to pay its beneficiaries and to avoid detection of the theft.
  
  Prosecutors also said after the estate’s executor died in 2009, Scott failed to disclose the death so that the investment account manager would continue to send the executor’s checks to Scott’s law firm.
  
  Scott then allegedly forged the executor’s signature and deposited the checks into his law firm’s account. Prosecutors said Scott also had the successor executor sign a document renouncing the position so that he could continue to forge the signature of the deceased executor and divert money belonging to the estate.

Source: Bucks lawyer disbarred after sentenced to prison for $2.3M fraud scheme.

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(1) The Pennsylvania Lawyers Fund for Client Security was created to help (at least partially) compensate persons who have suffered a loss of money or property due to misappropriation or embezzlement by a Pennsylvania-licensed attorney.

For similar "attorney ripoff reimbursement funds" that sometimes help cover the financial mess created by the dishonest conduct of lawyers licensed in other states and Canada, see:

• Directory Of Lawyers' Funds For Client Protection (February 2017) (includes Canadian recovery 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.  ripoff reimbursement