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Yahoo
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Legal group urges state Supreme Court to order Florida Bar to investigate Bondi
Snubbed by The Florida Bar last month, about 70 liberal-leaning scholars, attorneys and former judges have asked the state Supreme Court to order the Bar to investigate their complaint claiming U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi violated Florida's ethics rules as the nation's top law enforcement official. The coalition's legal argument in a petition filed on Tuesday may be compelling, but it's a long shot given the fact that the seven justices on Florida's high court were all appointed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and former GOP Gov. Charlie Crist. In June, the group filed an ethics complaint against Bondi with The Florida Bar, but the Bar rejected it on jurisdictional grounds, saying in a formal response that it 'does not investigate or prosecute sitting officers appointed under the U.S. Constitution while they are in office.' READ MORE: Group accuses Bondi of 'misconduct' as Attorney General; Florida Bar rejects complaint However, in their petition to the Florida Supreme Court, the coalition challenged that assertion, noting that in 1998 Congress passed the McDade Amendment, which explicitly rejected The Florida Bar's argument that investigating federal officials would encroach on federal authority. The McDade Amendment states: 'Attorneys for the [U.S.] Government shall be subject to State laws and rules ... to the same extent and in the same manner as other attorneys in that State.' In their petition filed with the Florida Supreme Court, the coalition preemptively confronts the likely criticism that their legal bid to have The Florida Bar investigate Bondi — who has aggressively carried out the Trump administration's crackdown on undocumented immigrants, elite universities and law firms — amounts to political grandstanding. 'Some have criticized ethics complaints against public officials as being 'politics,' or a vehicle for adjudicating policy disputes,' said the petition, which was filed by seasoned South Florida criminal defense attorney Jon May. 'As a review of the complaint will make clear, however, its aim is to assure that lawyers who occupy positions of public trust continue to abide by the Rules of Professional Conduct that they are obliged to follow,' said May, who represented Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega in his drug-trafficking case in Miami. 'The long list of signatories to the complaint, many of whom are distinguished professors of legal ethics, vindicates that intent.' On Tuesday, The Florida Bar did not respond to a Miami Herald request for comment. 'The Florida Bar has this view that the Attorney General is too busy to be bothered with an ethics complaint,' said Jamie Conrad, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney with Lawyers Defending American Democracy, which helped author the complaint and petition. 'We think it's just the opposite. 'She, of all people, has to set an example for the government and the rest of the country,' Conrad told the Miami Herald. 'But she and her team are being allowed to operate in an ethics-free zone and that's a very dangerous situation for the country.' The coalition, which includes retired Florida Supreme Court justices Barbara J. Pariente and Peggy A. Quince, took aim at Bondi in their complaint filed on June 5 with The Florida Bar. Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles appointed Pariente to the Court in 1997 while Chiles and Republican Jeb Bush, then governor-elect, jointly appointed Quince. The coalition's complaint accuses Bondi, a Florida Bar member, of violating her ethical duties as U.S. Attorney General, saying she has committed 'serious professional misconduct that threatens the rule of law and the administration of justice.' The complaint claims Bondi 'has sought to compel Department of Justice lawyers to violate their ethical obligations under the guise of 'zealous advocacy' ' that she espoused in a Feb. 5 memo to all agency employees on her first day in office. The complaint further says Bondi threatened agency lawyers with discipline or termination if they failed 'to zealously pursue the President's political objectives,' alleging her conduct violates Florida Bar rules and longstanding norms of the Justice Department. The coalition noted that The Florida Bar rejected two other recent ethics complaints against Bondi filed, respectively, by two California congressmen and a California lawyer. The Bar's lawyers cited a jurisdictional issue in those prior instances, too. At the time, the Department of Justice, speaking on behalf of Bondi, condemned these collective efforts, saying they were trying to 'weaponize' a complaint using The Florida Bar to attack the U.S. Attorney General. 'The Florida Bar has twice rejected performative attempts by these out-of-state lawyers to weaponize the bar complaint process against AG Bondi,' Justice Department chief of staff Chad Mizelle said in a statement provided to the Miami Herald. 'This third vexatious attempt will fail to do anything other than prove that the signatories have less intelligence —and independent thoughts — than sheep.' The coalition's complaint accuses Bondi — the 59-year-old former Florida Attorney General and State Attorney in the Tampa area — of playing a central role in the improper firings and resignations of numerous government lawyers during her four-month span at the helm of the Justice Department. Three examples are cited in the complaint: ▪ In mid-April, Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche fired a seasoned immigration lawyer who the Trump administration accused of sabotaging its legal case over the mistaken deportation of a Maryland man to his native El Salvador. Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni argued the government's case in the deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was sent to a Salvadoran mega prison in March due to an 'administrative error,' despite an immigration court order that he not be removed from the United States. Reuveni was initially placed on administrative leave days after informing a federal judge: 'Our only arguments are jurisdictional. … He should not have been sent to El Salvador.' In April, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the judge's order directing the Trump administration to 'facilitate' Abrego Garcia's release. Abrego Garcia, who had not been charged with a crime despite being accused by the Trump administration of belonging to the notorious MS-13 gang, remained in the Salvadoran prison for nearly three months. But in late May, Bondi announced that Abrego Garcia was flown back to United States and charged in a new federal indictment, accusing him of conspiring to transport undocumented migrants within the country who had crossed the southern border illegally. 'Abrego Garcia has landed in the United States to face justice,' Bondi said at a news conference in Washington. 'He was a smuggler of humans and children and women. ... This is what American justice looks like.' After his return, the coalition that filed the ethics complaint that was rejected by The Florida Bar also submitted a similar one with the federal district court in Maryland, where Abrego Garcia's immigration case was reviewed. Reuveni filed a whistle-blower claim with the U.S. Senate in June. 'The Department of Justice is thumbing its nose at the courts, and putting Justice Department attorneys in an impossible position where they have to choose between loyalty to the agenda of the president and their duty to the court,' Reuveni told the New York Times in an interview last week. Bondi denied his account on social media: 'This disgruntled employee is not a whistle-blower — he's a leaker asserting false claims seeking five minutes of fame.' Last Friday, Bondi also fired her personal ethics adviser, removing the Justice Department's top official responsible for counseling the most senior political appointees, according to published reports. Joseph Tirrell, a career attorney who'd spent nearly 20 years at the department, received a termination letter from Bondi. READ MORE: Judge orders Trump administration to bring Venezuelans back from El Salvador prison ▪ In mid-February, a longtime federal prosecutor resigned rather than carry out what she described as orders from Trump-appointed officials to pursue enforcement actions unsupported by evidence, according to a copy of her resignation letter. Denise Cheung, who was the head of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, wrote in her resignation letter to interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin that she had 'always sought to offer sound and ethical counsel' and that she had been asked to take investigative and law enforcement actions despite what she called the lack of 'sufficient evidence.' Cheung wrote that she was asked to review documentation provided by the Office of the Deputy Attorney General 'to open a criminal investigation into whether a contract had been unlawfully awarded by an executive agency.' The contract was reportedly granted by the Environmental Protection Agency during President Joe Biden's administration. ▪ Earlier in February, several senior federal prosecutors in New York and Washington resigned after they refused to follow a Justice Department order to drop the corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. They resigned after Emil Bove, the acting U.S. deputy attorney general, issued a Feb. 10 memo ordering federal prosecutors in New York to dismiss the case against Adams, saying it hampered the mayor's ability to tackle 'illegal immigration and violent crime.' Danielle R. Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, resigned one day after appealing to Bondi. Sassoon said she attended a meeting on Jan. 31 with Bove, Adams' attorneys and members of her office. 'Adams's attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department's enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed,' Sassoon wrote on Feb. 12. According to the coalition's 23-page complaint, Bondi's 'principal ethical violation arises from her perversion of the concept of 'zealous advocacy' into an overriding campaign, individually and through Messrs. Blanche, Bove and Martin, to coerce and intimidate the lawyers they supervise into violating their ethical obligations.' In each of the three examples, Bondi and her senior team 'ordered Department lawyers to do things those lawyers were ethically forbidden from doing, under threat of suspension or termination—or fired them for not having done so,' the complaint says. May, who helped write The Florida Bar complaint, said he believes 'zealous advocacy operates within the rules of ethics, not outside them.' Others in the coalition agreed. 'The Florida Bar has a responsibility to hold Bondi — and every lawyer under its purview who is implicated in her conduct — to account for actions that threaten the rule of law and the administration of justice,' said Norm Eisen, executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit legal advocacy group in Washington, D.C. Eisen is the former ambassador to the Czech Republic during the Obama administration.
Miami Herald
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Legal group urges state Supreme Court to order Florida Bar to investigate Bondi
Snubbed by The Florida Bar last month, about 70 liberal-leaning scholars, attorneys and former judges have asked the state Supreme Court to order the Bar to investigate their complaint claiming U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi violated Florida's ethics rules as the nation's top law enforcement official. The coalition's legal argument in a petition filed on Tuesday may be compelling, but it's a long shot given the fact that the seven justices on Florida's high court were all appointed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and former GOP Gov. Charlie Crist. In June, the group filed an ethics complaint against Bondi with The Florida Bar, but the Bar rejected it on jurisdictional grounds, saying in a formal response that it 'does not investigate or prosecute sitting officers appointed under the U.S. Constitution while they are in office.' READ MORE: Group accuses Bondi of 'misconduct' as Attorney General; Florida Bar rejects complaint However, in their petition to the Florida Supreme Court, the coalition challenged that assertion, noting that in 1998 Congress passed the McDade Amendment, which explicitly rejected The Florida Bar's argument that investigating federal officials would encroach on federal authority. The McDade Amendment states: 'Attorneys for the [U.S.] Government shall be subject to State laws and rules ... to the same extent and in the same manner as other attorneys in that State.' In their petition filed with the Florida Supreme Court, the coalition preemptively confronts the likely criticism that their legal bid to have The Florida Bar investigate Bondi — who has aggressively carried out the Trump administration's crackdown on undocumented immigrants, elite universities and law firms — amounts to political grandstanding. 'Some have criticized ethics complaints against public officials as being 'politics,' or a vehicle for adjudicating policy disputes,' said the petition, which was filed by seasoned South Florida criminal defense attorney Jon May. 'As a review of the complaint will make clear, however, its aim is to assure that lawyers who occupy positions of public trust continue to abide by the Rules of Professional Conduct that they are obliged to follow,' said May, who represented Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega in his drug-trafficking case in Miami. 'The long list of signatories to the complaint, many of whom are distinguished professors of legal ethics, vindicates that intent.' On Tuesday, The Florida Bar did not respond to a Miami Herald request for comment. 'The Florida Bar has this view that the Attorney General is too busy to be bothered with an ethics complaint,' said Jamie Conrad, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney with Lawyers Defending American Democracy, which helped author the complaint and petition. 'We think it's just the opposite. 'She, of all people, has to set an example for the government and the rest of the country,' Conrad told the Miami Herald. 'But she and her team are being allowed to operate in an ethics-free zone and that's a very dangerous situation for the country.' The coalition, which includes retired Florida Supreme Court justices Barbara J. Pariente and Peggy A. Quince, took aim at Bondi in their complaint filed on June 5 with The Florida Bar. Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles appointed Pariente to the Court in 1997 while Chiles and Republican Jeb Bush, then governor-elect, jointly appointed Quince. The coalition's complaint accuses Bondi, a Florida Bar member, of violating her ethical duties as U.S. Attorney General, saying she has committed 'serious professional misconduct that threatens the rule of law and the administration of justice.' The complaint claims Bondi 'has sought to compel Department of Justice lawyers to violate their ethical obligations under the guise of 'zealous advocacy' ' that she espoused in a Feb. 5 memo to all agency employees on her first day in office. The complaint further says Bondi threatened agency lawyers with discipline or termination if they failed 'to zealously pursue the President's political objectives,' alleging her conduct violates Florida Bar rules and longstanding norms of the Justice Department. The coalition noted that The Florida Bar rejected two other recent ethics complaints against Bondi filed, respectively, by two California congressmen and a California lawyer. The Bar's lawyers cited a jurisdictional issue in those prior instances, too. At the time, the Department of Justice, speaking on behalf of Bondi, condemned these collective efforts, saying they were trying to 'weaponize' a complaint using The Florida Bar to attack the U.S. Attorney General. 'The Florida Bar has twice rejected performative attempts by these out-of-state lawyers to weaponize the bar complaint process against AG Bondi,' Justice Department chief of staff Chad Mizelle said in a statement provided to the Miami Herald. 'This third vexatious attempt will fail to do anything other than prove that the signatories have less intelligence —and independent thoughts — than sheep.' Bondi's role in firings The coalition's complaint accuses Bondi — the 59-year-old former Florida Attorney General and State Attorney in the Tampa area — of playing a central role in the improper firings and resignations of numerous government lawyers during her four-month span at the helm of the Justice Department. Three examples are cited in the complaint: ▪ In mid-April, Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche fired a seasoned immigration lawyer who the Trump administration accused of sabotaging its legal case over the mistaken deportation of a Maryland man to his native El Salvador. Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni argued the government's case in the deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was sent to a Salvadoran mega prison in March due to an 'administrative error,' despite an immigration court order that he not be removed from the United States. Reuveni was initially placed on administrative leave days after informing a federal judge: 'Our only arguments are jurisdictional. … He should not have been sent to El Salvador.' In April, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the judge's order directing the Trump administration to 'facilitate' Abrego Garcia's release. Abrego Garcia, who had not been charged with a crime despite being accused by the Trump administration of belonging to the notorious MS-13 gang, remained in the Salvadoran prison for nearly three months. But in late May, Bondi announced that Abrego Garcia was flown back to United States and charged in a new federal indictment, accusing him of conspiring to transport undocumented migrants within the country who had crossed the southern border illegally. 'Abrego Garcia has landed in the United States to face justice,' Bondi said at a news conference in Washington. 'He was a smuggler of humans and children and women. ... This is what American justice looks like.' After his return, the coalition that filed the ethics complaint that was rejected by The Florida Bar also submitted a similar one with the federal district court in Maryland, where Abrego Garcia's immigration case was reviewed. Reuveni filed a whistle-blower claim with the U.S. Senate in June. 'The Department of Justice is thumbing its nose at the courts, and putting Justice Department attorneys in an impossible position where they have to choose between loyalty to the agenda of the president and their duty to the court,' Reuveni told the New York Times in an interview last week. Bondi denied his account on social media: 'This disgruntled employee is not a whistle-blower — he's a leaker asserting false claims seeking five minutes of fame.' Last Friday, Bondi also fired her personal ethics adviser, removing the Justice Department's top official responsible for counseling the most senior political appointees, according to published reports. Joseph Tirrell, a career attorney who'd spent nearly 20 years at the department, received a termination letter from Bondi. READ MORE: Judge orders Trump administration to bring Venezuelans back from El Salvador prison ▪ In mid-February, a longtime federal prosecutor resigned rather than carry out what she described as orders from Trump-appointed officials to pursue enforcement actions unsupported by evidence, according to a copy of her resignation letter. Denise Cheung, who was the head of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, wrote in her resignation letter to interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin that she had 'always sought to offer sound and ethical counsel' and that she had been asked to take investigative and law enforcement actions despite what she called the lack of 'sufficient evidence.' Cheung wrote that she was asked to review documentation provided by the Office of the Deputy Attorney General 'to open a criminal investigation into whether a contract had been unlawfully awarded by an executive agency.' The contract was reportedly granted by the Environmental Protection Agency during President Joe Biden's administration. ▪ Earlier in February, several senior federal prosecutors in New York and Washington resigned after they refused to follow a Justice Department order to drop the corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. They resigned after Emil Bove, the acting U.S. deputy attorney general, issued a Feb. 10 memo ordering federal prosecutors in New York to dismiss the case against Adams, saying it hampered the mayor's ability to tackle 'illegal immigration and violent crime.' Danielle R. Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, resigned one day after appealing to Bondi. Sassoon said she attended a meeting on Jan. 31 with Bove, Adams' attorneys and members of her office. 'Adams's attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department's enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed,' Sassoon wrote on Feb. 12. 'Zealous advocacy' According to the coalition's 23-page complaint, Bondi's 'principal ethical violation arises from her perversion of the concept of 'zealous advocacy' into an overriding campaign, individually and through Messrs. Blanche, Bove and Martin, to coerce and intimidate the lawyers they supervise into violating their ethical obligations.' In each of the three examples, Bondi and her senior team 'ordered Department lawyers to do things those lawyers were ethically forbidden from doing, under threat of suspension or termination—or fired them for not having done so,' the complaint says. May, who helped write The Florida Bar complaint, said he believes 'zealous advocacy operates within the rules of ethics, not outside them.' Others in the coalition agreed. 'The Florida Bar has a responsibility to hold Bondi — and every lawyer under its purview who is implicated in her conduct — to account for actions that threaten the rule of law and the administration of justice,' said Norm Eisen, executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit legal advocacy group in Washington, D.C. Eisen is the former ambassador to the Czech Republic during the Obama administration.
Miami Herald
10-07-2025
- Miami Herald
A Florida lawyer is suspended after her husband punched and threw their child
Suspension starts Saturday for a St. Petersburg attorney convicted of doing nothing as her husband punched their 3-year-old girl and hurled the child into a bedroom door during an extended beating, according to court files and police reports. Amber Patwell's analysis of Feb. 15, 2022: She couldn't do more for her child after taking her own beating from Eric Patwell, a former Marine with PTSD. READ MORE: Why three Coral Gables attorneys have been reprimanded or disbarred 'I had vomited blood all over the stairs of my house and I was so incoherent I could barely remember my daughters' birth days and had no idea what had transpired,' Patwell wrote in a June 30 Facebook post showing bodycam footage of Pasco County Sheriff's Office personnel. Two weeks before the post, Amber Patwell was sentenced to 24 months of drug offender probation after a Pasco jury convicted her of third-degree child neglect without great bodily harm. Patwell is appealing the sentence by Judge Joshua Riba as well as the conviction, which is what drew the interim felony suspension by the state Supreme Court. The court docket shows 16 letters of pre-sentence support for Patwell, including one from a former client who filed a Florida Bar grievance against her and believes te attorney owes her money. Patwell practiced criminal law and family law. The same day Amber Patwell received her sentence, Eric Patwell got two 10-year sentences, one for each count of aggravated child abuse to which he pleaded guilty. The sentences will run concurrently, so the Florida Department of Corrections entry projects he will be released on Feb. 16, 2032. A court filing said Pasco County Sheriff's Office Child Protective Investigator Tara Galipault 'saw two contusions to the front of the child's head; scrapes from the back of the scapula to the mid-back; bruising and scratching to (the child's) ear; blood in (her) nose; a redness to (the child's) nose itself. '(She) told CPI Galipault, 'Daddy hit me and threw me against the wall.'' Patwell's Facebook post said: ''Most notably and most thankfully, my daughter had minor injuries and neither of us have any memory of this event. Below is a video of my eyes rolling back into my head and the blood coming out of head when I was accused of neglecting of my child. I had to get three staples in the back of my head and I suffered from a concussion.' The arrest report, which claimed to be from security cam footage, said Amber Patwell 'entered the bedroom during the attack and aided the child momentarily before putting her back into her bed.' But after Eric Patwell resumed beating the girl, 'at no time did (Amber Patwell), who is the child's mother, make any attempt to stop this brutal attack or protect her child.' A neighbor called 911. In an ongoing related case, Amber Patwell also pleaded not guilty to a perjury charge. The charging documents say she claimed in a June 19, 2023, hearing that she hadn't spoken with Eric Patwell since the previous February. Investigators say in going through Eric Patwell's communications, they found e-messages to 'Mollie Charlene,' who they believe is Amber Patwell. They also say they found 459 phone calls between the Patwells, with Eric Patwell using other inmates' identification numbers.
Miami Herald
03-07-2025
- Miami Herald
Why three Coral Gables attorneys have been reprimanded or disbarred
All three Miami-Dade attorneys on the Florida Bar's monthly list of attorneys disciplined by the state Supreme Court have their professional homes in Coral Gables. In alphabetical order: Steven Amster Steven Amster (admitted to the Bar in 1994) took Tomas Diaz's Duval County criminal case for a non-refundable $5,000 flat fee. The retainer agreement said the case would be done when charges were dismissed, or Diaz was acquitted or convicted. Diaz pleaded guilty, ending what was covered by the $5,000 fee. Later, when a violation of probation matter came up, Amster worked on that for Diaz. For a year and a half, he drove up to Duval County for hearings and wound up keeping Diaz out of jail. But, as Amster's guilty plea in this discipline case says, he did so without a written fee agreement. Three times, he reached out to Diaz, asking for another $50,000 fee for his work. Eventually, Diaz's mother paid the $50,000 via three wire transfers. Amster violated Florida Bar rules of 'duty to communicate basis or rate of fee or costs to client.' Amster has to return $10,000 to Diaz's mother, attend ethics school and will receive a public reprimand. This comes less than three years after Amster's last public reprimand, which he received in November 2022. READ MORE: The end for a Fort Lauderdale attorney who disappeared with at least $630,000 Ruzy Behnejad Ruzy Behnejad, 35, has been a Bar member since 2014 with no previous disciplinary history. Behnejad received $128,597 from a property damage settlement in his trust account during April 2024. But before shooting that money to his client or the service providers owed, Benejhad left the country on a personal matter. '[Behnejad] failed to communicate with (his client) to explain the delay in payment of her portion of the settlement funds or to explain the failure to pay the public adjuster, water & mold mitigation service, or the consultant,' Behnejad's application for disciplinary revocation states. Behnejad told his client in July 2024 that he'd distribute the money as required and, as financial apology for the delay, refund $11,000 of his legal fees. Which is what he did upon returning to the United States in September. In fact, including the $11,000 refund, he paid $130,338.17, which was more than the settlement. The client filed a Bar complaint. Behnejad filed for disciplinary revocation, essentially disbarment, with leave to seek readmission after five years. The state Supreme Court granted Behnejad's request — Behnejad is tossed from the Bar for five years, and the Bar discipline case disappears. If there had been civil or criminal matters arising from this case, they would not be affected. READ MORE: What happened to a Florida attorney accused of misappropriating $1 million Michael Murphy If Michael Murphy's disbarment were a person, it could legally have a Cuba Libre, having turned 21 on April 28. Despite being disbarred since 2004, the Bar's contempt petition said, Murphy sent communication on May 3, 2024, on behalf of a woman trying to get her security deposit refunded from a former landlord and signed it, 'Michael Murphy, Esquire.' When the landlord responded by asking for a 'letter of legal representation,' Murphy's reply email stated, 'I represent Ms. Crystal Harris' and signed it 'Michael Murphy, Esquire.' A May 6, 2024, email from Murphy said, 'we stick by our original offer to pay the designated items, NOTHING MORE! If you wish to discuss further, call me to discuss, not (his purported client), she is done talking to you all.' That's holding himself out to be an attorney. As Murphy already was disbarred, but could apply for readmission, he's now permanently disbarred.
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Miami Herald
02-07-2025
- Miami Herald
The end for a Fort Lauderdale attorney who disappeared with at least $630,000
The odyssey of a Fort Lauderdale attorney who disappeared with at least $630,000, some of which was intended for an octogenarian woman's care, went to Philadelphia, returned to Fort Lauderdale and will end in Texas. Specifically, a federal prison in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. On Thursday in Fort Lauderdale federal court, Judge David Leibowitz ordered John Spencer Jenkins, 55, to surrender Friday to start serving time at a federal prison in the Metroplex, where Jenkins has family. After pleading guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering, Jenkins got two years, nine months for each charge, sentences to be served concurrently, plus $760,865 restitution. READ MORE: What happened to a Florida attorney accused of misappropriating $1 million Another part of Jenkins' sentence is a 500-hour residential drug and alcohol treatment program. That and a line from his lone pre-sentence letter of support — 'John completed a residential substance abuse program and continues to regularly attend AA/NA meetings' — indicates what might have driven Jenkins to desert a promising law career to disappear with a chunk of neighbor William Walters' estate. MORE: A Fort Lauderdale lawyer stole a $643,000 inheritance and disappeared Disappearing acts and funds Like Jenkins, Walters lived in Wilton Manors. Walters set up his estate to go to a nephew, two nieces and the care of a younger sister. That sister is now 89, the age at which Walters died on Oct. 18 2021. As executor of the estate, Walters' nephew, Larry Corbin, hired Jenkins, aka 'Spencer,' to handle the legal side of getting the money to whom it needed to go. '[Jenkins] represented to [Corbin] that funds relating to [Walters'] estate should be deposited into the Jenkins Law Firm's (trust) accounts so that [Jenkins] could manage the distribution of those assets among [Walters'] designees,' Jenkins admission of facts states. But after Walters' estate got liquidated and $543,832 got wired into Jenkins' firm's trust account. He soon moved some of that money through a couple other accounts, cash movements that prompted the money laundering charge. Jenkins' admission says he 'caused the deposit of money from [Walters'] estate into the Jenkins Law Firm's (trust) accounts under the false pretense that he would be distributing the estate when, in truth and in fact, he embezzled the funds for his own personal use.' Not just those. Jenkins also took $88,000 he'd been wired for another client after a commercial asset sale. Also, the Florida Bar audit said the trust account wasn't empty when Jenkins' received Walters' estate money. None of Walters' estate money reached the Louisville, Kentucky-based family it should have. By the time Corbin filed a complaint to the Florida Bar on July 17, 2023, Stealth Supply had filed a complaint to the Florida Bar that Mullins bungled, then abandoned their case. Also, Jenkins' client Peter Mullins claimed in a lawsuit that Jenkins abandoned his case so totally that Mullins didn't know about the judgment against him until he learned there was a lien on real estate he wanted to sell. Corbin hadn't heard from Jenkins in a month when he filed a complaint with the Bar. Jenkins let his law firm's state registration corporate paperwork lapse in September 2023. His Fort Lauderdale office was empty. His phone numbers were disconnected. Jenkins was found in Philadelphia on Sept. 12, 2024, and charged days after. Assistant U.S. Attorney Altanese Phenelus handled the prosecution of the case.
