Sunday, December 14, 2008

South Carolina Attorney Sentenced For Stealing Client Funds

Michael Timothy Jordan, 45, a real estate attorney from Charleston, South Carolina, was sentenced December 2nd to 25 months in prison, on top of the 11 months house arrest and 5 month in jail already served, for bilking a client out of some $2.35 million. He was also ordered to pay $1.6 million in restitution. Jordan plead guilty to one count of wire fraud earlier this year. Authorities say Jordan was attempting to stage his own disappearance by going missing after a solo boat ride deep into the South Carolina marshes. He was arrested on August 3, 2007 when he was caught at the US-Canadian border near Buffalo, New York. Prosecutors say he began looting client trust accounts by transferring funds into his own trust account in or about August 2003. When a client hired him to handle a $2.3 million real estate transaction in early August 2007, prosecutors say he took the money, in part to pay back old clients he had previously stolen from.

Read the story here, here, here and here.

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