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Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Ind. Courts - "Attorney Crabtree charged with embezzling $1 million"
Andy Grimm reports today in the Gary Post-Tribune:
HAMMOND -- A federal grand jury has charged Schererville attorney William Crabtree with embezzling nearly $1 million from his clients' accounts.William Crabtree II faces two counts of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud for allegedly taking money from a client and, when caught, paying her back with money from other clients.
Crabtree entered a plea of not guilty in federal court Monday.
"This is all a misunderstanding," said Kevin Milner, Crabtree's attorney. "This was a financial transaction that is easily explained, and I'm confident when we lay out what happened, it will work itself out."
The indictment states that in 2005, Crabtree deposited into his own account a check for $275,000 he was supposed to apply to estate taxes on Janet Etchison's inheritance from her father. When she complained three years later, Crabtree paid her back -- with another client's money, the indictment says.
The state Supreme Court Disciplinary Committee last week filed a motion to have Crabtree's law license suspended while the case is pending -- a rare case of authorities acting against an attorney before the lawyer has been convicted, said Executive Secretary Donald Lundberg.
"(This case) is about as bad as it can get," Lundberg said Tuesday. "I've had maybe one other case that dealt with a little more than a million dollars mishandled in a similar way."
Lundberg filed more than 300 pages of evidence along with the motion, including piles of bank records that allegedly show the fraudulent transactions.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 22, 2008 09:07 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts