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| Joshua Adam Janis |
This time, the target of his alleged theft was his former mother-in-law, an East Goshen woman from whom he is now accused of stealing about $5,000 by falsely applying for a line of credit using her personal identification and that of a business she co-owned with her daughter, who herself has been identified as one of Janis’s victims.
Chester County Detectives Gerald Davis Jr. and Sgt. Robert Dougherty filed a criminal complaint containing the new allegations following a preliminary hearing before District Judge Bret Binder on charges that Janis — whose license to practice law was suspended by the Pennsylvania Disciplinary Board in December 2015 — had improperly taken money from three women who had hired him to represent them in family law matters in 2014 and 2015.
It was the fifth such arrest for Janis, 38, who now lives with his family in New Jersey, since July 2018. Clients Janis allegedly bilked are from Chester, Montgomery and Berks counties.
The hearing before Binder lasted more than 2½ hours before the two sides concluded their presentations, but without a resolution. Binder took the unusual step of saying that he would wait two weeks before announcing whether he would hold Janis on all, some, or none of the theft charges against him.
The judge explained that the issues involved in the case were complex enough that he wanted the additional time to study the law involved and mull over the facts presented by the prosecution and the arguments made by Janis’ defense attorney.
In general, Chief Deputy District Attorney Ronald Yen, who is heading the prosecution against Janis on all the myriad charges against him, said that Janis had illegally taken money paid to him by the three women by not depositing it in a so-called “lawyers trust account,” as is described by the state’s Rules of Professional Conduct.
Funds deposited in such accounts are meant to be withdrawn as an attorney completes work on a client’s case, with proper billing identifying the withdrawals sent to the client. In the cases of the three women, Yen argued, he had instead put the fees in his own bank account and used them as his own.
“Mr. Janis put moneys he was required to hold in trust into his own account and he spent it,” Yen said in a closing argument Friday in Binder’s courtroom at the Chester County Justice Center. “He took those funds and used them as his own when he knew he could not. It is not his money. It is the client’s money.”
But attorney Dan McGarrigle of Media, representing Janis, argued strongly that the prosecution was attempting to transform what should be either a civil suit or a disciplinary matter into a criminal case.
“They haven’t proven anything,” McGarrigle said of the prosecution’s case. “We are not in a disciplinary hearing. There has to be an intent to do something criminal, and it was his money to do whatever he wanted to do.” he argued that the women had been told what Janis intended to do for them, and at least one seemed satisfied enough that she considered hiring him for new work on her behalf.
The three women involved — Bonnie Hains, Katherine Bailey, and Judith Borland — all testified at the hearing about their interactions with Janis, which took place in 2014 and 2015, before his license was suspended by the state. The suspension came after multiple clients told investigators for the Disciplinary Board that Janis had taken money for their cases and then did little or no work for them, and attempted to skirt their attempts to get refunds.
Hains said that she had paid Janis $2,500 in March 2014 for a custody case involving her daughter, Jami Hains. She said that Janis had initially told her that the “retainer” would be put into a secure account that he would withdrawl from as her worked, but that he later sent her daughter a written fee agreement that specified that the $2,500 was a one-time payment to his office that would be deposited into his operating account rather than a trust account.
Eventually, when Hains checked court dockets in Chester and Montgomery counties, she learned that Janis had never filed anything in her daughter’s behalf, according to a criminal complaint filed in January.
Likewise, Bailey testified that she had paid Janis $2,500 in January 2015 to represent her in a child custody matter. She said he seemed to do little to present her case at a mediation hearing held in the Justice Center in March 2015, and afterwards told her. “He was going to take care of everything.”
But she said she later learned he had never spoken with the attorney for the child’s father, and never sent her an itemized bill for his services. There was a complete lack of communication, and she never received a refund for her payment after he was suspended.
Finally, Borland said she paid Janis $3,000 to handle her divorce in July 2015, at a time when he was being investigated by the Disciplinary Board. He told her nothing of the investigation, and gave her no written fee agreement. He filed a divorce complaint in her behalf, she said in her testimony, but “not a lot happened after that.”
Eventually, when she saw an article in the Daily Local News about his suspension, she contacted him and received $920 back from him, although he never explained what he had done to earn the $2,080.
McGarrigle objected frequently to much of the women’s testimony, and argued that the alleged thefts might be attributed to sloppy bookkeeping, but lacked any showing of criminal intent. The charges that Janis faces include theft by failure to make required disposition of funds, theft by deception, and receiving stolen property.
According to a press release from the District Attorney’s Office announcing the latest arrest, the total sum of alleged thefts from former clients is now in excess of $100,000, in addition to the thefts from his mother-in-law.
Said District Attorney Tom Hogan: "The defendant’s pattern of conduct is reprehensible. He regarded everybody he met as a potential victim - - his clients, his wife, even his mother-in-law.”
The allegations from the criminal complaint are as follows:
After Janis was arrested for the first time in July and charged with stealing money from the West Chester law firm he worked at from 2006 to 2013, his wife, Jennifer Hulnick, left him and divorced him. During the subsequent time period, she discovered that he had opened multiple credit card accounts in her name without her permission and incurred substantial debts in her name.
In August, Hulnick went to the mailbox that she and Janis had shared at their former home in East Caln and found a bank statement from JP Morgan Chase identifying $3,931 in an outstanding balance. The account was in the name of Ellen Hulnick, her mother, and the company they ran together.
In their investigation, Davis and Dougherty discovered that the defendant had set up a Chase account in Ellen Hulnick’s name, but with his own contact information and phone number, preventing his mother-in-law from knowing about the account. He used his mother-in-law’s name, Social Security number, and date of birth to open the account, and incurred $5,000 in unpaid debt on this account, less fees and costs.
Hulnick told the detectives that she had earlier caught Janis trying to open an account in her name in March 2016, just after she and her daughter started their business. When she confronted him, he told her he was “just trying something” and “messing around” without any further explanation, according to the criminal complaint. She told him he did not have any permission to open any account in her name. The new account was opened by Janis that same month, according to the investigators.
Janis is charged with identity theft, forgery, theft by deception, and receiving stolen property. After arraigning him, Binder set bail at $10,000 unsecured. The three cases that have been held for Common Pleas Court have been assigned to Judge Patrick Carmody.
Anyone with additional information is asked to contact Dougherty at 610-344-6866.
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Legal woes adding up for suspended Chesco lawyer
Keep piling them on him so there's no way he can get off or be put on probation!
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