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| Darce Jay Snyder, 68, faces a charge of grand theft. [Pinellas County Sheriff's Office] |
A St. Petersburg man who worked as a trust attorney has been arrested and charged with stealing nearly $279,000 from a client.
Darce Jay Snyder, 68, faces a charge of grand theft.
St.
Petersburg police said he had been hired to oversee a trust valued at
more than $700,000. When his client turned 50 and obtained control of
the trust’s assets, she found that Snyder had stolen $279,000 between
February and May of 2015. He stole by the money by writing checks from
the trust to himself, arrest reports state.
Bay
News 9 is reporting that the victim is Valerie Sexton-Maher, 50. She
told the station that the trust is actually empty, and that prosecutors
can’t charge him for stealing the entire amount because of the statute
of limitations.
“Unfortunately, you can’t always trust a trustee on an account,” she told Bay News 9. “They are very good at hiding money.
“What
he was charged with is not the full extent of what he took from me,”
she added. “At the beginning of the trustee account, there was close to a
million dollars in it and that was when my mother passed away in 2001.
So, at a conservative rate of interest we would be talking about
millions.
“It’s
beyond upsetting. It makes me sad that unfortunately my mother trusted
this person and thought that he was going to do the right thing for me,”
she said. “I’ve prided myself on not touching any money from that trust
until I needed it… I planned on using it for my retirement. I’ve had
some health issues in the last couple of years and… that money would be a
big deal for me now and I don’t have it.”
Snyder’s
law license was revoked by the Florida Supreme Court in 2018 after he
was accused of withdrawing $1 million in advance fees from another
client, according to Bay News 9.
Full Article & Source:
Former St. Pete trust attorney charged with stealing $279,000 from client
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