by Dennis Ferrier
SUMNER COUNTY, Tenn. (WZTV) — Even though he had at least 127 victims, it took years to bring Hendersonville’s Andy Allman to justice.
Why did it take so long? Partly because Allman is a lawyer and he is convicted of robbing people with a pen, paper and smile. But for many of his victims, it would have been better to have been robbed at gunpoint.
Back in early 2017, FOX 17 News packed the station with Allman’s alleged victim. Horror story after horror story. At the time, Allman’s law license was merely suspended but had been under investigation since 2014. A secret investigation. His clients had no idea who they were hiring.
Allman is accused of stealing Cathy Brown's entire inheritance: $230,000. Much of that money was supposed to go to her nephew Baylor Bramble, the Murfreesboro teen horrifically injured in a high school football game.
Cathy
Brown created a whole group of Allman victims, that’s how we all met.
FOX 17 News started putting the pressure on the board of professional
responsibility to do something significant and finally, in 2018, he was
disbarred.
“That took longer than it should have for sure. I really think your story prompted that to happen. I yelled, fussed, sent letters complaining, didn’t get anywhere but when your story broke it put pressure on them to disbar him. They had a stack this big of complaints and they hadn’t done anything about it until then,” said Brown.
The board of professional responsibility that oversees lawyers says it just took time, there were so many complaints from so many people and everything had to be thoroughly investigated.
Meanwhile, the criminal charges percolated. After being arrested for the Bramble theft, Allman was charged with 18 counts of felony theft in Sumner County.
Kevin Dycus hired Allman to put his late wife’s insurance policy in his son’s name, the $106,000 disappeared the next day.
“I guess I was just naïve and expected he’s going to go to jail that day. Andy’s knowledge of the legal system he was able to game it for some time,” said Dycus.
He would hire and fire lawyers, and get delay after delay. Finally, Sumner County Judge Dee Gay said enough, we are going to trial. Allman represented himself in Sumner County.
The jury found him guilty of 18 counts of felony theft—a possible but improbable 81 years in jail.
The victims are thrilled, but they will not get back any of the $1.1 million owed them, and it’s actually more. Noreen Gibbons didn’t just lose her legal fees, she lost her case, she missed all the deadlines, she says she lost more than a million dollars by hiring Allman, who at the time was in big trouble with the board of professional responsibility. But again, it was a secret investigation.
“He shouldn’t even have had his license to practice law when I hired him. It had already been established that there were multiple complaints and there was no way of knowing that,” said Gibbons.
During the trial, it came out how quickly Allman converted the client's money into his money.
It
was just enlightening to see how fast the money would go in and how
quickly it would go into Andy’s trust and then dispersed into personal
finances, business expenses, european vacations, almost 20 thousand
dollar engagement rings, an Alaska trip, boats, clubs,” said Kevin
Dycus.
Brown still waits for her justice in Davidson County and her opportunity to address Andy Allman.
“I don’t know if I even have words that I want to say to him. He caused delays in my nephew’s treatment. Caused duress on our whole family. He tore my whole life apart. I lived with such guilt for so long that I chose him for my attorney and he betrayed me,” said Brown.
I spoke with the prosecutor in the case Thomas Dean. He wrote:
This victory belongs to the victims. They testified and had to endure cross examination by Mr. Allman himself. Each of them honestly demonstrated the painful circumstances of their cases. All withstood the travail of testifying and being cross examined by someone who they once trusted as their attorney. Their testimony was the lynchpin to our success. The thanks, handclaps, and hugs from the victims after a hard-fought verdict like this one are the things a prosecutor remembers and cherishes long after the details of a trial fade from memory.
Sentencing is scheduled for mid-January.
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