Las Vegas attorney charged with stealing $150K from client

Scott Michael Cantor

By Glenn Puit

A Las Vegas attorney has been charged with stealing $150,000 from a client, according to Las Vegas police records.

Scott Michael Cantor, 69, was booked at the Clark County Detention Center Oct. 14 on a single felony count of theft $100,000 or greater.

Las Vegas police wrote in an arrest warrant for Cantor that detectives were contacted in January by a male client of Cantor’s, requesting that police investigate the lawyer. The client, who’s name was blacked out in the warrant, said his deceased mother’s home had recently been sold, and that related probate proceedings were finalized in December 2020. The funds from the sale were deposited into Cantor’s client trust account, the client said, but Cantor never delivered the money to the client.

When the man started questioning Cantor as to why the money hadn’t been received, he told the client in a text “that he needed to audit his trust account.”

“After Mr. Cantor’s audit, he told (the client) that there was only $200 in his trust account,” police said. “Mr. Cantor told (the client) that he would make good on the funds, but never paid.”

Police said they obtained text conversations between the client and Cantor in which Cantor repeatedly made excuses for why the money hadn’t been transferred.

“Get on putting that money in my account,” the client texted Cantor.

“I’m on it today,” Cantor responded.

At one point Cantor told the man “I don’t understand how I am short. It shouldn’t be. Either way I have to make you whole. I’m on the line to see if I can secure any funds I’m short.”

Police said in the warrant that Cantor ultimately offered the client “mining contracts as a replacement for the money.”

Cantor, police said, at one point sent the client a picture showing the funds had been transferred from Cantor’s bank account, but when police went to check Cantor’s bank records, they “showed no record of $150,000.00 being transferred.”

Cantor did not respond to requests for comment made Monday by email and phone. His attorney, Ozzie Fumo, declined to comment.

State Bar of Nevada records indicate Cantor has been a member since 1978.

Bar spokesman Phil Pattee Monday that the organization is aware of Cantor’s arrest.

“The matter is under investigation,” he said. “It will be presented to a screening panel for the Southern Nevada Disciplinary Board (of the Bar.)”

Records from the legal profession’s governing organization indicate Cantor was the subject of a disciplinary complaint resolved in 2016.

In a Nevada Supreme Court order, the bar said a hearing panel previously found that Cantor had breached a mentoring agreement by “failing to implement an accounting system” at his law firm.

The panel recommended a stayed three-year suspension of Cantor’s law license, followed by one year of probation. Cantor was also ordered to perform an audit of a trust account at the firm and repay any monies owed.

The nature of the complaint filed against Cantor was not detailed in the order.

“Cantor must implement and use accounting and case management systems for the operation of his law practice,” the Supreme Court wrote in the order.

Court records did not immediately list a future court date for Cantor.

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Las Vegas attorney charged with stealing $150K from client

Disbarred Brooklyn lawyer charged with stealing down payment on home

Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez. Eagle file photo by Rob Abruzzese

An East Flatbush man has been indicted by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office on a grand larceny charge for allegedly stealing the down payment for the purchase of a Brownsville home whose seller he represented. The defendant also allegedly separately borrowed $14,000 from the client and never paid it back.
  
Gonzalez identified the defendant as Gerald Douglas, 52, of East Flatbush. He was arraigned today before Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Sharen Hudson on an indictment in which he is charged with second-degree grand larceny. He was released without bail and ordered to return to court on May 12, 2021.
 
According to the DA’s Office, the defendant represented a 76-year-old woman in the sale of her Brownsville home, negotiating the contract for her in September 2018. A down payment of $71,700 was allegedly deposited into the defendant’s escrow account. 

The closing occurred in August 2019, by which time the defendant had allegedly stopped returning his client’s phone calls, and she was forced to retain new counsel to close the transaction. The client received the sale proceeds at the closing but not the down payment, despite repeated requests to the defendant, according to the charges.
 
It is further alleged that in June and July 2018, Douglas asked the same client if she would loan him money, first $6,000 and then $8,000. He allegedly told her he was expecting a rental payment for a property he owned in Flatbush, although in fact the property had gone into foreclosure five years earlier and he was no longer the owner.

Gonzalez commented, “The victim in this case was allegedly defrauded of a large sum of money by her own attorney, who had a legal duty to protect her interests. I would like to thank my Public Integrity Bureau for its hard work in seeking to hold the defendant accountable for his alleged criminal act and betrayal of trust.”
 
Douglas was disbarred by the Appellate Division Second Department in 2019.
 
The case is being prosecuted by Senior Assistant District Attorney Adam Libove of the District Attorney’s Public Integrity Bureau, under the supervision of Assistant District Attorney Laura Neubauer, bureau chief, and Assistant District Attorney Michel Spanakos, deputy chief of the District Attorney’s Investigations Division.

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Disbarred Brooklyn lawyer charged with stealing down payment on home

Former St. Pete trust attorney charged with stealing $279,000 from client

St. Petersburg police said he had been hired to oversee a trust valued at more than $700,000.

Darce Jay Snyder, 68, faces a charge of grand theft. [Pinellas County Sheriff's Office]

By Chris Tisch

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.

Snyder was being held at the Pinellas County jail on $150,000 bail. An assistant public defender has entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

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Former St. Pete trust attorney charged with stealing $279,000 from client

Former Bridgeport Attorney Charged With Stealing From Client in Bankruptcy

Booking photo of former Bridgeport attorney Alfred Cali.

A former Bridgeport attorney was arrested Wednesday and charged with one count of second-degree larceny in connection with the alleged theft of nearly $10,000 from a client in a bankruptcy and a foreclosure case.

According to an arrest warrant application, New Jersey resident Alfred Cali, while practicing law in Bridgeport in 2016, deposited into his personal account a check for $9,614 that he received from his client, Fidel Morales.

Morales had paid Cali a $20,000 retainer.

Cali, the arrest warrant says, advised Morales that he should write him a $9,614 check for cash. He told Morales that the money would go into his attorney’s trustee account and then the funds would be forwarded to the lender, according to the arrest warrant. Cali, however, deposited the money into his personal bank account and never made a payment to the lender, authorities said.

Since the mortgage holder did not receive the adequate protection payments as ordered, Morales’ bankruptcy petition and home were in jeopardy.

Cali, 61, was arrested in New Jersey and brought back to Connecticut by inspectors from the Statewide Prosecution Bureau in the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney. He was arrested on a warrant charging him with second-degree larceny, which is a felony. The Statewide Prosecution Bureau was following up on a complaint from the state’s Statewide Grievance Committee.

In February 2016, Cali appeared before the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Connecticut in Hartford. When asked by the court why the agreed-upon payments had not been made to Morales’ lender, he told the court he didn’t know, according to the arrest warrant.

Between March and September 2016, the arrest warrant continues, the Connecticut Statewide Grievance Committee sent six notices by registered mail to Cali’s office and home. The notices sent to his office were returned marked as “unable to forward.” Those sent to his home address were not returned, authorities said.

On May 26, 2016, Cali was suspended from the practice of law after failing to appear at an interim suspension hearing.

The attorney, who previously practiced law with the Bridgeport firm of Cali & Pol, was arraigned in Bridgeport Superior Court on Wednesday by Judge Tracy Lee Dayton. Dayton ordered Cali held in lieu of a $50,000 bond. The case was continued to Oct. 31 and Cali faces up to 10 years in prison.

The Statewide Prosecution Bureau is handling the case. Mark Dupuis, communications officer for the state’s Division of Criminal Justice, said there would be no comment from authorities on the matter.

Cali is represented by Thomas Cocco of the Bridgeport-based Cocco & Ginsberg, LLC. Cocco told the Connecticut Law Tribune Thursday that, “Everything is not always as it seems. We shouldn’t jump to judgement. Everybody deserves their day in court.”

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Former Bridgeport Attorney Charged With Stealing From Client in Bankruptcy