Lake Wales Lawyer Faces Grand Theft Charges For Allegedly Embezzling Money From Client’s Trust

As much as financial planners promote them as a status symbol, trusts are a handy way of concealing shady financial dealings. When you establish a trust, the assets in the trust do not legally belong to you. Instead, they exist in a legal no man’s land; it is possible for them to disappear into thin air if everyone who possesses a copy of the trust instrument loses track of it. Trusts do a better job of veiling themselves from the view of regulators than shell corporations do. When the protagonist of The Usual Suspects said, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” he could have applied this statement to trusts. If you use the money in a trust to conceal your financial crimes, you just might get away with it. If the trustee of a trust mishandles the money, though, the beneficiaries of the trust will likely complain to the police, leading to criminal charges for the trustee. If you are facing criminal charges in connection to your actions as the trustee of someone else’s trust, contact a Tampa white collar crime lawyer.

Defendant Allegedly Spent Deceased Client’s Money at Casino

A living trust is one that becomes effective as soon as the grantor signs the trust instrument and transfers property to it. The opposite is a testamentary trust, which is created as a provision of the grantor’s will; it goes into effect when the grantor’s estate settles. A living trust can be revocable, where the grantor can modify the trust instrument throughout his or her life, or irrevocable, where it operates independently of the grantor even while the grantor is alive.

A man who retired to Florida set up a living trust, with his lawyer Jason Penrod as trustee; the beneficiaries were the grantor’s son and daughter, who live in Pennsylvania. Everything went fine with the trust while the grantor was alive, but prosecutors allege that, once the grantor died, Penrod began transferring money out of the trust into his personal account and spending it at casinos. Because of his gambling addiction, he had already lost his personal savings. Police arrested him at the Hard Rock Casino in Broward County. He is now facing felony charges for grand theft.

Penrod told police that he had hired a lawyer and then invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. The beneficiaries of the trust told police that, shortly before Penrod’s arrest, he had traveled to Pennsylvania to tell them the truth about what had happened to the money in the trust and to apologize to them. Like all defendants in criminal cases, Penrod is innocent until proven guilty.

Contact Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Bryant Scriven

A criminal defense lawyer can help you if you are facing criminal charges for financial crimes arising from your work as the trustee of a living trust.  Contact Scriven Law in Tampa, Florida to schedule a consultation.

Source:

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