Lawyer Accused of Robbing Bank to Pay Utility Bills, Other Living Expenses
For a decade or so, beginning in the late 1990s, attorney Peter Elliott allegedly siphoned some $2.5 million out of his client trust account to pay personal expenses.
The Wisconsin lawyer pleaded guilty to one count of federal bank fraud, and is scheduled to be sentenced later this month. But that wasn’t all, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
Questioned in July by a Waukesha County sheriff’s deputy who thought Elliott and his vehicle might match a bank robbery description, Elliott allegedly admitted that he had committed that June 12 crime as well. He said he had not been armed at the time, the newspaper recounts, based on information from a criminal complaint filed in Waukesha Circuit Court.
Elliott, who is 62, said it was “quite easy” to rob a Town Bank branch in Wales, Wis., of $9,516 and explained that he used the money to redeem his daughter’s vehicle from hock and pay utility bills and other living expenses, the complaint states.
He was suspended from law practice early this year after he refused to participate in an attorney discipline investigation, the newspaper reports.
