Lawyer gets 30 days for contempt after admitting he took money from ex-judge's 'honey pot' estate
A New York lawyer was sentenced Wednesday to 30 days for contempt for not complying with a court order requiring him to account for $2.28 million received from the sale of a deceased former judge’s real estate in 2012.
The sentence came after attorney Frank Racano, 54, admitted during a hearing that he “robbed from Peter to pay Paul,” taking money from the estate escrow account of the late John “Kung Fu” Phillips and using it for personal expenses, reports the New York Daily News.
Phillips, who at one time reportedly held real estate worth $10 million, died in 2008 at age 83, suffering from Alzheimer’s. His relatives are still awaiting a distribution by his estate.
A spokeswoman for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office said an investigation is ongoing, the newspaper reports.
Racano, who represented a nephew of Phillips who served as executor of the estate, is at least the second lawyer to have come to grief over what the sentencing judge described as an estate “used as everyone’s honey pot.”
In 2008, attorney Emani Taylor, who served as guardian for Phillips, was ordered to repay $403,000 and suspended from practice before the Appellate Division, First Department. A judge said she had been “at best, withdrawing funds from the guardianship account for legal fees without court permission, or, at worst, intentionally converting guardianship funds.”
Taylor was subsequently disbarred, having repaid none of the $403,000 and still contending that she was entitled to $700,000 in legal fees, despite a court’s prior finding to the contrary, says a November 2013 opinion by the Appellate Division, First Department.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Estate of ‘kung fu judge’ wins $750K in suit over his claimed unlawful confinement in nursing home”
