Lawyer is charged with stealing $587K from estate of deceased 'kung fu' judge
A Queens lawyer has been charged with grand larceny for allegedly siphoning $587,000 in Brooklyn real estate sale proceeds from the estate of a deceased New York judge.
Bail was set Wednesday at $250,000 for attorney Frank Racano, as he entered a not-guilty plea in criminal court in Brooklyn. He is accused of writing more than 300 checks for personal expenses against a $737,000 escrow deposit from a prospective buyer of a historic theater property owned by the late John Phillips Jr., the New York Law Journal (sub. req.) and the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) report.
The buyer agreed in 2012 to pay $2.2 million for a historic theater and adjacent property, providing a $737,000 down payment that was supposed to cover closing costs and real estate taxes. Racano wrote over 300 checks for personal use between February 2013 and May 2015, along with legitimate checks for another $150,000, until the account was depleted, according to a prosecutor and the indictment in the case.
Phillips, who at one point owned $10 million worth of real estate, was known as the “kung fu” judge due to his martial arts expertise, which he occasionally demonstrated from the bench in his Brooklyn civil courtroom.
However, he suffered from Alzheimer’s before dying intestate in 2008. Racano is not the first attorney accused of making unauthorized withdrawals of funds from the former judge’s assets, as an earlier ABAJournal.com post details.
