Posted on 06/13/2007 8:26:43 PM PDT by KJC1
Wealth, prestige gone, a lawyer faces prison term
He pleaded guilty to fraud while bilking the trust he was overseeing of $52 million
Mark Avery, San Francisco-born son of one of the nation's pre-eminent trust attorneys, was one of 14 lawyers fired in 1996 by a then-incoming San Francisco district attorney intent on making room for his own people.
Avery, now 48, rebuilt his life in Alaska, first working as a prosecutor in Anchorage and then prospering as he took over his late father's role as a trust attorney. But the wealth and prestige he built along the way were a product of betrayal and lies, authorities say.
Avery now faces the possibility of a prison sentence, having pleaded guilty to federal wire fraud and money laundering in connection with what investigators say was the $52 million bilking of a trust he was supposed to guard.
---snip---
Stanley Smith, an Australian who made millions in Malaysian mining, died in 1968. The wealth he amassed was assembled into the May and Stanley Smith Charitable Trust, formed in 1989 in California. It was used to donate to organizations involved in assisting the elderly, the blind, and disabled and poor children.
Smith's widow, May Wong Smith, helped administer her own personal trust, the May Smith Trust. But during the 1980s she began a slow decline from dementia and by 1991 required full-time care. By then she was living in a cottage with caregivers on the tiny island of Guernsey off the coast of France.
But shortly after he took over for his father as attorney and trustee, Avery carried out a series of transactions involving the May Smith Trust that he would later admit would never have been authorized by May Wong Smith.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
That is the truth, you put an attorney in charge of an estate and you will see an estate stolen.
Yeah, you are right. “Isn’t” is exactly what I meant.
Something I have found from personal experience.
I’ve met honorable lawyers. Both of them.
I sympathize.
Reminds me of the joke, “What’s the difference between a lawyer and a wood tick?”
“A wood tick falls off you when you die.”
It’s hard to imagine the greed that wouldn’t be happy with a cushy $400k a year trust attorney job. Now his whole family is living in a room in his aunt’s house...sniff.
Security Aviation was a big story in Alaska. Do a search of the name.
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