Jacksonville attorney’s license suspended after audit finds $107,000 ‘missing’ in client funds

A Jacksonville attorney’s license has been suspended following an audit that found more than $100,000 was at times missing from a trust fund intended for clients’ money.

“I also find that client funds have been misappropriated,” Florida Bar auditor Matthew Herdeker wrote in an affidavit attached to the bar’s emergency request asking the Florida Supreme Court to suspend James Alfred Stanley Jr.

The court approved the application on April 26 after the Law Society warned that Stanley “has caused, or is likely to cause, immediate and serious harm to his clients or the public” by misusing money purported to be carefully protected.

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Stanley, an attorney since 1989, did not respond to telephone and email messages seeking comment.

The Supreme Court ordered Stanley to stop accepting new clients or pursuing lawsuits, close his existing law firm within a month and stop doing anything that would allow him to ensure to someone else’s financial interests.

The order is the result of a Bar investigation that began because a Stanley firm bank account was overdrawn last fall.

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PNC Bank reported the overdraft to the Bar because the account was used to hold Stanley’s clients’ money in trust, and in November the Bar asked Stanley, a trial lawyer with a background in administrative law and civil law workers, to explain the deficit of $1,046.

In January, the Law Society launched a compliance audit and asked Stanley for a stack of records, but got only part of what it requested, the Law Society told the Supreme Court in its motion for suspension. So, the Bar subpoenaed PNC records dating back to 2021 and Herdeker got to work.

“After reviewing PNC Bank records, the Bar auditor calculated a shortage in the trust account ranging from at least $30,131.46 to at least $107,630.00 from June 2023 through January,” it said. the petition.

This article originally appeared in the Florida Times-Union: Audit reports $100,000 account ‘shortage’; Jacksonville lawyer suspended