Bristol Stomp

A Virginia attorney has consented to license revocation in the wake of a recent criminal conviction

The Bristol Herald Courier had this report on the crimes

Hutchinson, a bankruptcy attorney, worked for a law firm in Bristol, Virginia. After the firm’s Bristol office closed, Hutchinson worked in the firm’s Kingsport, Tennessee office. Hutchinson was the only lawyer in the firm who actively practiced bankruptcy law and the bankruptcy practice was somewhat separate from other operations of the firm.

When clients retained the law firm for the purpose of filing bankruptcy petitions on their behalf, Hutchinson collected initial payments from clients ranging between approximately $500 to $1,000, according to the statement.

Those payments were supposed to be used to pay bankruptcy filing fees, among other things.

Hutchinson was required to deposit those initial payments into the firm’s trust account and then used the money to pay bankruptcy filing fees. However, beginning in approximately 2013, Hutchinson received the initial payments from clients as cash and blank money orders, did not deposit the funds into the trust account, did not record the payments on the firm’s books, and used most of the money for his personal purposes.

To keep the scheme going, Hutchinson used the firm’s credit card account to pay the client’s bankruptcy filing fees in the bankruptcy court for the Western District of Virginia. Through the scheme, Hutchinson fraudulently used the firm’s credit card for more than $70,000 in bankruptcy filing fees that should have been paid from the initial payments collected from clients.

In approximately January 2015, based on insufficient return on its investment, the firm decided to close down the bankruptcy practice. Hutchinson was instructed to close down the bankruptcy practice and not take on any more clients. Unbeknownst to the firm, Hutchinson continued to take on new clients, collect initial payments from clients, and to not record receipt of these payments on the firm’s books. Hutchinson fraudulently retained those funds for his personal use, failed to pay any filing fees for those clients, and failed to file bankruptcy petitions for those clients.

United States District Judge James P. Jones scheduled sentencing for August 12 at 10:30 a.m.

(Mike Frisch)