The Georgia Supreme Court has rejected a petition for voluntary dicipline

In his petition, Williams admits that he violated Rule 8.4 (a) (2) of the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct, see Bar Rule 4-102 (d), when in April 2012 in an Alabama state court, he pled guilty to selling unregistered securities and was sentenced to three to five years on probation.  Williams, who has been a member of the Bar since 2003, admits that he was the escrow officer for a client who offered a high-yield investment program and that, although Williams did not promote the sale of securities and was not otherwise involved in the underlying fraud scheme, he was responsible for holding and disbursing the funds associated with the program using his trust account. Williams asserts that he filed a notice to withdraw upon learning of a criminal investigation of the program, but admits that he nonetheless subsequently accepted $380,000 from an investor and then disbursed those funds in February 2010, instead of reporting the matter to the authorities and holding the money in his trust account as he should have done.

Notably

Williams self-reported his conviction to the State Bar of Georgia on June 5, 2012, but the Bar did not begin disciplinary proceedings until May 16, 2016.

…although it appears that the deplorable delay between Williams’s self-reporting to the Bar and the initiation of these disciplinary proceedings was not his fault, he has presented no evidence that he was not practicing law after his conviction. Such evidence might justify the imposition of a longer suspension nunc pro tunc.

Eventually

On January 9, 2017, the special master issued his report. The special master considered the mitigating factors offered by Williams and noted that although Williams was entitled to have the delay in the disciplinary proceedings considered as a mitigating factor, he had benefitted from the delay by not being suspended since his 2012 conviction. The special master recommended that this Court accept Williams’s petition for a suspension concurrent with his probation.

The Court

Based upon our review of the existing record, we do not believe that the proposed suspension is sufficient discipline. Williams has represented that his probation will end in April 2017, meaning that he would be suspended from the practice of law for only about a month from now. Although the Alabama prosecutor indicated in his letter that Williams’s involvement in the criminal scheme was minimal, the prosecutor also explained that Williams, “while not initially aware of [the] fraudulent activity, . . . should have abandoned his role earlier than he did after receiving complaints from the victims.” Moreover, Williams’s criminal conduct directly involved his law practice. In fact, the prosecutor explained that by using his trust account to hold and disburse funds as part of the fraudulent scheme, Williams received $6,066.26 in legal fees. In the cases where, due to the presence of significant mitigating factors, this Court has not simply disbarred lawyers for criminal convictions related to their practice of law, we have imposed a suspension considerably longer than one month.

(Mike Frisch)