Six Months For Real

An attorney with a prior stayed six-month suspension has been sanctioned by the Ohio Supreme Court

In 2002, we found that he had failed to fully disclose to his clients his financial interest in investment recommendations that he made while acting as both their lawyer and their financial planner and we sanctioned him with a conditionally stayed six-month suspension.

Here

In 2016, relator, Stark County Bar Association, charged him with making false statements relating to his clients’ financial information while representing them in the Medicaid application process. Buttacavoli stipulated to some of the charges against him. After a hearing, the Board of Professional Conduct issued a report finding that he had engaged in some of the charged misconduct and recommending that we impose a two-year suspension with 18 months conditionally stayed and require him to make restitution to two of his former clients before seeking reinstatement. Neither party has objected to the board’s report and recommendation.

The particulars

a significant portion of Buttacavoli’s practice is providing financial-planning advice to elderly clients, with the purpose of ensuring their eligibility to receive long-term-care benefits under Medicaid. The board found that he had engaged in professional misconduct with regard to two such client matters.

First, in 2013 and 2014, Buttacavoli assisted Marquerite A. Marchant in transferring assets to family members, including gifting her life-estate interest in real property to her children, gifting the ownership of life-insurance policies to her daughter, and transferring stock ownership to her daughter effective upon Marchant’s death. In May 2014, Buttacavoli applied for Medicaid assistance on Marchant’s behalf, and the following month, the Stark County Department of Job and Family Services interviewed him as her representative. During that interview, he falsely stated that Marchant had not transferred, sold, or given away any resources within the previous five years. He also signed a statement attesting that the representations he made during the interview were truthful. During his disciplinary proceedings, Buttacavoli admitted that his representations to the agency were false, that he was required by law to disclose all prior transfers, and that he had made the misrepresentations for the purpose of inducing the agency to find that his client qualified for Medicaid benefits. 

After an investigation

In September 2015, Buttacavoli pled guilty to a first-degree misdemeanor charge of falsification under R.C. 2921.13(A)(4), which prohibits a person from knowingly making a false statement with the purpose of securing a benefit administered by a governmental agency. The Stark County Court of Common Pleas ordered him to serve a 180-day suspended sentence and pay a $500 fine and court costs.

He had engaged in similar misconduct in a second client matter.

The attorney also engaged in misconduct by charging a “non-refundable” fee without required disclosures.

The court accepted the proposed sanction. (Mike Frisch)