The Elusive Jessica Wells
An attorney’s conversion of entrusted funds and false statements made in the disciplinary process has led to disbarment by the Indiana Supreme Court
From 2014 through 2018, Respondent engaged in pervasive financial misconduct, including multiple overdrafts of her trust account, commingling of personal and client funds, use of trust account funds to pay personal or business expenses, failing to deposit client funds into a trust account, and conversion of client funds.
She denied converting client funds
Respondent…told the Commission that two checks totaling about $7,800 drawn from settlement proceeds in that case were written to a church’s building and scholarship funds pursuant to the terms of settlement, when in fact those checks were payments for Respondent’s children’s private school tuition. (Comm’n Ex. 29, Ex. Vol. 2 at 46-48; Comm’n Ex. 55, Ex. Vol. 4 at 238; Comm’n Ex. 60, Ex. Vol. 6 at 56). Finally, Respondent’s series of overdrafts (eight in all, including four totaling about $1,000 committed after Respondent had completed two remedial financial education courses) and her elaborate pattern of deception regarding those overdrafts provide substantial additional support for the hearing officer’s finding of conversion.
Making matters worse
Respondent lied at innumerable junctures to the Commission and during sworn testimony, forged an affidavit containing false statements of material fact, falsified a personal check, and even invented a fictitious bank manager – all in an effort to extricate herself from various investigations and proceedings that began as simple overdraft inquiries. Put simply, the criminal and dishonest nature of Respondent’s pattern of misconduct demonstrates that she cannot be safely recommended to the public as a person fit to practice law. Further, Respondent’s total lack of insight during these proceedings into the wrongfulness of failing to account for client funds and using those funds to pay personal expenses, and her utterly inexplicable decisions during the progression of this case to double and even triple down on her demonstrably false statements, persuade us that her fitness to practice law is not capable of being restored.
The forged affidavit was something less than a masterpiece
the evidence overwhelmingly supports the findings that Respondent, in an attempt to shift blame for one of the overdrafts onto a former paralegal, knowingly provided the Commission with a forged and false affidavit purportedly from her former paralegal. In the affidavit, the paralegal’s name was misspelled, her address and telephone number were incorrect, and her signature differed from the paralegal’s signature on other documents executed while in Respondent’s employ. Similarly, the notary’s signature on the affidavit differed from the signature the notary provided to the Commission, and the notary’s commission expiration date on the affidavit was inaccurate.
The bank manager
The evidence also overwhelmingly supports the findings that Respondent made a series of false statements to the Commission regarding an “extensive accounting” of her trust account allegedly performed by a bank manager at Respondent’s request. Respondent identified this manager as “Jessica Wells,” a person with whom Respondent indicated she was personally acquainted through her daughter’s soccer team. Respondent also provided the Commission with an address and phone number for “Jessica Wells” she indicated she had obtained through a soccer team list containing the names and contact information of the parents. However, the bank has never employed anyone by the name “Jessica Wells,” the address provided by Respondent is a heavily-wooded and vacant lot, and the phone number provided by Respondent belonged to one of Respondent’s clients, M.B., a fact Respondent attempted to conceal by omitting M.B. from the list of clients she provided to the Commission. Notwithstanding Respondent’s
reiteration of this “Jessica Wells” narrative during her final hearing testimony, Respondent’s counsel expressly stipulated at the hearing that “we’re in agreement there was no Jessica Wells” and that “this person doesn’t exist.”
(Mike Frisch)