Disbarment has been imposed by the Minnesota Supreme Court
The petition for disciplinary action is 38 pages long and sets forth detailed accounts of extensive misconduct by Kleyman. His misconduct falls into three broad categories. First, Kleyman misused his attorney trust accounts and committed other misconduct related to those accounts, including knowingly using these accounts to further fraudulent schemes. Second, he misappropriated client funds. Third, he made knowingly false statements to the Director and did not cooperate in the disciplinary investigation. We summarize the misconduct in each of these categories below.
The first category of misconduct involves Kleyman’s misuse of his trust accounts, including his knowing use of those accounts to further fraudulent schemes. In July 2017, Kleyman acted as an escrow agent in the sale of a bank draft between the Hanson Group of Companies (the Hanson Group), represented by Chief Executive Officer Harold
Boigues, and GCM Hong Kong Limited (GCM), represented by its president K.F. Kleyman’s electronic signature appeared on the contract document, his initials were on all four pages, and a scanned copy of his passport was attached to the document. The document also contained information regarding Kleyman’s attorney trust account into
which GCM was instructed to deposit the money. K.F. believed that the transaction was legitimate because of the use of Kleyman’s trust account.
In August 2017, GCM paid the Hanson Group 50,000€ directly and deposited $168,106.43 (the equivalent of 150,000€) into Kleyman’s Wells Fargo trust account. Kleyman paid himself $1,680 of the funds that GCM wired into his trust account for his role as an escrow agent in the transaction. The Hanson Group first provided GCM with a bank draft, which K.F. rejected, and the Hanson Group then presented GCM with another instrument, which K.F. also rejected, believing it to be a fraudulent and postdated personal check.
K.F. contacted both the Hanson Group and Kleyman in November 2017, requesting a refund and referencing his previous requests for a refund. In his response, Kleyman claimed that he had never seen the agreement and did not believe that he had a personal