A former attorney in Tacoma, Washington, pleaded guilty to wire fraud that included embezzling an elderly client’s reverse mortgage-funded trust account.
According to records filed in the case, in 2010 Colby Parks became the trustee for a living trust designed to pay the victim’s expenses after she was severely injured as a passenger on a motorcycle. The victim’s trust account contained approximately $1.66 million, but in his first seven years as the trustee Parks siphoned the funds for his own personal use in such large amounts that only $20,000 was left.
In 2018, Parks had the victim take out a reverse mortgage on her home and used the proceeds to fund the trust account. Parks made more than 600 transfers of the victim’s funds to accounts he controlled.
In all, over 10 years, Parks transferred more than $880,000 from the victim’s accounts to ones he controlled. He paid himself at least $530,000 more than he was entitled to receive as his fees for trustee services. By the end of 2019, the victim’s accounts held only $15. She was forced to sell her home – yet Parks diverted proceeds from the sale into his accounts by claiming the victim owed him money he had advanced to her.
Parks repeatedly told the defendant she was spending too much money, when in fact, the amount that the victim received as cash disbursements was a fraction of the amount that Parks secretly siphoned for himself.
The Washington State Bar also investigated the matter, but Parks resigned his law license ahead of a disciplinary hearing that could have resulted in his disbarment.
Prosecutors will recommend Parks serve no more than 33 months in prison when he is sentenced on Aug. 29.
That is ridiculous! Only up to 33 months in jail for what he did? Where is the justice in that sentence? The attorney should be force to sell his assets and pay back her what he took. Shame on him!