Posted on: September 4, 2024, 05:57h.
Last updated on: September 4, 2024, 05:57h.
A Florida lawyer ransacked a client’s trust account and blew $1.8 million of it gambling at the Hard Rock Casino in Tampa, according to a civil lawsuit filed by the real beneficiaries.
Jason Penrod is the owner of Family Elder Law, which closed its three branches without warning in Lake Wales, Lakeland, and Sebring in July, The Ledger reports.
This was probably because Penrod was facing disciplinary action from the Florida Bar and realized his life was unravelling. That same month, Penrod confessed in a letter to one of the plaintiffs that he had gambled away the money. He described himself as “a raging addict” in the letter, according to court documents.
I would gamble until I exhausted our family’s savings, my law firm’s profits; all the while avoiding reality and any type of feeling (which is the only way I can explain not fearing the consequences of my irrational and immoral behavior),” Penrod allegedly wrote in the letter, a copy of which was filed in court. “And then, once I received more money, I would gamble and lose those monies.”
‘Traumatic Stress’
Penrod was hired in 2014 to draft a living trust for a client named David D. Anderson, who died in 2021. Penrod was a designated successor trustee. Anderson’s children, Charles Anderson and Sherry Prevoznik, the plaintiffs in the case, were sole beneficiaries.
Charles Anderson met with Penrod in June to discuss winding down the administration of the trust, at which point Penrod passed Anderson the confessional letter he had written, the lawsuit states.
In it, he admits that from October 2023 to January 2024 he transferred money from the trust into his own personal account until it was depleted, according to the complaint.
Penrod blamed his actions on “post-traumatic stress endured from childhood experiences” that had taken over “various facets of my life, particularly my mental health.”
He viewed these transactions as temporary loans that he would pay back with interest, he claimed. But he soon began to realize he would not be able to repay the money and “hit rock bottom,” understanding that he would lose his license to practice law and go to prison, according to the letter filed in court.
Shot at Redemption
Penrod has filed a petition to the Florida Supreme Court asking it to grant “disciplinary revocation.” If granted, this would terminate his privilege to practice law while allowing him to retain the option of later applying for readmission to the Florida Bar to resume his legal career.
It would also mean that the Florida Bar’s disciplinary action against him would be dismissed, but it would not, of course, protect him from any criminal prosecution.
He said chose this route because he believes his ability to work in the future is the only shot he has to repay the money.
“I humbly ask that you allow me to continue to work and pay you back,” Penrod wrote in the letter. “This is obviously self-serving, since it keeps me from going to prison and allows me to be with my family. And while I know God’s grace is real, as I wouldn’t be here were it not, I cannot control […] whether you forgive me.”
