March April 2003
Photos and text by Richard Bermack

Mike Maacks worked as a policeman for 26 years before becoming an investigator for the California State Bar, and he found that many of the lawyers he investigated did not differ much from the criminals he went after. “We get cases dealing with the full gambit of the law,” Maacks explains. “Lawyers seem to break all the laws everyone else does.” Most of the cases involve minor infractions, however some involve major fraud.

Attorneys have complicated and precise rules for setting up trust accounts to handle their clients’ money and keep it separate from their own. Maacks worked on a case where an attorney moved about $1.5 million through his client’s trust account, and discovered that the attorney was transferring his client’s money into his personal bank account. Maacks received 10 separate complaints against the attorney and was able to substantiate approximately $120,000 that the attorney had stolen from his clients over a period of a year and a half. “We continued to get complaints after he was disbarred, but after being disbarred we no longer had jurisdiction over him,” Maacks stated. The California State Bar has its own court. This court can order restitution, and recommend to the State Supreme Court that a lawyer be suspended from practice or disbarred. Those are the limits of its authority. For further prosecution it refers cases over to state and local law enforcement agencies.

Client Security Fund

What happens when attorneys have stolen clients’ money and the State Bar can’t recover it from the attorney? The State Bar maintains a Client Security Fund that can reimburse clients who lose money as a result of their attorney’s theft of client funds. The fund reimburses clients in amounts up to $50,000 and is maintained by a $35 annual assessment of all active bar members. “We paid out over $110,000 in that one case I investigated.” Maacks states with pride.