Now-Disbarred Closing Attorney Gets 3 Years For Looting Trust Accounts Of $1M, Ingloriously Ending 44-Year Law Career

In Henrico County, Virginia, the Richmond Times Dispatch reports:

• Character witnesses for longtime attorney William Orr Smith described him Tuesday as a trusted mentor whose decades-long career combined a sharp knowledge of the law, respect and a street-smart awareness.



• But when Smith stood to address a Henrico County judge poised to sentence him in a $1 million embezzlement scheme, Smith described his 44-year career as leading to guilty pleas that reduced him to "a common thief."



• The solemn-looking, chagrined attorney will spend three years in prison despite sentencing guidelines that called for no active prison time. Smith, 72, will report to the Henrico jail Jan. 27, Circuit Judge George F. Tidey ruled.



• Special Prosecutor Tracy Thorne-Begland described Smith as unequalled in the assistance he gave investigators tasked with unraveling the savvy attorney's embezzlements from a subsidiary of Bank of America that handled foreclosures and mortgages. But Thorne-Begland said, too, that the five-year scheme involved hundreds of illegal transfers from mortgage accounts and foreclosure accounts — repeated acts that could have stopped at any time but that resulted in only three actual criminal counts of embezzlement.

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• "It was who he was for virtually all his life," defense lawyer Craig S. Cooley said of Smith's ended law career, noting that insurance will pay $650,000 of the loss and that Smith will be hard-pressed to make restitution of the balance of the $1,065,327.10 that he pilfered.



• Smith surrendered his law license in June, cooperating with State Bar investigators as much as he did detectives. He pleaded guilty to two embezzlement counts in September.

For the story, see Lawyer, 72, will serve three years in $1 million embezzlement.