A own harm attorney accused of thieving a lot more than $840,000 from shoppers was arrested Feb. 27 by Pinellas County Sheriff’s deputies, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri declared in a information meeting.
Christopher Michael Reynolds, 44, of Pinellas Park, opened his personal practice in Seminole in 2015 and mostly represented purchasers wounded in motor vehicle crashes. In accordance to Gualtieri, at minimum 16 consumers experienced their instances settled, then had their dollars stolen by Reynolds.
In accordance to information provided by the sheriff’s business office, the initially recognised instance of Reynolds thieving cash from consumers was in December 2018.
When consumers initially retained Reynolds as their law firm, he continually responded to any questions or problems they experienced, Gualtieri explained. But around time, Reynolds’ responses to customers grew to become infrequent and ultimately stopped totally. Some clients would then simply call their insurance policy organizations due to increasing medical costs. Their insurance coverage companies would tell them their scenarios had been settled.
The sheriff’s business initially uncovered of the allegations last October, when just one of Reynolds’ purchasers reported that her coverage organization informed her that her lawsuit had been settled months previously for $100,000, Gualtieri claimed. But the woman stated she hadn’t been given the money.
Investigators figured out that Reynolds had cast the woman’s identify on lawful paperwork and gathered the settlement income, in accordance to the sheriff’s workplace, but he did not use it to fork out her health care costs.
Gualtieri said a lien was submitted towards an additional a single of Reynolds’ consumers when they could not spend their health care payments. The finest way for the customers to get their dollars again, he claimed, would be for Reynolds to be ordered to shell out retribution at the conclusion of his court docket scenario. But the sheriff said it could consider a long time for that to occur.
“He had a fairly good issue likely,” Gualtieri mentioned of the thefts.
Reynolds pocketed as much as $148,750 from 1 customer in March 2019, according to facts presented by the sheriff’s office. He took at the very least $100,000 each individual from many shoppers. Gualtieri mentioned the purchasers have to have experienced really serious accidents in order to get six-determine settlements.
It is considered Reynolds utilised some of the money he stole to buy medicines, Gualtieri explained. He also claimed Reynolds put in a lot more than $30,000 on the grownup content material membership web-site OnlyFans, pretty much $400,000 on the digital payment system PayPal and much more than $24,000 on the trip-sharing app Uber.
Gualtieri reported the sheriff’s office environment thinks there probable are more customers whose revenue was stolen by Reynolds. He claimed Reynolds typically experienced conferences with his purchasers, who ranged in age from youthful to more mature persons, at bars.
Reynolds was suspended by the Florida Supreme Courtroom in December 2022 as a result of the allegations, court records demonstrate. A summary of the suspension order posted on the Florida Bar’s internet site states Reynolds “abandoned his regulation exercise with no observe.”
Gualtieri stated the Florida Bar previously had started investigating claims built towards Reynolds before the sheriff’s business office gained its very first complaint in October 2022.
That exact same month, Reynolds posted a image taken in Asheville, North Carolina, on his company Fb web site. Quite a few of the responses on the submit had been prepared by users boasting that Reynolds stole income from them.
Reynolds was booked into Pinellas County Jail on Feb. 27. Jail data demonstrate Reynolds faces 13 counts of grand theft, including just one rely of grand theft from a particular person 65 yrs of age or more mature. He also faces two counts of cash laundering.
He was held in lieu of $395,000 bail, according to jail data.
Asked if Reynolds was cooperating with deputies, Gualtieri claimed Reynolds “lawyered up” on his arrest.
The state welfare division has fired Brad Pigott, the former U.S. attorney it contracted to claw back thousands and thousands in misspent federal cash from dozens of people today in Mississippi’s sprawling welfare scandal.
The termination will come about a 7 days soon after Pigott submitted a subpoena on the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation for its communication with many noteworthy people, such as former Gov. Phil Bryant, to get to the base of why it been given $5 million in welfare resources to construct a volleyball stadium.
“All I did, and I imagine all that brought about me to be terminated from representing the division or having something to do with the litigation, was to test to get the reality about all of that,” Pigott informed Mississippi Right now hours immediately after his firing on Friday. “People are heading to go to jail more than this, at minimum the condition need to be ready to find out the real truth of what occurred.”
It is unclear how Pigott’s termination will affect the welfare agency’s civil lawsuit, which promised to probe players in the welfare plan and response queries that present prison proceedings wouldn’t. Just last week, Pigott had scheduled depositions with key players in the plan, including former NFL quarterback Brett Favre.
Pigott stated he was not given a cause for his termination, but that Mississippi Office of Human Solutions officials told him it was not related to the excellent of his authorized work.
Officers at the Mississippi Division of Human Expert services and the Lawyer General’s Business, which had to indication off on Pigott’s contract and is integrated on the civil lawsuit, did not return phone calls Friday. Pigott said both organizations were knowledgeable of his intent to subpoena the athletic basis days before he submitted.
Modern revelations about the welfare scandal, initially investigated by previous Bryant campaign manager and Bryant appointee Condition Auditor Shad White, influenced previous state and federal officers to issue no matter whether White’s close political ties to Bryant could have jeopardized an impartial investigation.
“I am confident they can uncover a loyal Republican attorney to do the do the job,” mentioned Pigott, a former President Bill Clinton appointee.
Pigott’s firing arrives just times immediately after he submitted legal paperwork zoning in on significant-profile gamers in the scheme — such as Bryant and Favre — that have so far escaped authorized scrutiny for their involvement.
Mississippi Right now uncovered in April that Bryant started aiding Favre with a enterprise known as Prevacus just days in advance of the enterprise obtained a dedication of $2 million in welfare resources. The money arrived from a nonprofit run by then-Very first Lady Deborah Bryant’s buddy Nancy New, who was provided authority to shell out tens of thousands and thousands of resources from MDHS. Texts confirmed the former governor was poised to acknowledge shares in Prevacus just after he left office, until finally the February 2020 arrests derailed the arrangement.
New, a defendant in the civil suit who also pleaded guilty to prices of bribery and fraud, also not long ago alleged for the initially time publicly that Gov. Bryant directed her to make a $1.1 million welfare payment to Favre.
In early Might, Pigott filed a civil go well with from 38 individuals or organizations in an endeavor to recoup around $24 million in welfare money the state claims they squandered. These funds were being supposed to address poverty in the poorest state in the nation.
Pigott was blocked, even so, from which includes in his initial criticism everything about the $5 million in welfare cash that went to build the USM volleyball stadium — a payment encouraged by Favre.
“I was forbidden to do so by political operatives who regard by themselves as better up than the director of the MDHS,” he explained to Mississippi Currently.
MDHS is an agency immediately overseen by Gov. Tate Reeves’ place of work. Reeves appointed the current MDHS director tasked with cleaning up the scandal, Bob Anderson, who labored with Pigott in the regional U.S. attorneys workplace in the 1990s and informed Pigott of his termination Friday.
Before Favre linked with New to fund Prevacus, the pharmaceutical commence he was investing in, he experienced sought her support on the volleyball undertaking.
“She has sturdy connections and gave me 5 million for Vball facility by means of grant dollars,” he texted Jake Vanlandingham, founder of Prevacus, in late 2018.
To justify the payments, New’s nonprofit Mississippi Neighborhood Schooling Center disguised the $5 million settlement with the athletic foundation as a lease of the university’s athletic amenities, in accordance to the indictment against Nancy New’s son Zach New. The nonprofit claimed it would use campus home to host activities and applications for the area’s “underserved population,” a nod to the actual goal of the grant money it was working with. In exchange, the athletic basis would build the volleyball stadium, which it known as a “wellness heart,” and include workplaces in the building in which the nonprofit could host anti-poverty systems. This hardly ever transpired.
Auditor White questioned the $5 million payment in his explosive 2020 audit of the Mississippi Department of Human Companies. Alfred Rankins, commissioner of the Institutions of Increased Discovering, denied in a letter to White that the board experienced any involvement in this plan, to which White responded, “Instead of quibbling, most likely your time could be much better used giving the community with a program for the Wellness Centre to be used by the at-risk group in Hattiesburg and offering that to me in a letter. This way, the TANF funds that was paid out for the Center could be employed to reward the community it was intended to advantage.”
Pigott argues the lease arrangement was intentionally deceitful.
“It’s evident from published facts that Brett Favre admitted in a textual content that that $5 million in Department of Human Expert services grant money was, in his thoughts, a reward to him, which he designed very clear was to absolve him of paying that income himself to his alma mater to create this sort of a volleyball facility,” Pigott informed Mississippi Currently. “That was completely wrong and it was in opposition to the law and it charge the TANF system $5 million.”
“And it’s also evident from general public data,” he ongoing, “that the USM Athletic Foundation realized all of this and agreed to and signed a sham, fraudulent, so-termed lease agreement with Nancy New’s entity pretending that the $5 million was to enable Nancy New’s entity to use the soccer stadium at USM, and the basketball arena at USM, and the baseball arena at USM, and the parking tons linked therewith, all of which was a lie, as the USM athletic basis well realized.”
Bryant advised Mississippi Today in April that he was informed of Favre’s USM volleyball eyesight.
“That volleyball matter stored coming up, and popping up, and then it’d go away,” he said.
In the drop of 2019, right after the auditor’s investigation experienced begun, Bryant hosted a assembly at his business office with Favre, Nancy New and Bryant’s freshly appointed welfare director Christopher Freeze. Favre had been complaining that he “owed” more than $1 million on the volleyball stadium. Bryant claimed New asked in the meeting for extra cash for the making, which was below building, and Bryant said he instructed her “no.”
Pigott subpoenaed interaction among USM athletic basis board users or workers and Phil Bryant, Deborah Bryant, Favre, Nancy New, her sons Zach New and Jess New, former welfare department director John Davis and retired wrestler Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr.
“It is also clear from revealed facts that the number of lies that the USM Athletic Foundation explained to on a lease agreement is a more substantial amount than probably anyone else advised on paper in the system of this total pathetic story of misuse of money meant not to go as presents to well known famous people or to athletic packages of universities but as an alternative to go to the neediest households in the condition,” Pigott mentioned.
Pigott had also submitted a recognize of depositions that he scheduled involving August and November for the subsequent persons: Zach New, Jess New, Nicholas Coughlin, Adam Such, Nancy New, Christi Webb, Paul LaCoste, Jacob VanLandingham, Brett Favre, Teddy DiBiase Jr., Brian Smith, Ted DiBiase Sr. and Heart of David Ministries, and Austin Smith. It’s unclear if the point out will shift ahead with these hearings devoid of Pigott.
