- Bermuda: Lawyer found guilty of stealing funds belonging to clients
A High Court judge in Bermuda has remanded a 37-year-old lawyer in custody after he was found guilty of stealing nearly $500,000 from his clients.
Tyrone Quinn, 37, was remanded into custody by Puisne Judge Juan Wolffe after a 12-woman jury unanimously found him guilty of three charges of stealing after three and a half hours of deliberation.
Quinn’s request for bail pending punishment to allow him to get his affairs in order was denied by the judge. Alan Richards, the Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, told the High Court that the charges were serious and required a significant punishment.
Justice Wolffe has ordered a social inquiry report on Quinn, and the case will be heard in court again next month.
Quinn was charged with three counts of theft totaling $483,000 after three of his clients complained that he had failed to return compensation monies obtained on their behalf.
The alleged offences occurred between May 2020 and February 2021, and the High Court heard that Quinn represented Jacqueline Trott in 2020 when she sought compensation for an injury she sustained while working as a security guard.
The woman stated that Quinn recommended her to accept a $100,000 reward and that he notified her that the money had been sent at the end of February 2021.
He then handed her an envelope containing $13,000 and stated that the remaining funds will be transferred to her account, but no such transfer occurred.
Another client, Larry Brangman, stated that he hired Quinn in March 2019 following an accident that left him with cuts and a dislocated hip. He agreed to a US$300,000 settlement in April 2020 but got suspicious when he did not get the money.
Colonial Insurance informed Brangman in March 2021 that the funds had been distributed about a year earlier.
Jenna Riley, the third client, stated that she resolved a lawsuit for $89,000 and was informed by Quinn that she would receive the monies in a matter of weeks, but after months of trying, she reported the matter to the police.
Quinn admitted in court that he received the funds for the customers and had no intention of depriving them of the funds indefinitely.
He claimed that in 2019, he was approached by two persons who requested pay for a “problem” involving an illicit business transaction.
Quinn claimed he had no knowledge of the individuals or their “problem,” but after they threatened him and his family, he complied with their requests, giving them thousands of dollars and making a variety of payments on their behalf. He assured the judge that he had always planned to reimburse his clients’ money.
He asked the jurors to ponder what they would have done if their families’ lives were under danger.
The prosecutor, however, claimed Quinn acted dishonestly and used his customers’ monies as if they were his own.
Richards claimed that neither Quinn nor his witness were willing to identify the alleged perpetrators to police or the courts, and that enormous sums of money were spent on things unconnected to the purported threats.
