Legal problems keep piling on the former leader of Georgia’s Democratic Party.
A criminal complaint filed Thursday with the Walton County Sheriff’s Office accuses Mike Berlon, who resigned his chairmanship June 10, of swindling businessman James Quick out of $144,000 — money Berlon was supposed to use in establishing a trust fund on Quick’s behalf.
Berlon told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday that his contract with Quick, the owner of Quick Pour Foundations, gives him 30 days to refund the money, and that it would be returned next week.
“It will be resolved in the next three to four days,” Berlon said.
Berlon, a Grayson attorney who also owns an investment company, resigned from his political post after the AJC reported on a string of legal woes accusing him of neglecting and defrauding clients.
A lawsuit filed in Gwinnett County accuses Berlon of failing to distribute nearly $1 million from a trust fund he created for a friend, Raymond Hines, and Hines’ son. He also has been accused in recent years of missing key deadlines, ignoring clients and defrauding a firm that he once represented out of more than $400,000.
Berlon was briefly suspended from the state bar in April, and he was reprimanded at his own request by the state Supreme Court in May for violating legal ethics rules.
Quick’s criminal complaint says he hired Berlon to handle his bankruptcy, and that Berlon advised Quick to turn over money from an annuity and an individual retirement account so that it could be placed into a trust that would be out of creditors’ reach.
“But nothing ever got done,” said Quick’s daughter, Gina Crawford. “None of the paperwork. Nothing.”
Berlon said he was “disappointed” that a criminal complaint was filed “when it wasn’t warranted.”
“I am certainly happy to refund all of the money he put down to fund the initial trust,” Berlon said.
Quick hired Athens attorney Michael Berger after reading about the Hines lawsuit. Berger wrote a letter to Berlon on May 30, demanding return of the funds and ordering him to cease all representations on Quick’s behalf.
In an email exchange with Berlon, provided to the newspaper by Crawford, Berger said there is “nothing ethically allowing you to retain my clients’ funds for a month when the funds were to be placed into a trust … and the trust, in fact, was never established.”
Berger, a bankruptcy attorney, told the AJC that money in IRAs already is protected during bankruptcy proceedings and that he has repeatedly asked Berlon for proof that the trust fund was created.
“I have never received the first document,” Berger said.
When asked by a reporter whether the trust fund has been established, Berlon said he could not comment because of attorney-client privilege. He used the same reasoning to decline to comment when asked whether he advised Quick to remove money from his IRA to protect it from creditors.
“I have fully complied with the terms of our contract, from my perspective,” Berlon said.
Crawford said a detective from the Sheriff’s Office told her Friday that it would give Berlon until the end of the week to return the money. She’s worried that it won’t happen.
“Everything he’s said has fallen through,” Crawford said of Berlon.
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