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San Diego 'Woman of the Year' attorney on the run 'after allegedly swindling more than $400,000' from clients
March 30, 2023
An attorney in San Diego who once won a local "woman of the year" award is now apparently a fugitive after being charged with misappropriating hundreds of thousands in funds from her clients, reported The Daily Beast on Thursday.
"Kelly DuFord Williams, 36, was charged with a slew of crimes — including grand theft of personal property and forgery of checks, money orders, and travelers’ checks — after allegedly swindling more than $400,000 from at least eight legal clients, according to a criminal complaint obtained by The Daily Beast and filed in San Diego Superior Court. Williams was also hit with an aggravated white-collar crime enhancement," reported Decca Muldowney and Pilar Melendez. "A March 20 warrant was filed for William’s arrest, but records from the San Diego Sheriff’s department show she is not in custody."
"Prosecutors say that starting in 2020, Williams and her boutique law firm, Slate Law Group, were hired in various civil matters. After successfully securing settlements for her clients, Williams allegedly would deposit their checks into 'her client trust account or business checking account,' and then 'spent the money without giving the clients their full share,'" said the report. "Fernando Rodridguez, a former client of Williams’, told The Daily Beast earlier this month that the lawyer allegedly stole part of his $175,000 settlement from an unjust termination case. The complaint details Rodriguez’s case, noting that Williams only paid him $24,450. Court documents say he is still owed $15,550."
The California State Bar has recommended Williams be stripped of her license to practice law, both due to the alleged embezzlement and an incident in which she "made at least two false 911 calls in Utah, where she allegedly posed as a district attorney concerned about the welfare of a child because she was angry at a former paramour."
Attorneys ripping off their own clients have made national news in recent years.
Last year, celebrity attorney Michael Avenatti — who once represented adult film star Stormy Daniels at the start of the controversy with former President Donald Trump — was sentenced to 14 years in prison for tax fraud and embezzlement of millions from clients. And this year, prosecutors argued that South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh, who was convicted of the murder of his wife and son, committed the killings to cover up his financial crimes, including embezzling from his clients and law partners.
ALSO IN THE NEWS: Watch: Plaintiff in Gwyneth Paltrow lawsuit compares actress to Jeffrey Epstein
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The plaintiff in a lawsuit against Gwyneth Paltrow on Wednesday hurled an incendiary allegation at the star in an apparent Jeffrey Epstein reference.
Terry Sanderson, the retired 76-year-old optometrist, is suing Paltrow for $300,000 in connection with a 2016 skiing accident. Paltrow is countersuing for $1, plus legal expenses.
“This is obviously an issue that someone needs to be accountable for and if they're never accountable, what are they going to do? They're going to do it again,” Sanderson said Wednesday during testimony, a video of which is circulating on social media.
“Now we have the molesting of young children on an island.”
Paltrow appeared to be in shock as her attorney Stephen Owens fired back saying “this is ridiculous testimony” before Judge Kent Holmberg ordered the jury to disregard Sanderson’s remark.
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Watch the exchange below or at this link.
\u201cThe doctor who is suing Gwyneth Paltrow says he is suing her because celebrities need to be held accountable and that when celebrities aren't held responsible, they start doing things like molesting children on islands. \n\nSo we got a QAnon guy on our hands...\u201d— Yashar Ali \ud83d\udc18 \u06cc\u0627\u0634\u0627\u0631 (@Yashar Ali \ud83d\udc18 \u06cc\u0627\u0634\u0627\u0631) 1680206908
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For those watching the New York grand jury dealing with the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, the revelations that more hush money payments are being explored in the case isn't new information.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump allegedly got his close friend David Pecker at the National Enquirer to run a scheme to buy Playboy model Karen McDougal's story and hire her to write fitness articles. Neither that story nor any fitness articles were ever published, and the payment was supposedly a "catch and kill" agreement to bury the matter.
Former FBI general counsel and NYU law professor Andrew Weissmann claims Pecker was being brought in to the grand jury to reveal the second piece of the Daniels story.
NBC's Vaughn Hillyard explained that the Southern District of New York had already laid out the details in the Pecker case. In fact, they laid out the argument not only in the 2018 sentencing memo for Michael Cohen, but also in describing what Pecker and his company already admitted to.
"There is a litany of statements that are important," said Hillyard. "One of those here: 'In or about Aug. 2015, David Pecker, the chairman is CEO of AMI, met with Michael Cohen, an attorney for a presidential candidate and at least one other member of the campaign that is Donald Trump's campaign. At the meeting, Pecker offered to help deal with negative stories about that presidential candidate's relationships with women, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.'"
The Manhattan DA has brought in two former Trump campaign staffers, Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks.
Hillyard explained that these details are important because it's a court document with Pecker's company admitting the purpose of paying McDougal was to suppress her story and prevent such stories from influencing the election.
"If prosecutors in Manhattan District Attorney's office are trying to get to the point of making the case of an election law violation here, the parent company of the National Enquirer, which bought Karen McDougal's story at the behest of Michael Cohen, and as federal prosecutors have alleged, Donald Trump's directive, then, therefore, this particular company has already admitted they did it for the purpose of influencing the 2016 presidential election," he explained.
Weissmann explained all of these facts were recorded and confirmed by the SDNY that Trump was not only a witness to the negotiations for McDougal and Daniels but it was at the behest of Trump.
"The reason, as Vaughn laid out, this is important is for two reasons: one, because you have David Pecker saying that Donald Trump was in on the scheme to do a catch and kill and that there were direct conversations with David Pecker, Michael Cohen, and the former president," Weissmann said. "So that's one incredibly important piece of evidence, and the other is the defense that Donald Trump may have, which is, 'I did this because I was concerned about Melania, my wife, finding out' — the so-called John Edwards defense."
"'I wasn't doing this related to the campaign,' is also something that is directly refuted by David Pecker, assuming he's going to repeat what he said to the southern district of New York, and it is laid out directly," Weissmann continued. So, those two things are really important pieces that the Manhattan District Attorney could be not just pursuing but really have in the pocket to present a strong case to the grand jury and then, of course, ultimately if there's an indictment, to a trial jury."
See the full discussion below or at the link here.
The Karen McDougal hush money piece kills all of Trump's defenses: law professor www.youtube.com
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