A bold US attorney who successfully negotiated a settlement over a highway expansion, then strangely forged his client’s signature to take off with the cash.
An Oklahoma lawyer has been accused of stealing his client’s settlement money and forging his signature.
Ralph Mackey, who hired the lawyer to negotiate a settlement related to a City of Tulsa highway expansion, which cut 20 acres out of Mackey’s 40 acre property.
But Mackey never received his $198,332 check, which, it turns out, was accepted on his behalf by his fraudulent attorney.
“Obviously didn’t look like my signature at all. My heart just sunk. My stomach turned,” Mackey told News On Six.
The lawyer responded with numerous excuses to Mackey’s emails, attempting to get the check back until he finally threatened to take legal action.
Unsurprisingly, Mackey then found an alternate attorney to file a lawsuit against the thieving lawyer, and even though the fraudulent lawyer has paid back $7,000 of it, Mackey needs the rest of it to pay his legal fees.
“When you settle a case, the first person who should get their money is the client. And he was hiding that he had gotten the money and used the money for other purposes, and he had to be sued to come clean on that,” Mackey’s new lawyer said.
