A disbarred lawyer has been sentenced to 10 years? probation and one year to serve in the Muscogee County Work Camp after pleading guilty to charges of forgery, identity theft and conversion stemming from legal work he continued to do after his law license was lifted.
Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit Chief Judge John Allen on Wednesday also ordered Elliott Vogt, 37, to pay $1,500 in restitution, according to Vogt?s attorney, Neal Callahan of Columbus? Waldrep, Mullin & Callahan.
?I tried to tell the judge I didn?t think he needed prison time,? said Callahan, but Allen ?ordered that he do every single day.?
The office of Circuit District Attorney Julia Slater had asked that Vogt serve five years, Callahan said.
Vogt, a graduate of the University of Alabama School of Law who joined the Georgia bar in 2005, had a small family law practice across the Chattahoochee River from Columbus in Phenix City, Ala., when he failed to respond to a State Bar of Alabama investigation into a bounced check from his escrow account. His Alabama law license was suspended. The Georgia bar suspended his license here in a reciprocal action, said Callahan, and in June 2010 ? after an investigation into complaints from Georgia clients ? the Georgia Supreme Court ordered Vogt disbarred.
Vogt continued to represent clients until late 2010, when Chattahoochee Circuit Superior Court Judge Bobby Peters ordered him jailed for 20 days on contempt charges after a hearing in which evidence showed that Vogt had not only continued to represent clients but had forged court documents, seals and judges? signatures.
In the interim, Callahan said, he and Vogt have searched out former clients in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee and paid out about $26,000 in restitution.
?For two years we?ve been investigating his cases and finding all the people he represented from the time he was disbarred until he was caught,? said Callahan.
Reiterating the account he gave the Daily Report in 2010, after Peters took the unusual step of issuing a public press release to warn the public about Vogt, Callahan said his client was just an unprepared young lawyer whose life spun out of control after his practice began to slide.
?That $26,000 represents every dime he made for about a year,? said Callahan. ?He?s been paying back student loans; his wife left him and took their child; he?s living with his parents and making pizzas earning just above minimum wage.?
There was never any assertion that Vogt had any drug or alcohol problems, said Callahan. ?He never even had a speeding ticket.?
?I think the lesson here is that we, as a bar, need to make sure that lawyers who are going out on their own to be solo practitioners have mentors, that they have someone there to make sure they?re able to handle their workloads,? Callahan said.
Source: http://www.atlawblog.com/2012/10/disbarred-lawyer-to-serve-one-year-on-forgery-id-theft-charges/
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