The end for a Fort Lauderdale attorney who disappeared with at least $630,000
The odyssey of a Fort Lauderdale attorney who disappeared with at least $630,000, some of which was intended for an octogenarian woman’s care, went to Philadelphia, returned to Fort Lauderdale and will end in Texas.
Specifically, a federal prison in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
On Thursday in Fort Lauderdale federal court, Judge David Leibowitz ordered John Spencer Jenkins, 55, to surrender Friday to start serving time at a federal prison in the Metroplex, where Jenkins has family. After pleading guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering, Jenkins got two years, nine months for each charge, sentences to be served concurrently, plus $760,865 restitution.
READ MORE: What happened to a Florida attorney accused of misappropriating $1 million
Another part of Jenkins’ sentence is a 500-hour residential drug and alcohol treatment program. That and a line from his lone pre-sentence letter of support — “John completed a residential substance abuse program and continues to regularly attend AA/NA meetings” — indicates what might have driven Jenkins to desert a promising law career to disappear with a chunk of neighbor William Walters’ estate.
MORE: A Fort Lauderdale lawyer stole a $643,000 inheritance and disappeared
Disappearing acts and funds
Like Jenkins, Walters lived in Wilton Manors. Walters set up his estate to go to a nephew, two nieces and the care of a younger sister. That sister is now 89, the age at which Walters died on Oct. 18 2021.
As executor of the estate, Walters’ nephew, Larry Corbin, hired Jenkins, aka “Spencer,” to handle the legal side of getting the money to whom it needed to go.
“[Jenkins] represented to [Corbin] that funds relating to [Walters’] estate should be deposited into the Jenkins Law Firm’s (trust) accounts so that [Jenkins] could manage the distribution of those assets among [Walters’] designees,” Jenkins admission of facts states.
But after Walters’ estate got liquidated and $543,832 got wired into Jenkins’ firm’s trust account. He soon moved some of that money through a couple other accounts, cash movements that prompted the money laundering charge.
Jenkins’ admission says he “caused the deposit of money from [Walters’] estate into the Jenkins Law Firm’s (trust) accounts under the false pretense that he would be distributing the estate when, in truth and in fact, he embezzled the funds for his own personal use.”
Not just those. Jenkins also took $88,000 he’d been wired for another client after a commercial asset sale. Also, the Florida Bar audit said the trust account wasn’t empty when Jenkins’ received Walters’ estate money.
None of Walters’ estate money reached the Louisville, Kentucky-based family it should have. By the time Corbin filed a complaint to the Florida Bar on July 17, 2023, Stealth Supply had filed a complaint to the Florida Bar that Mullins bungled, then abandoned their case.
Also, Jenkins’ client Peter Mullins claimed in a lawsuit that Jenkins abandoned his case so totally that Mullins didn’t know about the judgment against him until he learned there was a lien on real estate he wanted to sell.
Corbin hadn’t heard from Jenkins in a month when he filed a complaint with the Bar. Jenkins let his law firm’s state registration corporate paperwork lapse in September 2023. His Fort Lauderdale office was empty. His phone numbers were disconnected.
Jenkins was found in Philadelphia on Sept. 12, 2024, and charged days after.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Altanese Phenelus handled the prosecution of the case.
