Florida attorney accused of misappropriating $37,000 says she and son faced homelessness
An Orlando lawyer whose trust account came up short by about $37,052, according to Florida Bar auditor calculations, began her suspension on Wednesday.
Natalie Jones said she misappropriated funds to avoid homelessness for herself and her son.
That’s from Jones’ June 25 letter to the Bar, written on Everett-Jones Law Firm stationery, and included in the documentation of her discipline case.
Jones said she made that decision in September 2021, but the bar auditor’s chart of her trust account says it was only $13,000 short at the end of that month. It was $37,052 in the red on June 30, 2024.
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As is standard in cases of misappropriated funds, the Bar petitioned for Jones’ emergency suspension, which the state Supreme Court granted on Sept. 16. Jones couldn’t accept any new clients from that date and, as of Wednesday, had to stop representing current clients.
Jones joined the Florida Bar in 1994 and, previously, had a clean discipline record.
Trust account issues
According to the Florida Bar, Bank of America notified the Bar on March 26 that Jones’ trust account had a $2,402.57 overdraft. When asked by the Bar to explain, the Bar’s petition said Jones stated that the overdraft occurred because “she sent a trust check to a client (‘M.R.S.’) with the expectation that ‘M.R.S.’ would receive it two days later,” giving her time to make trust account deposit to cover that check.
But after examining Jones’ trust account records, Florida Bar auditor Matthew Herdecker wrote that he found “that, contrary to [Jones’] explanation of events, the shortage in her account was caused when she disbursed her fees of $2,500 for a settlement on March 13, two weeks before she deposited the settlement check for that matter into her trust account.”
“[Jones], therefore, used funds owed to ‘M.R.S.’ to pay herself $2,500 in attorney’s fees for settling a case involving ‘M.P.,’ a different client.”
That’s when the Bar asked for Jones’ trust account records going back to April 1, 2021.
Jones sent those over along with the letter in which she tried to explain what led her to use the money.
Other people’s money
Jones said after the death of her mother, whom she’d been caring for, she moved to Orlando and began teaching high school. She began practicing law again by drafting demand letters for other lawyers, then picked up several cases, including accident cases involving Walmart and Lyft. The COVID-19 shutdowns hit schools in March 2020.
“In two months, I was without a steady income and in an exceptionally precarious situation,” Jones’ letter said.
She said “the closure of courts and the insurance companies’ exploitation of the pandemic’s chaos” prevented the settlement of the Walmart and Lyft cases. She dished those cases to large firms.
“When the smaller cases settled, I paid my clients and received my attorney fees,” she wrote. “However, as my ledger reflects, I did not immediately compensate the medical providers. In September 2021, 18 months after the pandemic-induced shutdown, I resorted to utilizing the medical providers’ funds to pay for the cost of living.
“The alternative would have rendered my son and me homeless.”
Jones’ letter didn’t explain how the trust account fell even further into arrears over the next three years.
