Disbarred Lawyer Hooked for $989k Restitution, Gets Prison in Client Swindle
A disbarred lawyer who swindled clients on Staten Island and in Brooklyn is on the hook for nearly $1 million in restitution and will spend up to a dozen years in prison, according to a report on silive.com.
“According to authorities, Robert Fontanelli helped himself to more than $1 million owed a client from a real-estate sale and to more than $155,000 from another client in an unrelated property deal,” the site reports.
A judge in state Supreme Court sentenced Fontanelli to one to three years in prison and ordered him to pay $55,760 to a Staten Island client whose personal-injury settlement the ex-barrister pocketed. The report says the sentence will run concurrently to a separate sentence of four to 12 years in prison and $933,245 in restitution imposed on Fontanelli last week in Brooklyn state Supreme Court for grand larceny and fraud-related convictions.
