These stories usually reside in the Mish Mash section but this one is so outrageous it has made its way to the House of Butter column
A Kitsap County lawyer accused of stealing $500,000 from a client’s estate meant for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital so she could loan money to a purported arms dealer in Paraguay — and then stealing $500,000 from a friend to cover the first theft — was sentenced Friday to 18 months in federal prison.
Darlene Piper, 57, of South Kitsap, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to a count of wire fraud for the scheme. She apologized first to the court then to the friend she betrayed, Tina Chapman.
“I have to say it is completely crazy,” Piper said in an emotional statement to Judge Robert Bryan.
Before federal prosecutors took the case and charged Piper criminally, Chapman was left to foot legal bills to sue Piper, and win, but she said she has not received any money from the judgment.
The experience left Chapman’s faith in the U.S. court system shaken, which, as an immigrant from Vietnam, she had fully believed in before the ordeal.
“I thought we were close friends,” Chapman told Judge Bryan of her relationship with Piper. “I trusted her, I confided in her, I respected her opinion and advice, I thought of her as a sister.”
The $500,000 she gave to Piper, for what she was led to believe was an investment, accounted in part for a lifetime of work – often six or seven days a week – that came after the sale of Chapman’s Bainbridge Island house.
Here’s the DOJ press release
Former Port Orchard, Washington attorney sentenced to prison for defrauding clients
Tacoma – A former Port Orchard, Washington attorney, who stole a bequest left by a client for the benefit of a children’s hospital, and then defrauded a close friend, was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to 18 months in prison and 3 years of supervised release for wire fraud, announced U.S. Attorney Nick Brown. Darlene Piper, 57, of Bremerton, Washington pleaded guilty on August 30, 2021. Piper was indicted in September 2020, following a multi-year fraudulent scheme. At the sentencing hearing U.S. District Judge Robert J. Bryan said Piper “became a thief and a crook” through “a long series of criminal acts.” In addition to her financial victim Judge Bryan said “the legal profession is a victim as well.”
According to records filed in the case, Piper practiced law in Port Orchard, handling wills, trusts and probate of estates. In 2011, she prepared a will for a client who left his entire estate to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. However, when that client died in 2014, Piper as executor of the estate, stole $500,000 from the estate and invested it in Paraguay. When the children’s hospital inquired about the funds it was owed, Piper stole from a friend to repay the hospital. She told the friend that she had invested the money in Paraguay. The victim had just sold a home, and the money was for her retirement. The victim sued Piper and won. Piper has not paid the victim any of the money awarded through the litigation.
In sentencing documents prosecutors described how Piper continues to falsify her finances. She failed to list homes she owns in Cabo San Lucas and property on the coast of Mexico as assets that could be liquidated to pay her victims.
Judge Bryan ordered Piper to sell the waterfront property within 6 months to compensate her victims. He ordered her to pay restitution of $500,000.
Piper had already given up her law license and bar membership, after the Washington State Bar Association was poised to sanction her for stealing $42,000 from two other clients.
The case was investigated by the FBI. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Michael Dion, and by former Assistant United States Attorneys Arlen Storm and Andre Penalver.
