The Providence Jnl
PROVIDENCE – As a personal injury lawyer, Peter P.D. Leach “had it all,” a federal prosecutor said Thursday.
He came from a loving family, enjoyed an elite education and earned between $200,000 and $300,000 a year as a lawyer respected by others in his field.
And yet.
And yet, he stole from the very people who needed his help, said prosecutor Sandra R. Hebert; clients wounded physically and emotionally in accidents who sought financial settlements but received from their trusted lawyer instead constant “manipulation, the lies.”
“There is no other reason other than greed here,” Hebert told a federal judge. “No other good reason other than wanting more.”
Judge: ‘No justification or excuse for what you have done’
On Thursday U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin agreed with Hebert’s assessment and sentenced the 63-year-old disbarred lawyer to 33 months in federal prison.
“There is no justification or excuse for what you have done,” Sorokin said. “Society cannot accept this kind of abuse,” especially from someone in a position of trust.
Leach had pleaded guilty to fraud and tax evasion. Prosecutors had said that between 2014 and 2019 he misappropriated more than $500,000 of his clients’ settlement funds, resulting in more than $250,000 never being paid out to some clients.
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As clients struggled to pay their medical bills, Leach lulled them with false excuses and false accountings.
Those who complained the loudest might receive some money from other clients’ misappropriate settlement funds to quiet their objections.
And all the while, prosecutors said, Leach was using their money for such things as membership fees to Metacomet Country Club, travel expenses, or tuition for his two children to the Wheeler School, Syracuse University and Pitzer College.
Victim’s tearful account of lies and betrayals
One of Leach’s victimized clients told the judge Thursday through a voice often broken with emotion that anytime she would ask Leach what was happening with her settlement from a car accident the “answer was always, ’No problem I’ll take care of it.’”
But eventually the full scope of his “lies and fraud came into the picture.”
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“Peter Leach settled my second injury case for a total of $150,000. To this day I have not received a single dollar from that settlement. Peter used his position as my attorney to settle my case, steal my money, lie to me and betray me. On top of his fraud, I had to pay thousands of dollars in medical bills and co-pays while Peter was out golfing and traveling the world and going to the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, as he loved to post on Facebook.”
“Peter Leach deserves to serve years in jail,” the woman said.
Leach responds before sentencing
As he was about to be sentenced, Leach stood to address the court.
He apologized to all his victims, saying there was “no excuse, no justification for my conduct.”
He noted, as did his defense lawyer, that he had arranged to “immediately” pay restitution to his victims through a family trust fund in the hope it “would begin to remedy the harm” he had caused.
Sorokin ordered that Leach pay restitution to eight former clients – ranging in individual payments of between $10,000 and $157,700.
He also ordered that Leach pay the IRS $320,622.76.
The judge ordered Leach to turn himself over to federal prison authorities on Feb. 5. He will mostly likely serve his time at the prison facility at Devens, Massachusetts.
PROVIDENCE, RI – Former Rhode Island personal injury attorney Peter P.D. Leach has been sentenced to nearly three years in federal prison and ordered to repay clients that he defrauded when he conducted a Ponzi scheme with their settlement funds, announced United States Attorney Zachary A. Cunha.
At the time of his guilty plea to charges of wire fraud and tax evasion, Leach admitted that he forged client signatures and deposited client settlement checks into his attorney IOLTA account, using those funds to pay personal expenses and to repay earlier clients whose funds he had embezzled. To prolong his scheme, Leach repeatedly made false representations to clients about the status of their cases and told them that he would pay their medical expenses and other bills with settlement funds he had received.
Leach also admitted that from 2014-2019, he took multiple steps to conceal his gains from the IRS, including by making false statements on IRS forms regarding his assets; making false statements to IRS Revenue officers about his ability and willingness to pay his taxes and about his withdrawal of over $540,000 of cash from his IOLTA accounts for payment of personal expenses; and by transferring money from his client account to the account of family members to make personal payments.
“Peter Leach egregiously abused the core responsibility of any lawyer- the trust of his clients – to help himself to money that belonged to victims of accidents and tragedies, and then tried to cheat on his taxes into the bargain” remarked U.S. Attorney Zachary A. Cunha. “Today’s sentence provides not just accountability, but hopefully a chance for his victims to recover some of the funds that he stole from them, and it serves notice of this Office’s continued determination to tireless pursue the perpetrators of financial crimes against vulnerable victims.”
“While it is the expectation that a person can trust their attorney, Leach used his position to take advantage of his clients. He used their money and personal information to line his pockets, telling lie after lie to get what he wanted. Now, there is no lie that he can tell to hide the fact that he will spend the next few years in prison for his criminal acts. It’s time for him to face the truth,” said Thomas E. Demeo, Acting Special Agent in Charge of IRS-CI Boston.
On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin sentenced Leach to 33 months of incarceration to be followed by two years of federal supervised release. Additionally, Leach was ordered to pay restitution to his victims totaling $299,774.41. In a separate restitution matter, the court is expected to enter an order that Leach pay $320,622.76 to the IRS, representing taxes he failed to pay to the agency.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Sandra R. Hebert and Denise M. Barton.
The matter was investigated by the Rhode Island State Police Financial Crimes Unit and Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation.
