A legal bind

Ivan Moreno, Rocky Mountain News

Published May 12, 2007 at midnight

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Wiley Todd Linville promised himself he would pay back the money the first time he stole.

But he didn't.

Instead, the former Denver attorney who said he "hoped to save the world" plundered the accounts of his clients, living a life of luxury that included an airplane, a farm in Tennessee and frequent visits to strip clubs where he conducted business while scantily clad women danced on nearby stages.

He thought nothing of taking thousands of dollars with him to thrust in the G-strings of strippers on his almost daily visits to the clubs. But that didn't appease him.

"I was just drowning in a sea of nothingness," said Linville, describing the two years of extravagance, theft and lies that earned him 32 years in prison.

While Linville was experiencing that void, the pain he caused his clients was more acute.

"He caused more misery than he could ever, ever imagine out of his selfish greed," said one 73-year-old Parker woman who fell prey. By the time he was arrested in 2004, Linville had taken as much as $5 million, ripping off nearly a dozen clients. In the process, the 48-year-old former teacher also became the suspect in a homicide.

The money Linville stole was enough to drain most of the funds from a Colorado program aimed at protecting unsuspecting clients from dishonest attorneys. Of the more than $1.3 million the fund reimbursed in 2006, almost all of it went to Linville's victims.

Now, the Attorneys' Fund for Client Protection is struggling to cover the losses created by Linville and other crooked lawyers.

"He was a catastrophic hit on the fund," said John Gleason, who heads the state Supreme Court's Attorney Regulation Counsel, an agency that investigates lawyer misconduct.

"But we knew if it wasn't Mr. Linville, it would be someone else," Gleason said. "And my fear is that there are more Mr. Linvilles out there."

Just this week, law enforcement officials launched a criminal investigation into missing Breckenridge attorney Royal "Scoop" Daniel III, who may have taken more than $1 million from his clients in real estate deals. If proven true, the client protection fund could be stretched again.

The fund is already facing a shortfall. Reimbursements have multiplied more than 140 times since 1999. There are $2 million in pending claims but just $1.3 million in the fund, Gleason said. About $200,000 of the pending claims are still associated with Linville.

However, Gleason said the fund's astronomic growth does not correlate to a rising number of dishonest attorneys. Only a tiny fraction of the state's 22,000 active lawyers are responsible for running up the huge draw on the fund.

There's no way to prepare for the havoc wreaked by someone like Linville, Gleason said.

"We just have to deal with the aftermath."

A start as an idealist

Linville victimized at least 10 people.

Some had died or were on the verge of dying. In each case, he was the trustee on charitable trusts or wills he had prepared for them.

A 2004 grand jury indictment outlined a scheme in which Linville used several bank accounts - including one in Decatur, Ala. - to transfer money from the estates and trusts he was supposed to be managing.

The way Linville tells it - sitting in a plastic chair on the white linoleum floor of an inmate visitation room at Crowley County Correctional Facility - his actions don't reflect the person he was before he started stealing.

He was always an idealist, he said, which is why he double-majored in elementary education and special education in 1979 at the University of Northern Colorado.

What he earned as a special- education teacher, including a stint at Denver's Smiley Middle School in the mid-'80s, was barely enough to support his wife and three boys, he said.

Linville said he had to work a second job at a gas station.

"Was I unhappy? No." He spoke softly, his light-blue eyes darting around as if they were tracking the words. "It was bad, but it was a good time."

Linville said he hoped to use his law degree from the University of Denver - which he earned after 10 years of teaching - to help handicapped children receive a better education.

He never got around to doing that, going into probate instead.

By 2003, Linville had run his own private practice for six years, but his financial records didn't reflect much success. His checking account rarely held much money. At the end of 2002, his credit union account showed a balance of $282, according the Denver district attorney's office.

He was, however, trustee of several of his clients' estates, which, taken together, were worth millions of dollars.

The temptation to steal, Linville said, first came after his wife, Nancy Gaede, who is now deceased, filed for divorce and he had to pay her alimony in October 2003.

He didn't have the money, he said, so he took some from a client's account, thinking he would repay it.

Denver district attorney's records show he used one of his client's funds to write a check to his former wife for $19,526, on Oct. 22, the day his divorce became final, and then another one for $50,000 on Nov. 5.

It wasn't that much, Linville told himself, but soon the amounts grew and he was buying everything his heart desired. At some point, he said he realized he would get caught but he kept on spending.

"I figured I was going to go down in flames," he said.

But Linville's Denver grand jury indictment tells a different story about when the thefts began. He was siphoning money from his client's accounts into his own at the start of 2003, well before his divorce became final, according to grand jury records.

Banks 'dropped the ball'

Linville's avarice was relentless - $10,000 here, $50,000 there - slowly draining a client's account to almost nothing.

Merle Anderson, a man who grew up during the Great Depression, had inherited money from his parents and had saved up some on his own for his family. He hired Linville to prepare his will and divvy up the money to his relatives.

Instead, after Merle Anderson died, Linville used $141,118 for a farm in Tennessee, according to grand jury documents.

Sometimes, Linville would prepare his client's estate taxes and tell his victims to write a check payable to the U.S. Treasury and Colorado Department of Revenue.

Linville deposited the checks into bank accounts he controlled called "U.S. Treasury" and "Colorado Department of Revenue."

The name on those accounts should've been a red flag to the banks."The banks clearly dropped the ball," Gleason said.

The Parker woman, who asked that her name be withheld out of fear that others would learn about her finances, was a victim of Linville's tax ploy.

She said the estate tax checks Linville asked her to write totaled $327,776.

Linville used part of that money on January 2004 to buy a 1981 Piper Saratoga airplane. Two months later, he traded it for a 1973 Cessna.

Linville hired a pilot to fly him to his farm in Tennessee. He also loved flying to South Carolina, where he was romancing an exotic dancer.

Linville had a particular weakness for strippers.

PT's Show Club was walking distance from his office on Colorado Boulevard.

His secretary at the time, Yvonne Scofield, said she remembers Linville would call asking her to bring him his laptop and his files. He would always sit in the same place, she said, on a floor that overlooked the tables and dance stages below.

"He was overlooking (the stages) like God would overlook everything," Scofield said.

His vantage point wasn't entirely omniscient. He got close enough to stick thousands of dollars into the dancers' G-strings.

"He did that repeatedly, almost on a daily basis at times," said Gary Pangus, 59, the Denver district attorney's lead investigator in the Linville case. "And that's where a lot of the money went - in strippers' G-strings."

Linville used the rest of the money he stole from his clients' estates to pay his bills, take a vacation to Europe and buy a wedding ring for his second wife.

Lawyers pay for fund

Linville's extravagant lifestyle and its huge impact on the Attorneys' Fund for Client Protection has left officials uncertain of how to keep the fund stable.

The attorney responsible for the second-largest reimbursement, at $100,000, is the now-disbarred George H. Tilton. And that was for a single client.

Breckenridge's Daniel, if guilty of the allegations against him, could be the next big hit on the fund.

"So it's a needle in the haystack that causes the problem, but when they cause a problem, it's typically a big one," Gleason said.The fund receives no government or tax money and is made up exclusively from yearly attorney registration fees. "It's every lawyer paying for the sins of his brother or sister lawyers," he said.

Each of the state's active lawyers contributes $20 from their annual $225 registration fee. But if the fund is going to stay afloat, the fees may have to be raised, Gleason said.

Gleason said the state Supreme Court would have to approve a spike in the registration fees and his office will soon be petitioning for the change.

Every state has an attorney fund similar to Colorado's. New York, California and New Jersey are among those with the highest reimbursement levels, according to the American Bar Association. In most states, attorneys contribute an average of $30 into the fund, said John Holtaway, client protection counsel at the American Bar Association's Center for Professional Responsibility.

"This is something where the court and the lawyers have their heart in the right place," said Charles Goldberg, chair of the board of trustees for Colorado's fund.

Before Linville, there was a $100,000 limit per claim reimbursement. After Linville, Goldberg said, the board decided to go beyond the limit in some cases.

'As evil as they come'

But it was murder, not theft, that first led police to Linville.

Days after 75-year-old Charla Mae Hall was shot to death in her Denver home on July 21, 2004 - a crime that remains unresolved - Linville began transferring money from her trust to his bank account.

"As far as white-collar crime, he was about as evil as they come," DA investigator Pangus said.

Now retired, Pangus has written a novel, Each One Gets a Little Easier. It's a work of fiction, but he readily admits the lead character is based on Linville.

In the book, the character kills three of his clients.

In real life, Pangus said he believes Linville had a motive to kill Hall.

By the time of Hall's death, Linville's luck was running out. One of his client's accountants had confronted him about missing money and alerted the state Attorney Regulation Counsel. Pangus said Linville had also been sued to repay $679,256 he'd stolen from the estate of a deceased client.

Linville himself called police for a welfare check on Hall. Newspapers had begun piling up outside her Bonnie Brae home and Linville told police she hadn't returned his calls in three days.

However, Pangus said, phone records showed the last time Linville called Hall was the day she was killed.

Linville knows he was a suspect, but he denies killing Hall.

"It's just not my forte. I mean, I've been crazy, but I wasn't that crazy," he said in a prison interview.

Linville finally arrested

As police began looking at Linville, the Attorney Regulation Counsel was conducting its own investigation.

Mary and Paul Lillmars, both 75, had seen more than $73,000 of their trust's money disappear. Their accountant and their son confronted Linville about the withdrawals he had made, including $19,906 for a Mercedes-Benz.

"How could he do that?" Mary Lillmars asked.

Jamie Sudler, assistant regulation counsel who confronted Linville about the complaint against him, said he still remembers Linville's light-blue eyes during that meeting.

His eyes nervously shifted about, he said, as he denied everything.

Linville told Sudler he was only borrowing the Lillmars' money, making investments, and that he would pay them back.

"It was apparent to me the guy was a liar and he wasn't telling us the whole story," Sudler said. "It was mostly his eyes."

Linville said he has poor sight and a chronic eye condition.

The Lillmars' case got Linville disbarred and first got him arrested on Oct. 21, 2004. When it happened, he was on the side of the road on Santa Fe Drive south of C-470, waiting for a tow truck to take away his broken-down motor home. He had planned to go to Colorado Springs, where he grew up.

According to Pangus, Linville defended his actions.

"You don't understand," Pangus said Linville told him. "I was a trustee in these estates. I had the power to decide how to invest the money. So I was investing the money as I saw fit."

Pangus confronted Linville about Hall's murder:

"Well, tell me about it, you did it."

"I want my attorney," Linville responded.

"He didn't get mad. He didn't deny it," Pangus remembered. "He said, 'I want my attorney.'"

At the time there was only one count of theft against Linville. He posted bond and was released.

By Dec. 2, however, a Denver grand jury indicted Linville on 14 counts, including 11 counts of theft.

When he was arrested the second time, he was in the basement of the home of his second wife, Andrea Till, who told investigators in the arrest report that for "ten miserable months" she had been married to Linville.

She had filed for divorce days after his first arrest, she said.

The ring on her finger, investigators told her, was purchased with stolen money and she would have to return it.

Linville never went to trial. Instead, he pleaded guilty to three felony theft counts and one forgery count. He admitted he stole from 10 of his clients, sometimes using the money from one to pay an estate he had already looted.

At his sentencing, he said he would pay back every penny if given the chance. Judge William Robbins sentenced him to 32 years in prison. Pangus said the spreadsheet compiled by investigators showed that Linville had stolen as much as $5 million. Restitution was set at $3.35 million.

It's an order that Linville calculates will take him a lifetime to complete, and he's hopeful his life will last long enough.

"I'm going to live to be a hundred," Linville said cheerfully, after talking about his routine of running while in prison. "I have to if I'm going to get everything done."

Assets go to victims

For those who have been reimbursed, the client protection fund has helped Linville's victims' lives return somewhat to normal. The Cessna that Linville bought is now in the possession of one of the clients he stole from.

The Attorney Regulation Counsel uses investigators and lawyers to track the assets of attorneys charged with theft.

"They walk away, and then we'll chase them down, like Wyatt Earp," Gleason said. "We will dog those people to the end of the Earth."

Those reimbursed are often surprised about the money they get back, and that the generosity is coming from lawyers - the last place they would expect after their bad experiences.

"They paid us more than we ever dreamed of getting back," the Parker woman said. "We were just so shocked."

She said she received $263,000 of the $327,776 that Linville stole.

Merle Anderson's son, Brian, 51, also got back more than he expected. He thought the fund would be able to repay only $10,000.

His family received $90,000.

His family was able to recover some of the remaining money by selling the farm Linville bought in Tennessee. "It goes to show you the guy with the briefcase can steal a lot more than the guy with the gun," Anderson said.

Linville now wears a forest-green prison jumpsuit - a contrast from the suits he wore as a lawyer. He scratched his legs and pulled at his socks during a recent interview.

The man who came across as polite and professional to his clients now sports a beard about 4 inches long, mostly white with streaks of brown.

He is letting his hair grow out and hopes it will someday be used to fashion a wig for a chemotherapy patient. He said it would be a tribute to his mother, who died of cancer in November.

There are two things that make Linville cry when he talks: the death of his mother and when he apologizes to his clients for pocketing their money.

He said he takes responsibility for what he did.

He sat there, his eyes on the move again.

"It was almost like it was a play that was happening and I was just watching," he said. "It wasn't me."

How the fund works

• Where does the money come from? Each of the state's active lawyers contributes $20 from their annual $225 registration fee.

• Who can file a claim? Anyone who has lost money because of dishonest conduct by their attorney can file a claim with the Attorney Regulation Counsel to seek reimbursement from the Attorney Fund for Client Protection.

• Is there a time limit? There is a 5-year statute of limitations

• How do you start? People can start the process by calling the Attorney Regulation Counsel at 303-866-6400 or toll-free at 877-888-1370. The process begins by filling out a claim form, and the Attorney Regulation Counsel investigates the matter. An eight-member board of trustees, which meets three or four times a year, decides whether people should be reimbursed and how much.

• How many claims are filed each year? Anywhere from 45 to 100 .

• How long does it take?It takes about six months for a claim to be processed before reimbursement. Fifty-six people were reimbursed last year, 18 in 2005, and 114 in 2004.

TOP FIVE CASE TYPES PAID BY THE FUND SINCE IT BEGAN

• Probate $793.590

• Real estate $610,374

• Civil litigation $375,229

• Criminal $89,025

• Domestic relations $85,876

TOP FIVE REIMBURSEMENTS, BY ATTORNEY RESPONSIBLE

• Wiley Todd Linville $1,235,615

• George H. Tilton $100,000

• Brett J. Lambert $52,809

• Michael Varallo $39,100

• Wilhemena L. Mitchell $38,068