Warren attorney faces charges, disbarment

By Ed Runyan

The lawyer was suspended in 2003 for lying on a deposition.

WARREN — Atty. George N. Kafantaris, whose law license was suspended for six months in 2003, is facing possible disbarment and a criminal charge related to money he received from a client’s civil case.

Kafantaris, 55, whose office is on North Park Avenue, Warren, has pleaded innocent to grand theft in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court. He was released on $2,500 bond. If convicted, he could get up to 18 months in prison.

The criminal charge stems from an investigation ordered by Judge Thomas A. Swift of Trumbull County Probate Court and one done by the Trumbull County Bar Association related to a personal injury case Kafantaris handled for a Warren woman named Carol Williams.

Williams sought Kafantaris’ help after she was involved in a car crash in 1998, but she died Sept. 9, 2002, just one month before Kafantaris settled with Nationwide Insurance for $25,000 to settle her claim, court documents say.

Kafantaris didn’t tell Williams’ family he had settled the claim and deposited the money in his business trust account, said Randil Rudloff, who handled the bar association investigation along with Atty. Curtis Ambrosy.

A Williams family member asked Kafantaris about the lawsuit in February of 2004, a couple of months after Kafantaris had completed a six-month suspension of his law license on an unrelated matter.

At that point, Kafantaris came up with the $25,000 from other sources and eventually repaid the money to the family, Rudloff said.

But between February 2003 and February 2004, Kafantaris had diverted money from the trust account so that it held less than $25,000, court documents say. The account had gotten as low as $100 at certain points.

But by not maintaining a business account containing all of the money he was keeping in trust for clients, he committed an ethics violation, Rudloff said.

Chris Becker, assistant county prosecutor, said the same issues raised by the bar association and mentioned in documents from the Williams case in Probate Court form the basis of the grand theft charge.

The Williams matter also is part of the reason the bar association recommends that Kafantaris lose his law license permanently, Rudloff said.

Rudloff said the bar association has presented its findings to the Ohio Supreme Court’s Board of Commissioners, which will make a recommendation to the high court on any potential punishment.

In 2003, Kafantaris agreed to a six-month suspension of his law license as punishment for lying about having sexual relations with an office employee in a sworn deposition.

The deposition followed a lawsuit filed by the employee for battery and sexual harassment. The jury eventually sided with Kafantaris, who admitted an affair with the woman on the witness stand, according to Vindicator files.

runyan@vindy.com