Federal authorities accused a Woodbury lawyer of using money from a dead woman’s Oxford estate to pay credit cards and make a down payment on an ATV, among other personal expenses.
A chunk of the money was supposed to be used to build a new library in Oxford.
The lawyer, Peter M. Clark, 57, was arrested Thursday on a single charge of mail fraud and arraigned at U.S. District Court in New Haven.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Merriam ordered him released after warning him that he and his family will be liable for a $500,000 bond should he try to flee the jurisdiction or hide any of his money.
Background
Clark has been under a cloud of suspicion for months in connection with the money missing from the estate of Miriam Strong, a retired chemist and longtime civic volunteer in Oxford who died in 2010.
Clark was one of the executors of Strong’s estate.
Strong left $800,000 of her roughly $4.3 million estate to the Oxford Library’s building fund. She also left money to the town for open space acquisition, and to the school district to establish scholarships.
And she left money and land to a number of friends and relatives.
But the people who were supposed to get paid never did — even after a probate judge ordered Clark to make payments in February.
In March, Oxford First Selectman accused Clark of misappropriating the money.
What’s Going To Happen With The New Library?
In March, Temple said he didn’t know whether the library project would move forward.
On Thursday Temple said he wants to go forward with building a new library, even if it means the town would have to foot more of the bill.
Oxford, the state’s fastest growing town, has a library in the basement of town hall.
So to abandon the library project would be unfair to volunteers who have been planning the new facility for five years, and the town itself, he said.
“We’re going to go forward with our plans,” Temple said. “It may required a bigger bond issue, but my intention is to go forward.”
According to April meeting minutes from the Library Planning and Building Committee, the budget for the project may have to be reduced.
Temple said that “may be required,” but wasn’t sure Thursday.
“We’ll find out,” he said.
Temple also said he expects Clark to face a larceny charge in state court, in addition to the federal mail fraud case.
“We’re going to request that justice be pursued and it will be,” he said.
The Valley Indy left a message late Thursday with the chairman of the Oxford Library Planning and Building Committee.
Feds, State Police Investigate
According to an affidavit authored by FBI Special Agent James McGoey made public after Clark’s arraignment Thursday, the FBI and Connecticut State Police opened an investigation into how Strong’s estate was handled.
The answer: not very well.
“From about February 2006 until about March of 2015, Clark engaged in a scheme to defraud the Estate of Miriam S. Strong, and the estate’s beneficiaries and heirs, by using his position as an attorney … to take and embezzle funds belonging to the estate and its beneficiaries for his own personal uses,” the affidavit says.
The feds charged Clark with mail fraud, the affidavit says, because part of the scheme to embezzle the money involved “filing false and misleading documents with the Probate Court, which he mailed to the estate’s beneficiaries.”
“These filings reported that Clark had or intended to make specific distributions of cash to those beneficiaries when, in fact, Clark was embezzling those funds,” McGoey’s affidavit says.
Strong died July 2, 2010. Two months later, a probate judge appointed him and former Oxford First Selectman Paul Schreiber as executors of Strong’s estate.
Schreiber opened an account in the name of Strong’s estate at Newtown Savings Bank, with records showing about $1.3 million in deposits mainly from Strong’s brokerage funds and about $550,000 in checks written to beneficiaries named in the will and creditors to Strong’s estate.
But unbeknownst to Schreiber, Clark opened another checking account five months later at the same bank in the name of Strong’s estate.
The feds accused Clark of funneling money from Strong’s assets into that account and siphoning off about $1.8 million for his own use.
The alleged embezzlement wasn’t discovered until this January, when some of the beneficiaries listed in Strong’s will alerted the Probate Court that they had never received money.
At a hearing in probate court in March, a judge removed Clark and Schreiber as executors of Strong’s estate. The judge ordered them to file an accounting of its assets immediately.
Click the play button on the audio clips below to listen to the March probate hearing.
‘Non-Estate Matters’
Clark filed a financial report March 31 “updating and correcting the estate assets received and disbursed.”
In the document, Clark reported that he had “received assets” from the Strong estate in the amount of $1.8 million, the lion’s share of which he admitted were for “non-estate matters.”
The balance left in the account? $13.40.
According to McGoey’s affidavit, Schreiber was interviewed by state police detectives, and told the cops that he did not know about Clark opening the second bank account in the Strong estate’s name, or that Clark had been withdrawing sums for himself.
He told detectives he felt Clark had been “stalling” throughout the process of administering Strong’s estate.
The FBI says Clark took money from the account he controlled and moved most of it into two separate bank accounts he controlled.
“To date approximately $1.5 million of the $1.8 million Clark has admitted to using for ‘non-estate matters’ has been traced from the estate account to these two accounts controlled by Clark,” McGoey’s affidavit says. “These records also show that the transfers from the estate account were used to pay the personal expenses of Clark and were not related to any estate matters.”
Among the expenses the feds say Clark paid using the Strong estate’s money:
- $1,000 for a payment to his Cabella’s Visa credit card
- A $3,928 down payment on an all-terrain vehicle
- A $2,000 check written to his wife
- $412,187 transferred “to a third party in connection with the sale of a property.”
At Clark’s arraignment Thursday, Judge Merriam allowed Clark to be released on a $500,000 nonsurety bond, meaning he did not have to post any collateral to be released.
But the judge warned him that if he tried to move around any of his assets, prosecutors could ask for the bond to be forfeited, at which time he or his family would have to pay up.
The judge also ordered him to transfer a number of firearms he owns to a third party while the case is pending.
“There’s a lot of money at stake in this case, and that concerns me,” Judge Merriam told Clark. “I need you to understand that any violation (of conditions of bond) would be taken very seriously. Your case is different from a lot.”
She also ordered Clark’s passport to be held by the FBI, and for him to seek permission if he wants to leave the state, undergo a psychiatric evaluation, and seek employment.
Clark resigned voluntarily from the practice of law in March, his lawyer, William Stevens, said.
“This is going to be one of the hardest things you’ve ever been through, if not the hardest,” the judge told Clark.
“I understand,” he replied.
The judge continued the case to June 11 for a probable cause hearing.
The judge said it is far more likely that either federal prosecutors would seek an indictment against Clark from a grand jury. Another possibility — Clark and his lawyer could seek a continuance to discuss a possible plea agreement.
Clark and his lawyer declined to comment on the case as they left court Thursday.
Mail fraud carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, in addition to any restitution ordered.
The prosecutor in the case, Sarah Karwan, said such an order would be “very likely,” given the allegations.
