Tweet
Lawyer Gambles Away Clients' Cash
Boca lawyer gives up on charges he gambled away clients' cash
By Kevin Krause
Staff Writer
Posted May 24 2002
BOCA RATON · A prominent former zoning lawyer accused of skipping town with more than $800,000 of a client's money that he used in part to feed a gambling habit has surrendered on grand-theft charges, police said.
Robert Eisen had been living in the Phoenix area and attending Gamblers' Anonymous meetings there since failing to return the money from his trust account in October and leaving town. The Boca Raton-based lawyer admitted using $327,083 of the stolen money to pay back other clients from whom he had taken money, police said. Eisen, 54, turned himself in to Boca Raton police on Wednesday and gave a statement. He was released Wednesday from the Palm Beach County Jail on $15,000 bail.
Eisen was hired in September by developer Scott Asner to close a real estate deal with GLA & Associates for $843,831, according to an arrest report. Washington Mutual Bank wired the money from Asner's account to Eisen's Bank of America trust account.
Asner later decided not to purchase the property, but Eisen did not return the money, the report said.
A claim was made with the Attorney's Title Insurance Fund, an insurance underwriter that hired an attorney and private investigator to wade through a complex number of Eisen's financial transactions.
The attorney, Alfred Lasorte, met with Eisen in January. Eisen told Lasorte how he stole the money and spent some of it gambling in Las Vegas, police said. Eisen also gave Lasorte $90,000 worth of cashier's checks he never cashed.
The title insurance fund was able to recover $182,887 from Eisen. The fund is considered the victim, because Eisen issued Washington Mutual Bank a "closing protection letter" during the Asner transaction to protect the bank against fraud and dishonesty, the report said.
Eisen was a respected attorney who represented virtually every developer in Boca Raton. He was involved in city politics, often went to City Hall for the various projects he was working on and even wrote many of the city's zoning codes.
In a March interview, Eisen described himself as a depressed gambling addict who ran up a large debt on frequent trips to Reno and Las Vegas. That and problems with the Internal Revenue Service in September ultimately led him to steal from clients, he said.
"I finally just lost the spirit to continue with everything," Eisen said in March. "There's a certain drive that comes from the compulsive addiction that keeps you going, and it just got so bad and so unmanageable. I just couldn't do it anymore.
"I intended to completely disappear. My thought was everybody would say, `Good riddance. Why didn't he disappear years ago?'"
The problem began, he said, at an early age. He recalled betting on the 1964 Sonny Liston-Cassius Clay fight. The day before his graduation from law school at the University of Florida, he said, he lost all his available money in a poker game, then drove to Jacksonville to get a cash advance on a credit card.
Eisen has since resigned from the Florida Bar. His latest problems started in January 2001, when he left his wife and two sons after she confronted him about his gambling, he said. About that time, he said, he shifted money from his clients' trust accounts to help cover his debts.
Eisen estimates he took roughly $500,000 from those accounts, using money from one account to cover what he took from another, and making the transactions difficult to trace.
By Kevin Krause
Staff Writer
Posted May 24 2002
BOCA RATON · A prominent former zoning lawyer accused of skipping town with more than $800,000 of a client's money that he used in part to feed a gambling habit has surrendered on grand-theft charges, police said.
Robert Eisen had been living in the Phoenix area and attending Gamblers' Anonymous meetings there since failing to return the money from his trust account in October and leaving town. The Boca Raton-based lawyer admitted using $327,083 of the stolen money to pay back other clients from whom he had taken money, police said. Eisen, 54, turned himself in to Boca Raton police on Wednesday and gave a statement. He was released Wednesday from the Palm Beach County Jail on $15,000 bail.
Eisen was hired in September by developer Scott Asner to close a real estate deal with GLA & Associates for $843,831, according to an arrest report. Washington Mutual Bank wired the money from Asner's account to Eisen's Bank of America trust account.
Asner later decided not to purchase the property, but Eisen did not return the money, the report said.
A claim was made with the Attorney's Title Insurance Fund, an insurance underwriter that hired an attorney and private investigator to wade through a complex number of Eisen's financial transactions.
The attorney, Alfred Lasorte, met with Eisen in January. Eisen told Lasorte how he stole the money and spent some of it gambling in Las Vegas, police said. Eisen also gave Lasorte $90,000 worth of cashier's checks he never cashed.
The title insurance fund was able to recover $182,887 from Eisen. The fund is considered the victim, because Eisen issued Washington Mutual Bank a "closing protection letter" during the Asner transaction to protect the bank against fraud and dishonesty, the report said.
Eisen was a respected attorney who represented virtually every developer in Boca Raton. He was involved in city politics, often went to City Hall for the various projects he was working on and even wrote many of the city's zoning codes.
In a March interview, Eisen described himself as a depressed gambling addict who ran up a large debt on frequent trips to Reno and Las Vegas. That and problems with the Internal Revenue Service in September ultimately led him to steal from clients, he said.
"I finally just lost the spirit to continue with everything," Eisen said in March. "There's a certain drive that comes from the compulsive addiction that keeps you going, and it just got so bad and so unmanageable. I just couldn't do it anymore.
"I intended to completely disappear. My thought was everybody would say, `Good riddance. Why didn't he disappear years ago?'"
The problem began, he said, at an early age. He recalled betting on the 1964 Sonny Liston-Cassius Clay fight. The day before his graduation from law school at the University of Florida, he said, he lost all his available money in a poker game, then drove to Jacksonville to get a cash advance on a credit card.
Eisen has since resigned from the Florida Bar. His latest problems started in January 2001, when he left his wife and two sons after she confronted him about his gambling, he said. About that time, he said, he shifted money from his clients' trust accounts to help cover his debts.
Eisen estimates he took roughly $500,000 from those accounts, using money from one account to cover what he took from another, and making the transactions difficult to trace.