Lynchburg-area ex-attorney pleads guilty to defrauding older consumers | Crime News
A former Lynchburg-region estate preparing legal professional and prosecutor pleaded guilty Friday in federal courtroom
A former Lynchburg-region estate preparing legal professional and prosecutor pleaded guilty Friday in federal courtroom to fraudulently wiring dollars from her elderly clients.
Cherie Anne Washburn, 45, of Lynchburg, was billed with 13 whole crimes in the U.S. District Court docket for the Western District of Virginia in an Oct indictment. In exchange for Washburn’s pleas to two counts of wire fraud and just one depend of generating a untrue assertion to a mortgage loan provider, prosecutors agreed to drop 10 of the fees versus her.
The costs stem from a plan against two of her consumers in which, employing Washburn’s access as their ability of attorney, she wired hundreds or tens of hundreds of pounds at a time in individual transactions for her own profit, in accordance to court docket documents.
Prosecutors reported at Washburn’s virtual plea hearing Friday that she’d owe close to $233,000 overall in restitution, a figure Washburn and her legal professional, Paul Beers, disputed.
Washburn received her legislation license in 2011, doing work initially out of a Roanoke-centered civil agency and then as a prosecutor in Appomattox County and then in Campbell County. She left Campbell County in June 2015 for non-public apply in Forest and was named electrical power of lawyer for 1 of the victims in the scenario about 5 months later, according to court documents.
Indictments submitted in opposition to Washburn element common withdrawals and account transfers from two victims setting up in November 2016. Civil cases involving the two victims surfaced in Lynchburg Circuit Courtroom in 2018, a person of them triggered by unusual account action recognized by Grownup Protective Providers workers.