Tustin lawyer allegedly misappropriated up to $282 million

Tustin lawyer misappropriated up to $282 million from clients looking for debt relief, state bar says

A statue of Lady Justice holding scales.

July 17, 2024 3:42 PM PT

A Tustin attorney faces disbarment for allegedly misappropriating up to $282 million from as many as 60,000 clients who hired him looking for debt relief, the State Bar of California said.

Daniel Stephen March did not dispute 27 ethics charges of moral turpitude, misappropriation, failure to maintain client funds in a trust account and others filed against him in May in State Bar Court, which independently handles attorney discipline cases.

“The level of March’s misconduct and misappropriation of client funds is stunning,” Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona said in a State Bar release Tuesday. “March completely betrayed his responsibilities as a lawyer and his sworn oath of service to his clients and to the profession. Given the scope of his offenses, the just outcome in this case is disbarment.”

March operated a Tustin business called Litigation Practice Group that offered debt relief services to customers for a flat fee, paid in monthly installments, and offered a refund if they could not deliver. It filed for bankruptcy in March 2023.

But according to bankruptcy filings, up to $282 million in advanced fee revenue collected by March from as many as 60,000 clients between November 2019 and March 2023 were missing, leaving only $1,500 in a JPMorgan Chase trust account and approximately negative $1,000 in a Union Bank trust account. Lawyers are required to hold client fees in trusts until the lawyer completes the work promised, at risk of discipline or disbarment.

Bankruptcy filings for Litigation Practice Group showed that March made 20 separate deposits of clients’ monthly installment fees into a trust account from March 2020 to September 2021 but then withdrew $78 million in client fees during that period, the State Bar said in the release. The fees, part of the $282 million total, were either never deposited into a trust account or remained for only a day and were wired into a personal account, the complaint alleges.

During bankruptcy proceedings, March seemed to admit that his client’s money had been mishandled, saying, “no money, nothing was held on behalf of the client,” according to the State Bar Court complaint.

“You are in the right hands in your journey to resolve your debt,” the Litigation Practice Group website still reads. Google marked the business as permanently closed.

A separate complaint by the State Bar Court alleged that March did not distribute almost $1.4 million in settlement funds meant for a client and allowed his employee Tony Diab, a disbarred attorney, to manage the client funds. Diab was disbarred in 2019 after he was accused of lying to a client about multiple aspects of his criminal case and had wired into his personal bank account $375,000 meant for his client’s termination settlement, according to State Bar Court records. Diab did not show up to his trial, was placed on default and was subsequently disbarred.

A federal case filed by an investor in Litigation Practice Group alleged that the business abruptly stopped paying the investor in June 2022 and that Diab used March as a figurehead to practice law after losing his own license.

March was previously suspended from practicing law for 90 days in 2008 . He was put on probation for a year after failing to pay all of a client’s medical bills with settlement money as agreed and lying about it to his client, then offering to settle the rest of the bills as long as the client did not contact the State Bar to complain, a 2008 complaint alleges. He was required to write quarterly reports, attend ethics school and pass a professional responsibility exam as a condition for his probation.

March did not respond to phone calls and voicemails Wednesday to his personal or office number.