A disbarred Tulsa guardianship attorney has been ordered to federal prison following his conviction for bank fraud and money laundering in a scheme that defrauded his client of $589,393, announced U.S. Attorney Trent Shores. Glenn Martin Mirando, 64 of Tulsa, Oklahoma, pleaded guilty September 4, 2018.
Today, U.S. District Judge John E. Dowdell sentenced Mirando to 33 months in prison, for both bank fraud and money laundering, to be followed by five and three years of supervised release.
The court also ordered a criminal forfeiture money judgment in the sum of $589,393, representing proceeds obtained through those crimes. All monies will go to provide restitution to the victim.
“Mirando chose to violate and abuse both his position of trust as a formerly licensed attorney and his position of trust as a court appointed guardian for the victim of this horrible fraud. Embezzling almost $600,000 from a vulnerable individual who was receiving medical treatment in order to maintain an extravagant personal lifestyle for himself and his family is inexcusable.
Even more egregious, Mirando used his skills as an attorney to conceal the theft for three years by laundering the proceeds of the bank fraud scheme through the movement of cash between multiple bank accounts. The violation of such positions of trust should be severely punished as a deterrent”, said U.S. Attorney Shores.
The victim told the court at length how Mirando’s fraud harmed her financially.
The victim questioned why Mirando had made no attempt to repay her in the three years that had passed since the discovery of the crime in late 2015.
Mirando was a self-employed, licensed attorney in the state of Oklahoma from 1989 until he was suspended in 2016 and then disbarred from the practice of law by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in 2018.
The bank fraud violations stem from a scheme in which Mirando used his position as an attorney and court-appointed Guardian to steal funds from his client, by causing funds to be disbursed from the victim’s IRA account at Wells Fargo in St. Louis, Missouri, without her knowledge, to an account Mirando controlled at Tulsa Teachers Credit Union (“TTCU”) where he then would withdraw the funds in cash.
Mirando would then engage in financial transactions with the stolen funds for his personal benefit with the intent to conceal the proceeds of the fraud.
Beginning on January 3, 2013 and continuing through December 2015, Mirando requested distributions from the victim’s IRA account at Wells Fargo. When Wells Fargo would distribute the withdrawals to the TTCU account Mirando opened, Wells Fargo also withheld and paid Federal income tax and Oklahoma state income tax on each distribution.
Mirando then would withdraw cash from the TTCU account and deposit the cash he withdrew into other accounts at TTCU in his name, his business’ name, and his wife’s name. The victim never made any cash withdrawals from the account at TTCU nor did the victim receive any cash directly from Mirando.
To further conceal the scheme, Mirando would withdraw cash from the TTCU account, wait a couple of hours or sometimes a day and then make cash deposits into other accounts at TTCU with the aggregate amount being slightly different from the total cash withdrawal.
Mirando had $782,357 under his control and custody, which was withdrawn from the victim’s IRA at Wells Fargo. From the foregoing amount, Mirando paid $121,000 directly to the victim and paid $14,074.23 to others on behalf of the victim. The cumulative loss attributable to Mirando (inclusive of federal and state taxes that were paid by Wells Fargo on behalf of the victim), which were used for sentencing purposes, is in excess of $589,393.
Most of the stolen funds appear to have been used to support the lifestyle of Mirando and his family members. The 306 cash withdrawals Mirando made totaling $466,950 were subsequently deposited into his personal account, his business account, and his wife’s personal account and used to pay personal expenses. Coupled with the federal and state taxes paid by Wells Fargo on behalf of the victim and taken from the victim’s IRA, the total loss for sentencing purposes was in excess of $589,393.
This was a joint state/federal investigation involving the U.S. Department of Treasury, Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Tulsa Police Department, and Tulsa County District Attorney. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Charles M. McLoughlin and Catherine J. Depew prosecuted the case.
