Lawyer accused of ‘egregious acts of dishonesty,’ gambling with client cash gets disbarred

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Lawyer accused of ‘egregious acts of dishonesty,’ gambling with client cash gets disbarred

By Debra Cassens Weiss

October 22, 2024, 11:44 am CDT

A California lawyer has been disbarred after he was accused of misappropriating nearly $117,000 in client money, spending it on gambling and personal expenses, and then lying to state bar officials about having cancer.

Sergio Valdovinos Ramirez of Manhattan Beach, California, who uses Valdovinos as his last name, was disbarred effective Oct. 18, in a Sept. 18 opinion by the California Supreme Court. He was ordered to pay restitution and interest to five clients and to pay a $5,000 sanction to a client security fund.

After ethics charges were filed against him, Valdovinos told the State Bar of California’s Office of Chief Trial Counsel that he had cancer, according to the review department opinion. He told the hearing judge that he was undergoing chemotherapy, and that he was being treated by Dr. Stephen Chang of the City of Hope.

He did not provide promised medical documentation. Investigators were unable to find any doctor by that name at City of Hope.

Valdovinos later said he didn’t present his medical documentation because of privacy concerns.

He also lied to clients about their cases, providing them with checks that were said to be settlement money or a refund, the opinion said. The checks bounced.

“This case is about an attorney’s egregious acts of dishonesty that occurred in his practice and continued through his disciplinary trial,” the review department of the State Bar Court of California—the administrative arm of the California Supreme Court—said in a June 28 opinion recommending disbarment.

Law360, KTLA and the Los Angeles Times via Yahoo News are among the publications with coverage.

Valdovinos had claimed that the hearing judge was biased against him, and she had embarrassed him when she asked whether he intended to raise gambling addiction as a mitigating factor in his ethics case. The question was not unreasonable, the review department said. In a two-year period, Valdovinos had spent $886,535 for gambling chips from the Bicycle Casino and the Commerce Casino.

The opinion detailed alleged misappropriation and misrepresentations.

One client who said she was injured in a car accident paid Valdovinos $4,850, but he never filed a lawsuit on her behalf, the review department said. He used the money for personal expenditures, including payments for restaurants, a gas station and the Bicycle Casino. Valdovinos allegedly told the client that he had filed the suit, but there were court delays because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He later said he settled the suit, according to the opinion.

Valdovinos gave the client four checks said to represent the settlement money, but he stopped payment on the first and had insufficient funds to cover the other three, the opinion said. He also claimed that he had tried to wire the funds, but there were problems. He did provide the client $500, the only money he ever returned to her.

“Valdovinos went to great lengths to give [the client] the false impression that he was making progress on her case and to hide the fact that he had not filed a lawsuit on her behalf, which is evidence that the misrepresentations were intentional,” the review department said.

Valdovinos also provided other clients with checks that bounced, the hearing board said.

“Valdovinos’s misconduct was widespread, covering multiple client matters, and he significantly harmed his clients,” the opinion said.

The review board cited several aggravating factors, including that Valdovinos “lied about the most easily verifiable facts.” His misrepresentations about cancer were “purposeful misrepresentations” to avoid complying with deadlines in the ethics case, the review board said.

“There is nothing in the record to illustrate Valdovinos learned from his misconduct and would not engage in such misconduct again; instead, Valdovinos never showed remorse or accepted responsibility,” the opinion said.

In his closing brief, Valdovinos had argued that the trial counsel’s office had relied heavily “on speculation and innuendos.”

Valdovinos never told one client that her case had settled for $175,000; rather, that was the amount that the client hoped to obtain, Valdovinos said. Her advance fees were used for a private investigator. And he never filed suit because there was no injury, he said.

Another client who cut off contact with Valdovinos “chose not to collect his funds in full,” the brief said. Another client never gave Valdovinos the necessary evidence for his case. In yet another case, Valdovinos worked on the case, using up the entire retainer, Valdovinos said.

Valdovinos was licensed in California in 2017 and had a solo practice. He is a graduate of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego.

Valdovinos did not immediately respond to an ABA Journal request for comment sent to an email address on file with the state bar. A phone number listed by the state bar was not in service.