Wednesday, November 13, 2002
Page 3
Former Lawyer Angela Wallace Arrested in Court on New Charges
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Ex-lawyer Angela Wallace, already facing trial and a possible eight-year prison sentence for allegedly stealing a $380,000 life insurance settlement, was arrested in court yesterday on new charges.
Wallace was handcuffed and taken into custody by two armed District Attorney’s Office investigators shortly after noon outside Dept. 130 in the Foltz Criminal Justice Center.
She was charged with conspiracy to commit false personation and subornation of perjury, District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said.
Wallace was being held after her arrest on $50,000 bail. Gibbons said a hearing is scheduled for this morning on whether Wallace, if she seeks bail, must first show that the any bond money was legally obtained.
Details of the new charges were not immediately available. Wallace’s attorney, Milton Grimes, said after the arrest that he did not know the charges.
The former Beverly Hills attorney was appearing at a pretrial hearing with co-defendant Timothy Mack in their prosecution for grand theft by embezzlement, forgery and perjury. Mack has been in custody since February as the case has proceeded slowly through the court. But Wallace had been free on $150,000 bond.
Wallace and Mack are accused of cheating her clients, two brothers, out of the life insurance settlement they were to receive from the estate of their mother, Los Angeles Police Officer Shiree Arrant. Soon after Jontrae Byrdsong, 18, and Howard Byrdsong, 20, contacted the District Attorney’s Office to complain, they were shot to death.
Prosecutors say a man dressed as a postal worker knocked on the door of the house where the brothers were staying, pistol-whipped family friend Regina Martin and killed the men.
No charges have been filed in the killings. The Inglewood Police Department is investigating.
Wallace was serving a two-year suspension and barred from practicing law in California when she represented herself as an attorney from the All American Law Firm to the Byrdsong brothers and agreed to act as their trustee, prosecutors say.
Wallace, a graduate of USC law school, was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1988. She received a two-year suspension in September 1999 after stipulating to seven counts in six consolidated cases, according to the California Bar Journal, an official State Bar publication.
Wallace stipulated that she “commingled funds, allowed the misappropriation of client funds and committed acts of moral turpitude” in one case and she failed to communicate with a client after receiving settlement funds in another. Wallace also stipulated that she “failed to perform legal services competently or refund her client’s advanced fees.”
She resigned from the State Bar last year with charges pending.
Copyright 2002, Metropolitan News Company