A choose sentenced a Smithtown attorney to approximately 5 a long time in jail Thursday for a plan in which prosecutors stated he stole $2 million of a child’s inheritance from a settlement for her father’s Suffolk jail custody loss of life.
“The rightful heir has not received a penny,” U.S. District Court docket Decide Joan Azrack explained even though sentencing Vincent Trimarco Jr. to 57 months behind bars for conduct she known as “specifically reprehensible for the reason that he is an attorney.”
The judge explained greed enthusiastic Trimarco, 52, and that he utilized funds that belonged to Rebecca Schaefer to fund a life style of excess whilst the youthful sufferer was deprived of a at ease upbringing.
Assistant U.S. Legal professional Catherine Mirabile questioned Azrack to punish the defendant within just a sentence array of 46 to 57 months in jail that was calculated in October 2020 when Trimarco pleaded guilty.
He admitted to conspiracy to dedicate mail and wire fraud as jury choice was underway in his trial.
The judge also ordered Trimarco to spend $1.5 million in restitution to Schaefer and to forfeit one more $1.5 million in proceeds from his felony exercise. She told him to surrender to prison officers Jan. 7.
The FBI arrested Trimarco in 2017 just after an lawyer for Schaefer, now a 20-calendar year-previous solitary mother of two, brought the scheme to the agency’s notice just after he could not collect the settlement dollars from Trimarco.
That Miller Put attorney, John Ray, had come forward in 2012 to say that his young customer was in fact the heir of Scott Eriksen — the yr just after Eriksen’s father Gary gathered a $3 million civil settlement from Suffolk County as the deceased’s supposedly closest heir.
Ray spoke in courtroom on Schaefer’s behalf Thursday as she sat close by, telling the judge about her “very modest” upbringing with her grandmother and how she “by no means received that money to be in a position to make a daily life.”
A attorney for Trimarco beforehand claimed the defendant was unaware of the daughter’s existence until finally 6 many years right after her father’s loss of life and that Trimarco experienced fought to get the county settlement dollars.
Scott Eriksen died when Schaefer was 5 many years aged, immediately after what his family claimed was a brutal beating while the 20-year-previous person was jailed in 2005 on a misdemeanor drug demand.
Schaefer by no means satisfied her father.
She was born following a partnership he experienced with her mother, a community teen, Newsday beforehand reported.
Prosecutors stated Trimarco managed financial institution accounts keeping the $2 million in settlement cash that went to Gary Eriksen right after legal costs, although also dominating most other factors of Eriksen’s daily life by having to pay his payments and hire and acquiring his mail.
The two applied the settlement revenue to invest in a $200,000 Ferrari, a $57,000 Jaguar and a few true estate qualities in Suffolk, even though investing $800,000 in a Patchogue nightclub, prosecutors explained in courtroom records.
Azrack claimed Thursday that Trimarco also fed Gary Eriksen’s prescription painkiller routine, even sneaking OxyContin to him when he was in jail.
Prosecutors explained Trimarco and Gary Eriksen disregarded Surrogate’s Court docket orders in 2012 that identified Schaefer was the suitable heir and orchestrated a plan to defraud the daughter of her inheritance following her lawyer sued to check out to get the funds.
Trimarco pulled Gary Eriksen into the conspiracy, with the attorney setting up shell corporations to conceal transactions created using settlement funds, according to prosecutors.
Gary Eriksen, who was named in the felony scenario as an unindicted co-conspirator, died just before a grand jury indicted Trimarco.
Trimarco’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, requested Azrack on Thursday to take into account his client’s history of pro-bono legal work, together with on behalf of veterans, together with his provider in the New York Countrywide Guard.
He also stated his shopper suffered from alcohol and substance abuse challenges and asked the judge to take into account that “his crimes are a element of what he is but it’s not wholly what he is.”
Trimarco informed the decide he experienced “uncovered useful classes” and his actions ended up “not indicative” of him “as a gentleman.” He also stated he would do every thing he could “to make restitution.”
Schaefer declined to comment later on, but Ray termed the restitution “a paper judgment” and explained his customer would be fortunate if she received any income.
But with Trimarco now heading to federal jail, in a way justice was served, he additional.