A Florida lawyer misappropriated client funds, then sued that client for $100 million [Miami Herald]

Miami Herald (FL)

A Melbourne lawyer engaged in billing shenanigans with clients, didn’t notify those clients of $15,000 in settlement funds and paid himself with that money. He, then, sued those clients alleging breach of contract “damages of $100 million.”

What he did with the $15,000 earned George Ollinger III an emergency suspension in January 2021. What Ollinger did afterwards got him disbarred last month after being a member of the Florida Bar since 1977.

What can sound at times like a first season episode of “Better Call Saul” starts in Palm Bay’s Sunrise Mobile Home Park four years ago.

A Florida lawyer had a habit of practicing while suspended or, essentially, disbarred

Death and attorney’s fees

What follows comes from the referee’s report on Ollinger’s original discipline case.

Claudia and Nandallal Rameshwar lived in the mobile park, but didn’t get along with management. After a “dispute” with the manager, Claudia Rameshwar claimed she was injured and hired Ollinger to for a personal injury lawsuit on Jan. 20, 2018. Ollinger’s fees would be contingent on the lawsuit’s result.

A charge of felony aggravated assault on Feb. 7, 2018 gave Claudia Rameshwar another reason to need an attorney, so she hired Ollinger for a $3,500 flat fee. But Claudia Rameshwar died during heart surgery on Feb. 18, 2018, heart surgery that her husband and her adult daughters blamed on her fights with Sunrise Mobile Home Park management.

They hired Ollinger for a wrongful death lawsuit against the manager and Sunrise Mobile Home Park, attorney fees contingent on the lawsuit’s result. They also hired him for probate work on Rameshwar’s estate, preventing Nandallal Rameshwar from being evicted from Sunrise and a lawsuit against Minnesota Life Insurance for not paying the claim after Claudia Rameshwar’s death.

Ollinger thought he could get Sunrise with a class action lawsuit for predatory behavior via unfair evictions. He sent 399 form letters to Sunrise homeowners and billed the Rameshwars for the time his paralegal spent interviewing some of those owners.

A Florida Bar audit would show that on June 18, 2018, Ollinger put a $10,000 check from Geico for Claudia Rameshwar’s estate in his trust account. The memo on the check said “for underinsured motorist coverage.” He did the same with a $5,000 check from Geico. The memo said “for personal injury protection and death benefits.”

Ollinger’s paralegal emailed the Rameshwars about the $10,000 four days before Ollinger deposited the check. But, there was no similar notification about the $5,000. Also, Ollinger never got a signed closing statement from the Rameshwars before he moved $14,820 of the money from his trust account to his operating account.

By Jan. 28, 2019, all the Geico money was gone from the operating account and all the withdrawals from that account were for Ollinger’s law firm or Ollinger.

Ollinger, the only signatory on that operating account, later claimed the Geico money stayed in the account until July 8, 2019 even in the face of bank statements showing the operating account overdrawn on Jan. 28, 2019. What an audit found was that he transferred $15,000 back into the trust account from his operating account.

READ MORE: South Florida lawyers suspended for attempted murder charges, helping a paralyzed child

Paperwork and a ‘paralegal/paramour’

Even after the Rameshwars dropped Ollinger as an attorney, he continued to file pleadings on behalf of Claudia Rameshwar’s estate and attempted to have who the referee called his “paralegal/paramour” installed as the estate’s personal representative.

In November 2018, Ollinger filed a lawsuit against Nandallal Rameshwar and his late wife’s adult daughter for breach of contract, alleging breach of various fee agreements. He added Claudia Rameshwar’s estate as a defendant in November 2019. That’s the $100 million lawsuit.

Meanwhile, as the lawsuit against Minnesota Life Insurance proceeded in federal court, Ollinger didn’t file a motion for permission to withdraw, but did try to substitute his paralegal as the plaintiff instead of Claudia Rameshwar’s estate.

The federal magistrate court eventually issued an order removing Ollinger as counsel for the estate.

Suspension and disbarment

The Florida Bar petitioned the state Supreme Court for an emergency suspension of Ollinger in January 2021 because he “appears to be causing great public harm by engaging in patterns of misconduct, including, but not limited to, the following: misappropriating client’s funds, commingling attorney and client’s funds, and engaging in conflicts of interest.”

The court granted the Bar’s request. But, a Bar petition for contempt said, Ollinger kept “engaging in email communications “as counsel for the opposing party”” in a Broward County divorce case in April 2021.

The referee’s report on the previous matter recommended Ollinger be disbarred. The contempt of court case just added weight. Combined, the two crushed Ollinger’s law career.