After Bar Complaint, Lawyer Caught on Camera Burglarizing Client's Home, Police Say
Things have gone from bad to worse for an environmental and land use lawyer whose client complained to the Florida Bar that the attorney had taken $2,500 he wasn’t entitled to from an escrow account after a real estate deal.
After the bar complaint, police say Albert E. Ford II went on a rampage at the unidentified ex-client’s business and home—and was captured on a surveillance camera at the home as he allegedly kicked a bench into a swimming pool and removed an American flag, pool cover and filter and drove off with them in a pickup, according to ABC News and the Orlando Sentinel.
“I have not seen anything like this in my career as a law enforcement officer,” Detective Matt Schaefer of the Lake Mary police department tells ABC News.
Police say Ford, 43, started Wednesday evening at the Sanford business where the ex-client sells luxury tour buses and stole computer information concerning some customers. Then he proceeded to the man’s Lake Mary home. He was arrested yesterday and charged with grand theft, two counts of burglary and criminal mischief. He is expected to appear before a Seminole County judge this afternoon.
Ford wife defended her husband, telling ABC News that the ex-client didn’t pay her husband and tried to interfere with his livelihood.
A 1995 graduate of Tulane University School of Law, Ford has no prior record of attorney discipline.
