Mobile attorney Willie Huntley surrenders on first-degree theft charge over $118,000 escrow
Mobile lawyer Willie Huntley turned himself in Saturday on a first-degree theft charge and was released on bond within 90 minutes. He faces a civil suit over $118,000 in escrow funds.
Mobile attorney surrenders on theft charge linked to $118,000 escrow dispute
Willie Huntley, a 68-year-old Mobile lawyer whose law licence was suspended by the Alabama State Bar earlier this year, turned himself in on a first-degree theft charge Saturday and posted bond roughly an hour and a half later, fox10tv.com reports.
The precise nature of the criminal charge was not immediately clear. Huntley is, however, already the defendant in a civil lawsuit filed in Mobile County Circuit Court in July, which accuses him of improperly retaining $118,000 held in an escrow account he managed on behalf of a logging company.
The civil dispute
The lawsuit was brought by C. James Fields and James Fields Trucking and Logging, who entered into a 2023 agreement to harvest timber on property in Alabama's Hale County. A disagreement among the heirs of that property led to separate litigation in Greene County, where the logging company hired Huntley as its attorney and paid $118,000 into an escrow account he controlled.
According to the Mobile County complaint, Huntley failed to distribute the funds to the plaintiffs, withdraw from the case, transfer the money to another licensed attorney, or deposit it with the Greene County court. The suit seeks the full $118,000 plus $39,333 in attorney's fees and interest. "By retaining Plaintiffs' payments … Defendants have been unjustly enriched at Plaintiffs' expense," the complaint states.
Bar suspension and prior disciplinary record
The lawsuit also references the Alabama State Bar's decision to suspend Huntley's licence in January, a move taken after the organisation determined he had repeatedly failed to respond to requests for information in a disciplinary matter. The Bar additionally barred him from maintaining an attorney trust account.
This is not Huntley's first encounter with bar discipline. In 2006, the organisation publicly reprimanded him for mishandling $30,000 in insurance proceeds intended for the children of a deceased man. Records show Huntley deposited the cheque into his trust account and only forwarded the money approximately 18 months after the children's attorney had requested it — and only after deducting a $6,000 legal fee. He refunded that fee in January 2006 after the Bar threatened suspension.
The Bar also reprimanded Huntley for using client funds to cover firm expenses during a law partnership with Mobile attorneys Jay Ross and Buzz Jordan, and issued a further reprimand after he filed a form in a Mississippi court in October 2003 falsely stating he had not been subject to any disciplinary action.
In 2008, the Internal Revenue Service petitioned a federal judge in Mobile to compel Huntley to comply fully with a summons requiring him to produce his personal income tax records for 2005 and 2006. The IRS contended that Huntley had submitted documents but had not provided all required information. The agency eventually dismissed the case voluntarily.
A long career in Mobile law
Huntley has practised civil and criminal law in Mobile for decades. Over the course of his career he served as a federal prosecutor, a Mobile Municipal Court judge, and the attorney for the Prichard Water Works and Sewer Board. Most recently he represented a contractor charged with conspiring to embezzle funds from the same Prichard utility.
Source: Google News MT — Crime (en)