Court’s Approval of Estate Account No Bar to Criminal Charges Against Trustee/Agent
In companion appellate cases, a brother and sister argued the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was “collaterally estopped or otherwise barred by the constitution and/or statute” from bringing criminal charges against them arising from payments from a trust account, because of a civil order “approving” the final accounting in the estate. Pointing out that the state was not a “party” to the Orphan’s Court proceeding, even if it had an interest in proper disbursement of estate funds, the Pennsylvania Superior Court rejected the estoppel arguments as a “matter of law.”
The Court observed, “As [Charles] McCullough has indentified no ruling or filing in the certified record that made the Commonwealth a party to the Orphan’s Court proceeding, we conclude that it was not a party. As such, collateral estoppel cannot apply.”
The rulings in Commonwealth v. Charles McCullough and Commonwealth v. Kathleen McCullough, decided on February 27, allow the siblings’ cases to go forward on multiple criminal counts, including allegations of theft by unlawful taking and conspiracy. The allegations go back to 2007, with multiple continuances of the scheduled trial dates.
The court appeared to credit the Commonwealth’s theory that the complexity of the case was largely the result of the brother, a licensed attorney, who “intentionally obfuscated his roles as trustee and agent,” creating confusion on the part of the bank, a co-trustee. The brother was charged with “24 crimes arising from his actions as an agent and co-trustee for Shirley Jordan, now deceased. Jordan was approximately 90 years old, a widow without any children, and living in a senior living center when she executed a springing power of attorney in favor of McCollough.” The Court observed that it was estimated that “Jordan had assets of approximately fourteen million dollars at the time.”
Charles is accused of misusing Jordan’s assets for his own benefit (including an alleged $10,000 gift to a charity allegedly connected to his family) and of arranging for his sister to be hired at an “exorbitant” rate of $60 per hour for companion services for the elderly woman, as compared to a “Department of Labor estimate of average wages of $8.63 to $9.74 per hour.”
The appellate opinions in the cases are fairly dry. In fact, the sister was charged with theft of what, at first blush, seems like a fairly small sum, $4,575.01.
The larger back story, however, includes the allegation that the sister was “hired” as a companion by her brother, using his authority under a Power of Attorney, just weeks after she had been fired and accused of misappropriating more than $1 million from her previous corporate employer. In a separate criminal proceeding, Kathleen McCullough was convicted in 2010 of theft from two companies that employed her, as detailed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.