Disbarred Grundy attorney sentenced to three years in federal prison

Just before he died, a Buchanan County doctor left his $2 million estate in the hands of his long-time lawyer and friend. Attorney David Eugene Cecil, now disgraced and disbarred, was to manage trust accounts for the doctor’s four daughters. Instead, he pocketed upwards of $260,000 and stiffed the federal government out of a quarter of a million dollars in taxes.

Cecil, 59, of Grundy, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in October to fraud, money laundering and tax evasion.

The conviction requires no jail time. But at a sentencing hearing Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy Ramseyer argued that Cecil should be sent to prison for 33 to 41 months.

If a person is convicted of selling crack cocaine to a person who wants to buy crack cocaine, Ramseyer said, they get a mandatory minimum of five years in prison. If a person, though, is convicted of stealing $260,000 from a family who did not want to be stolen from, there is no mandatory sentence.

That, he said, is because the court relates to white collar criminals -- middle-class lawyers from good families with “all those things that drug dealers don’t have.”

“It’s hard to send someone like David Cecil to prison because he’s like us,” Ramseyer said, arguing for prison time not only as punishment for violating his client’s trust, but also as a warning to any other attorneys considering doing the same.

Cecil asked for leniency – he pleaded guilty and saved the government money on an investigation; he cooperated with prosecutors. His preacher, a fellow attorney and a former client all testified to his good nature. He was on the board of directors for the humane society and the YMCA; he was the president of a country club and an elder at his church.

His law license has already been revoked, argued his attorney, Robert M. Galumbeck. He was once a high-powered, well-respected lawyer in a small town.

“The mighty fall hard,” Galumbeck said. And that’s punishment enough.

Jones, however, sided with the prosecution. When a lawyer misbehaves, all lawyers suffer, Jones said.

“It hurts the public’s trust in the legal system,” he said.

He sentenced Cecil to three years in prison, followed by three years of supervised probation.

Cecil was ordered to pay $291,451.19 in restitution. With court-imposed monthly installments of $1,000, it will take him 24 years to pay back the sisters. He will be nearing 90 when he pays off his debts.

Cecil was hired in February 2007 to administer the $2 million estate of Buchanan County doctor Robert Baxter and his wife, Nancy. The oldest of their four daughters, Frannie Minton, testified Monday that her father trusted Cecil to take care of his family after his death.

She listed the family’s emotions upon learning of his deception: “violated, betrayed, humiliated, ignorant, embarrassed, tremendously disappointed.”

In 2007, Cecil met with the Baxter daughters and quoted a one-time fee of 2 percent of the estate, or $40,000, to liquidate the trust and distribute the money to the family, according to court documents.

The theft started with one property – he sold it for $60,000, kept the money and told the daughters that the Internal Revenue Service confiscated it, Cecil testified Monday. It went on from there.

“It just got out of hand,” he testified.

In total, he paid himself more than $260,000 from the estate.

They inquired and he told stories.

“I was scared to tell them the truth,” Cecil said.

“You were scared to tell them the truth, but you continued to steal from them?” Ramseyer replied.

In June 2008, the sisters confronted him and he admitted to taking excessive fees and signed a promissory note for $100,000, which he has still not paid.

In October, Cecil told the court that he deposited the money into various accounts to skirt detection and avoid paying taxes.

At his sentencing hearing Monday, Cecil testified that he was sick – suffering from morbid obesity, sleep apnea, diabetes and a bad back. He nearly lost his foot to a diabetic ulcer. He couldn’t work as much as he used to, his law practice fell apart around 2000 and he had to feed and educate his family of five.

He never used any of the money he stole from the sisters to pay his back taxes, the prosecutor noted.

Meanwhile, he bought a $50,000 GMC Denali truck and $2,235 in University of Kentucky basketball tickets.

 “I’ve always considered myself part of the solution, not part of the problem,” Cecil responded. “Somewhere along the way, I made some terrible decisions.”