Rye Lawyer Embezzled Dead Client's Estate

RYE, NY — A Westchester County attorney admitted to embezzling from the estate of someone for whom he was an administrator. Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Thursday that Guy Parisi, 71, of Rye, pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud arising from his attempt to embezzle funds from a decedent's estate, for which he was the court-appointed administrator.

"As he admitted today, Guy Parisi, a Westchester attorney, flouted his fiduciary duty to the estate," he said. "He attempted to direct fees from the estate to a company he himself formed with a relative. Now Parisi awaits sentencing for his crime."

According to the allegations contained in the indictment, Parisi was appointed administrator for the estate of a former Mount Vernon resident in April 2017. His duties included collecting the assets of the estate.

He had a duty to the estate and to the decedent's son, the sole beneficiary of his father's will, authorities said.

New York law provided for a fee for estate administrators like Parisi based on a percentage of the value of the estate's assets.

A substantial part of the estate's assets reverted to the state as abandoned property between 2000 and 2008, when the estate was first presented to the Surrogate's Court. These assets were held in the custody of the state comptroller.

Around June 2017, Parisi, on behalf of the estate, retained Stokes Asset Recovery Services as the estate's abandoned property location service in exchange for a fee of 15 percent of the value of the estate's assets held by the comptroller, which is the maximum fee allowed by New York law.

Parisi did not disclose, and actively concealed, to authorities said that Stokes was owned by a relative and that he and the relative had formed Stokes less than two weeks before he notified the comptroller of his retention of Stokes, as he was required to do under state law.

Parisi and his relative named Stokes after a Southampton street on which Parisi owned a waterfront vacation home.

At the time he retained Stokes, Parisi knew that the estate's assets held by the comptroller were worth several million dollars.

The one count of mail fraud carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Parisi is scheduled to be sentenced May 29.

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