Big Mess in B'klyn Court for Estates

By Nancie L. Katz
New York Daily News

July 1, 2005

A day after a powerful Brooklyn judge was booted for lining a pal's pockets with the money of the dead, a city report said the system the judge presided over was rife with sloppy bookkeeping.

City Controller Bill Thompson called the files on estates of people who died in Brooklyn without a will "disorganized collections of documentation."

He said the office of the Brooklyn Surrogate's Public Administrator Marietta Small also was "unable to demonstrate that the fees it charged estates for administrative expenses ... were appropriate," according to an audit released yesterday.

A probe of 25 files during 2004 found such disarray that Small closed the books on one dead Brooklyn resident's estate without distributing 48 U.S. savings bonds. The bonds later showed up in an employee's desk drawer, the report said.

On Wednesday, the state Court of Appeals bounced Surrogate Judge Michael Feinberg, finding he approved nearly $9 million in fees to his pal - Louis Rosenthal, counsel for the public administrator - without ever asking for affidavits saying what he did to earn the money.

Feinberg said he didn't know he needed to get affidavits - an excuse scoffed at by the court.

The audit also faulted Small for allowing Rosenthal to charge substantial fees without ever filing the required affidavits.

                                              Crooked Lawyer Jailed

by Eric Lenkowitz
New York Post
October 9, 2003

 ROBERT KRESS 
 Bilked the disabled.  

- A Queens-based lawyer who exploited a fatal flaw in the appointments of estate guardians to bilk millions of dollars from disabled and dead clients was sentenced to up to nine years in prison yesterday.

Robert Kress, 41, admitted in court that he pillaged the accounts of 17 court-appointed clients between 1997 and 2002 - including $832,000 from a 52-year-old quadriplegic.

"The defendant betrayed his solemn obligation to honestly and responsibly administer the affairs of the victims and corrupted the fiduciary process for his own selfish purposes," Queens DA Richard Brown said.

The case brought to light a loophole in the guardianship process that allowed him to suck money from the accounts after his appointment and hand them over to the Surrogate's Court as if the client were penniless.

Brown said his office's Integrity Bureau has launched a wider probe to put an end to any existing oversights.

"It is essential that public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the process by which fiduciaries are appointed and regulated - and the manner in which they carry out their responsibilities - be maintained," he said.

Kress' three- to nine-year sentence was part of an agreement reached on May 28, when he pleaded guilty to grand larceny and offering a false instrument for filing. He had faced up to 25 years in prison.

Kress, a lawyer since 1986, was immediately disbarred.