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Florida lawyer says she used trust account funds to avoid becoming homeless

By Debra Cassens Weiss

October 17, 2024, 1:58 pm CDT

An Orlando, Florida, lawyer accused of client trust account violations has said she used some settlement funds during the COVID-19 pandemic to avoid becoming homeless when she lost her primary job as a schoolteacher.

The Florida Supreme Court placed the lawyer, Natalie Renee Jones of Florida, on emergency suspension in a Sept. 16 order summarized by the Florida Bar News.

The Miami Herald covered the suspension and Jones’ explanation.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton are further compounding Jones’ troubles, Jones said in a motion for an extension of time to comply with the suspension order. The hurricanes have displaced Jones from her home and law office, and she has limited access to essential documents and records, she said.

The ethics investigation began when Bank of America notified the Florida Bar of an overdraft of about $2,400 in Jones’ client trust account in March, according to the Sept. 11 motion for the emergency suspension. The bar determined that the overdraft stemmed from Jones’ payment of fees to herself from trust account money two weeks before she deposited the settlement check.

The bar initiated an audit. It found shortages in the trust account ranging from $3,333 to $37,052 from December 2020 to June 2024, according to the suspension petition.

Jones told disciplinary authorities in a June letter that she used client settlement funds for personal expenses because “the alternative would have rendered my son and me homeless.”

The letter said Jones began working as a schoolteacher a year before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. She also began drafting demand letters for attorneys and took on two significant accident cases against Walmart and Lyft, as well as some smaller cases.

After the pandemic shut down schools and courts, Jones wrote, “I was without a steady income and in an exceptionally precarious situation.” Because her “finances were depleted,” she had to refer her two best cases to large litigation law firms.

When smaller cases settled, she said, she did not immediately compensate medical providers and used the money for living expenses.

In her answer to the petition for an emergency suspension, Jones said there was no threat to the public because all clients received their full settlement funds. Medical providers impacted by delayed funds were contacted and informed.

Jones said she is an attorney with a 30-year career that is “devoid of bar violations or complaints.”

Since the bar inquiry began, Jones said, she has taken a continuing legal education course on emotional resiliency, has sought counseling, and has listened to podcasts on managing client trust accounts.

Neither Jones nor her lawyer, Christopher L. Clark of the First Neighborhood Law Firm, immediately responded to an ABA Journal request for comment sent to email addresses used in the disciplinary case.

Almost a year after her last confirmed sighting, a homeless woman was found stuffed dead in a suitcase. Now investigators in Seattle, Washington, are working to officially determine how Shannon Marie Caslin Reeder, 37, died and to figure out who put her in the suitcase.

“It was absolutely one of the most heinous, disgusting things that I’ve ever heard,” Tim Emerson, program director for We Heart Seattle, a homeless outreach group, according to Seattle ABC affiliate KOMO. “It’s hard to believe that a human being could do something like that to another human.”

More Law&Crime coverage: Teenager who murdered homeless woman said he was going ‘hobo hunting,’ prosecutor says

The discovery happened amid a separate incident in which in which a man was shot and injured near a homeless encampment in the area of Dr. Jose Rizal Park in Seattle. Law enforcement and outreach workers moved to clear out the encampment, but on Sept. 27, those workers discovered the suitcase and the horrifying remains in a trash pile.

Emerson reportedly said violence was not unusual in the area.

“There’s always a worry and a concern,” he said. “You always just have to be smart, watch your backs and know who you’re dealing with and when to walk away.”

An Idaho man who livestreamed himself shooting a homeless man in downtown Spokane, Washington, will serve a little over three years in jail after making a plea deal.

Hoyt Webb, 36, will spend 37 months in custody for the shooting of Thomas Hatch, 47. Webb pleaded guilty to second-degree assault.

A pastor slapped with over a dozen criminal zoning charges after he insisted on keeping his church doors open to the homeless has sued a city in Ohio alleging religious discrimination is behind efforts to shudder his sanctuary.

Pastor Chris Avell vows under his Christian faith he is bound to help the hungry and house those without homes at his 24-hour ministry in Bryan, Ohio, known as Dad’s Place.

But officials in the small city outside of Toledo say Dad’s Place turned into a hot spot for “transient” crime starting last spring and allege that Avell had failed for months to adhere to numerous local fire ordinances as well as residential-use rules for his property.

The first floor, Bryan officials said in a press release reviewed by Law&Crime, was not permitted for residential use; the “lives and safety of those in the building” were in potential jeopardy due to things like “improper installation of laundry facilities, inadequate or unsafe exit areas” and more, according to officials.

Avell was arraigned on Jan. 11 and pleaded not guilty. Eleven days later, the pastor decided he wouldn’t take the charges lying down and with his attorney and lawyers at the religious liberty group First Liberty Institute now aiding him, he filed a claim against Bryan officials urging a federal court to issue a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction barring the mayor and his officers from enforcing city ordinances.

By doing this, it would allow those who need shelter and food in the cold Ohio winter to be protected and would, moreover, allow the church to continue “using the entirety of its property for religious purposes,” the motion requesting the restraining order argues.