Chances to clear bad checks documented in Titus case

VIRGINIA BEACH

On Nov. 26, 2002, lawyer Troy A. Titus wrote a check for $30,000. Trouble is, he had only $4,000 in the bank.

Then he wrote another check. And another. And another. And another.

By the time he was stopped, 2-1/2 years later, Titus had written 72 checks for amounts he couldn't cover. At one point, his account was $2.5 million in the red.

Some of the bad checks were paid, with penalties. Some bounced. For some, however, it is unclear what the bank did.

Finally, in September 2005, the Virginia State Bar forced Titus to give up his law license. By then, he had taken money from several clients and investors.

What took so long?

It's unclear when the Virginia State Bar was notified of the first checks or what actions it took.

It appears from Titus' revocation order that SouthTrust Bank first told the bar about the bad checks in February 2003. A few months later, in August, Titus assured the bar that he had hired an accountant to fix the problem.

But the bad checks persisted, this time at another bank.

It appears from the revocation order that the bar again tried to work with Titus a year later, in 2004, to get his finances in order. Again, Titus assured the bar he was working on it - and again he wrote more bad checks.

Finally, in 2005, the bar stopped Titus.

The bar's current counsel, George W. Chabalewski, said he can't talk about specifics of the Titus case because he is not familiar with the details. He joined the bar staff in 2006, after Titus' revocation.

The bar's former counsel, Barbara Ann Williams, said she doesn't remember the details and doesn't have any of the paperwork. She left the bar to join a private law firm in Richmond two years ago.

Meanwhile, two members of the bar's Committee on Lawyer Discipline are asking: Can't we stop bad lawyers earlier?

The subject came up at a committee meeting earlier this month.

The committee discussed Titus and a Northern Virginia lawyer, Stephen Thomas Conrad, whose license was revoked in December. Conrad's law practice is now under court receivership. Titus is being investigated by the FBI.

Robert W. Carter, a Virginia Beach commercial real estate broker and a lay member of the lawyer discipline committee, brought up the subject first.

He was joined by another lay member of the committee, Forrest "Frosty" Landon of Roanoke, former director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government.

"Certainly two and a half years is too darn long for trust account screw-ups," Landon said.

In an interview last week, Chabalewski said, one bounced check generally "does not a Troy Titus make. If four come in, then you're starting to talk about a bunch."

Often, he said, bounced checks are a sign of lousy bookkeeping, not theft. It takes a long time, he said, for an investigator to sort through a trust account and discover, "Hey, we have a problem here."

Chabalewski said it's easy to see there's a problem after the fact, but "it's sometimes not as easy to be as perceptive when you're on the ground dealing with it."

Carter said the bar generally does a good job policing itself. "The fact that a Troy Titus slips between the cracks, it's a rarity," he said.

Landon said he'd like to see the bar act more quickly.

"Is there any way to speed up the process to protect the public from being ripped off by the rare bad guy?" he asked.

Marc Davis, (757) 222-5131, marc.davis@pilotonline.com