He claimed to be a CPA. He lied.

NORFOLK

He had blue eyes and gray hair and a business card that labeled him a certified public accountant.

Leon Collier’s clients loved him. For some, he had prepared tax filings for years. He comforted them in times of financial duress, dined at their homes and offered friendship as well as money advice. When he told them he had cancer, they volunteered to cook meals and clean his home.

But there were things he didn’t tell them.

None of those clients knew that Collier, according to court and state records, never had been a certified public accountant in Virginia.

Or that, after a suspicious client contacted the state Board of Accountancy, Collier in 2004 had agreed to pay a $5,000 fine and signed a document promising to never again use the CPA designation without first obtaining the license.

Nor did they know that he pleaded guilty in 2006 to embezzling more than $50,000 from a Virginia Beach shopkeeper.

So when several people who had hired Collier to prepare their taxes discovered that he had not done so, their shock was rivaled only by their fear of audits: He left them to fend off the Internal Revenue Service and state auditors without even a W-2 form as a shield.

Last week in Norfolk Circuit Court, Collier, 58, pleaded guilty to one count of obtaining money by false pretenses, two counts of operating as a CPA improperly, and three counts of using the CPA designation without authority.

He is scheduled to be sentenced in July. His victims have been left to sort out their mangled finances.

Kathleen Lowery and Cindy Soldal considered Collier a friend. Since the women owned property together, it seemed expedient to use the same accountant. Collier had handled their taxes for years.

In 2006, when Collier told them he had bladder cancer, Soldal cleaned his home and changed his sheets. Lowery brought him meals.

“We were very close,” Soldal said. “It would bring tears to your eyes how he was so weak.”

When Collier told her he had missed mortgage payments because of his illness, Soldal and her husband lent him $3,600.

All of that was happening around the same time that Collier faced charges of embezzling thousands of dollars from Virginia Beach shopkeeper Lola Morris.

Morris also loved Collier’s affability. She owned an interior design and furniture shop on Shore Drive called Seascapes Interiors. Collier kept the books. He sometimes wore diamond earrings, she said.

“I trusted this man implicitly,” Morris said.

As her business struggled, she confided in Collier. “I’d say, 'I don’t understand. I’m working so hard, and I can’t get my head above water.’ He’d put an arm around my shoulder and say, 'You need to have a sale.’ ”

She discovered his duplicity because of an out-of-sequence check. When she could not reconcile the register, she said, she looked back through her canceled checks.

“I saw all these signatures that were so totally different to my signature,” she said.

Collier had been writing checks to himself ranging from $1,500 to $3,000. The betrayal nauseated her. While Collier pleaded guilty in February 2006 to embezzling more than $51,000, Morris estimates the true total at more than $250,000 during the decade he worked for her.

“That was my retirement,” she said. “He almost put me in bankruptcy. I almost lost my business. He didn’t care.”

Collier’s bookkeeping also landed her in trouble with the IRS.

“The tax people were trying to work with me knowing what had happened,” Morris said. “But it didn’t change the fact that I owed money.”

In May 2006, Virginia Beach Judge Edward W. Hanson Jr. sentenced Collier to 10 years in prison but suspended the entire sentence. The judge also ordered Collier to pay Morris $300 per month in restitution, beginning in June 2006. Morris received a few checks, she said, but they stopped around January 2007.

That’s about when Lowery and Soldal, believing that Collier was dying of cancer, approached him about taking their taxes elsewhere.

“We felt like a heel pulling our business away,” Soldal said. “We were trying not to bail out on him, but also trying to get our taxes filed.”

Collier pleaded, saying he needed the income. Lowery and Soldal relented, and handed over their tax documents.

That began the unraveling of their finances.

Collier offered excuses when Soldal called to check on her returns – appointments with his mechanic, with his doctor. Finally, he told Soldal he had filed her taxes electronically.

S he hadn’t given him permission to do that. Collier balked when she asked for the confirmation number. Two days after the filing deadline, Soldal called the IRS and the North Carolina Department of Revenue. Neither had received her tax filings.

“I called Kathleen and said, 'You better check,’ ” Soldal said.

Lowery called the IRS . The agency didn’t have her tax returns, either.

Their ordeal continued as they tried to retrieve their paperwork from Collier, who refused the calls and visits. When Soldal finally got her taxes to an accountant, she said, he told her that her returns showed “the competency of a beginning bookkeeper.”

Both Soldal and Lowery paid thousands in fines, penalties and interest to the IRS.

Their stories sounded familiar to Robert Gooden and Marc Bernstein. Gooden had discovered in 2004 that the tax returns he’d paid Collier to file had never made it to the IRS.

He called the Better Business Bureau to complain. They sent him to the Virginia Board of Accountancy.

“He’s not a CPA,” the woman there told Gooden, after searching for Collier’s name.

“I said, 'I’ve got his card right here. It says CPA,’ ” Gooden said.

He mailed it to the board. That’s when the board took action with the decree and the fine, which Collier never paid.

Bernstein sued Collier over his failure to file tax returns and refusal to return documents. A Norfolk General District Court judge convicted Collier of obtaining money by false pretenses and of keeping Bernstein’s tax documents from 2005.

Bernstein said Collier never paid the court-ordered restitution he was owed and failed repeatedly to show up for court dates. Bernstein reckoned that he’s out more than $6,000 in late filing fees, fines and penalties and payments to another accountant.

“Even in court, he patted me on the back and said he really liked me,” Bernstein said. “I said, 'Leon, you are a scumbag.’ ”

None of the victims expects to see any of their money, especially now that Collier is in jail without bond. They all plan to come to his sentencing hearing in July.

“Him being in prison is not going to compensate me a thing,” Morris said. “But him stealing from others is not going to help either.”

Michelle Washington, (757) 446-2287, michelle.washington@pilotonline.com