While the case against Brandon Benker, a former accountant with Pat Early's CPA firm, Somerset CPAs, languishes in the Marion Co. Prosecutor's Office many months after his attorney, Jim Voyles, informed Carl Brizzi's office that his client had embezzled more than $380,000 from the Penrod Society, a civil lawsuit has been filed to recover the lost funds according to the IBJ's Kathleen McLaughlin.
Attorney Peter French filed the suit against Benker on behalf of the Penrod Society. “'He was the person on site, he was the go-to,' said Peter French, the attorney who filed the lawsuit last week on the society’s behalf," McLaughlin writes. She notes that French, an attorney with Lewis & Kappes, is also on Penrod’s board of directors. "French said the society gave investigators a detailed spreadsheet of transactions on Penrod accounts, and hoped criminal charges soon would follow," she writes.
Brizzi's office let IMPD make excuses for the typical delays that accompany prosecuting these white collar criminal cases. A spokesman for IMPD blamed delays on "serv[ing] subpoenas on outside jurisdictions." Benker allegedly stole the money to pay for a gambling addiction.
The delay is explained by Voyles' inversion of the usual chronology. Usually, Brizzi grandstands and "uhs" his way through a breathless press conference. Later Voyles enters his appearance. Months go by until Brizzi thinks its safe to capitulate, and then capitulates.
ReplyDeleteThis time, Voyles himself essentially presented the case and his client to Brizzi at the very start, putting Brizzi in an embarrasing position of how to avoid noticably capitulating before charges are even filed.
It's amusing to watch private citizens have to vindicate themselves while the self-proclaimed defender of victims' rights sits and dithers.