No bail for attorney guilty of theft, forgery

WEST CHESTER » The disbarred Chester County attorney who stole from multiple clients, some of them elderly, will have to wait behind bars at the State Correctional Institution at Muncy to learn whether the appeal of her case is granted.

Common Pleas Judge William P. Mahon, who in 2019 sentenced Kristi Ann Fredericks to a term of more than 11½ years in state prison, last week denied a request made by Fredericks through her attorney for bail pending a decision by the state Superior Court on her twin requests for a new sentence and a new trial.

Mahon said that Fredericks,

who now goes by her married name of Kristi Ann McQuillan, has shown no good reason why she should be granted the $100,000 cash bail requested by defense attorney Rob Donatoni of West Chester, who is handling her appeal.

Most importantly, Mahon said, Fredericks had continued to show no remorse for any of her crimes and had stymied the efforts of her victims to recover stocks and bonds that she had taken from them while fraudulently working on their estates and business transactions.

He noted that at a hearing last month, at which Fredericks appeared by video from SCI Muncy in Lycoming County, one of two state prisons for women, several of her victims spoke out against the request for her release while the appeals court studies her motion — relief that Mahon had already denied. They had received no restitution from Fredericks, beyond the money that some were paid from the state’s Victim’s Compensation Fund for Attorneys.

In addition, Mahon noted

that Fredericks had violated the terms of her bail while awaiting trial, including an arrest and conviction on retail theft charges.

“(Fredericks) could not properly comply with bail prior to sentencing and the court has no reason to believe that she would be willing or able to comply with those conditions after the imposition of a significant jail sentence,” Mahon wrote in his order, filed Thursday. “Stated simply, (Fredericks) simply will not be told what to do by her clients, the office of Disciplinary Counsel, the bail agency, or the court.

“(Her) propensity to reoffend, even while on bail … evidences the need for a lengthy state prison sentence,” the judge wrote.

Donatoni had asked for the $100,000 bail so he could assist Fredericks in her appeal of the 137 months to 420 months sentence that Hamon imposed in August for her multiple convictions on charges of theft, forgery, and practicing law without a license. He argued that she had been compliant with bail after her conviction and prior to sentencing and that she was not a risk of flight.

The prosecution, led by Assistant District Attorney John McCaul, opposed any

bail being set in the case while it is on appeal.

Fredericks, 44, who had offices at various times in Downingtown, Malvern, and Coatesville, before she was disbarred in 2015 was found guilty in May 2019 of multiple counts of forgery and theft after a two-weeklong trial in Common Pleas Court in which she was accused of taking money from several clients, either by forging checks from estates she had been hired to represent or by charging clients for work she never performed. She even represented clients after she had been disbarred, without telling them of the status of her law license.

The severity of the crimes she was found guilty of committing — essentially stealing money from deceased people — as well as the number of victims — nine in all — made it likely that Fredericks’ sentencing guidelines will call for her to serve time in prison. Mahon’s sentence, however, was above what some had expected; her trial attorney, Vince DiFabio of Paoli, has asked for a county prison term of less than a year behind bars.

Donatoni filed an appeal of the case in August, asking for a new trial because he alleged that Mahon had acted improperly by limiting

the amount of time DiFabio was given to present her case to the jury.

Mahon gave her less than one day to put on her defense, insisting that testimony in the trial would conclude on its sixth day regardless of where the defense was in its case.

In the end, Fredericks was forced to wrap up her case after only half-a-day of testimony about complex financial transactions, billing and medical records, emails and letters, the motion claims. The prosecution, on the other hand, was given six full days to put on its evidence, Donatoni wrote in the motion for a new trial.

But earlier this year, Mahon ruled that she did not deserve a new trial because DiFabio did not object to the time schedule he set during the trial, and thus had waived that avenue for an appeal.

In addition to asking for a new trial, Fredericks is also asking for a lesser sentence than the prison time Mahon imposed, saying that it went against the weight of the evidence, and she had no previous criminal history.

There is no timetable on when those appeals might be decided by the Superior Court.