Attorney gets 9 months for embezzling $600,000
MacLean previously had law license suspended
Suspended lawyer Matthew MacLean, was sentenced Tuesday to nine months in the House of Correction for embezzling more than $600,000 from his former employer.
MacLean was charged with embezzling $600,000 to $700,000 from Red Granite Advisors LLC, an investment firm he helped create and where he worked as general counsel and held other executive positions. MacLean, of Hartland, pleaded guilty to theft and forgery last year, just one year after his law license was suspended.
Some of the stolen money was laundered through BrickStix LLC, a firm MacLean and his wife launched based on an idea by their then-9-year-old son.
Assistant District Attorney Kurt Benkley asked that MacLean be sentenced to 12 to 18 months in prison.
“This was not one impulsive act ... it reflected an ongoing pattern of deliberate conduct,” over several years, Benkley said. MacLean looked people “in the eye and he shook hands with them at the same time he was reaching into their pocket,”
His scheme included forging invoices from Michael Best & Friedrich – the downtown law firm where MacLean once worked. Red Granite rented space from Michael Best and MacLean falsified invoices but pocketed the funds.
MacLeans’s attorney, Michael F. Hart, asked for probation arguing that his client owned up to crime, made restitution, has been getting treatment for his bi-polar disorder and remains active in and committed to his family, community and church.
Benkley argued that it is important to send a message to the public that embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars is a crime that deserves prison.
Hart, however, offered a different message. If a person does all the things that MacLean has done “you could spare yourself prison.”
“What do we accomplish by sending Matthew MacLean to prison?” Hart asked Circuit Court Judge Joseph Wall.
In imposing sentence, Wall granted MacLean Huber privileges, allowing him to be released for work and for some family events, such as children’s sporting events and his son’s upcoming high school graduation.
Wall noted that MacLean has already faced some punishment in the four years since his crimes were discovered and criminal and regulatory investigations were launched.
“It can’t be minimized that Mr. MacLean wakes up every single morning with the uncertainty of what his fate will be,” said Wall, a former federal prosecutor who brought cases against fraudsters who pocketed millions.
The state Supreme Court in 2016 suspended MacLean’s law license for two years, or one year less than regulators asked for, because of his actions after his fraud was discovered. Among other things, MacLean, 45, borrowed money from family to pay $458,000 restitution.
An investigation by the District Attorney’s Office concluded that MacLean “embezzled an additional $161,132. Red Granite/Zielger Stifel was unaware of this additional embezzlement when they reached ... a restitution settlement with defendant MacClean,” the criminal complaint states.
Red Granite was an investment management firm with an office in downtown Milwaukee that was acquired twice during the period of MacLean’s embezzlement, first by Ziegler Lotsoff Capital Management, LLC and then by Stifel Financial Corp.
But the victims did not want additional restitution and Hart said those funds were paid back before MacLean’s scheme was discovered.
In asking for leniency, MacLean apologized to his family – several of whom were in the gallery – his ex-partners, the legal profession and his children.
Twice he looked into the gallery, to apology to his wife, Amy, who was quietly sobbing.
“An apology seems insufficient,” MacLean said. “It’s what I have.”