Disbarred attorney faces new charges
WEST CHESTER » A once prominent but now discredited and disbarred Chester County attorney has been arrested again by Chester County Detectives and charged with two separate cases of stealing $86,000 from former clients, essentially looting an escrow account that had been set up to handle the victims’ funds.
Thomas K. Schindler, who was disbarred in 2020, is charged with multiple counts of theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception, and theft by failure to make the required disposition of funds. He was arraigned by Magisterial District Judge Albert Iacocca on March 29 and released on bail.
Schindler had been awaiting trial before Chester County Common Pleas Court Judge Jeffrey Sommer on charges of stealing nearly $1 million from former clients who hired him for their divorce. The charges stemmed from a 2018 financial agreement with the victims where he failed to make required transfers of proceeds from the sale of their home.
The current charges deal with two clients, the first involv
ing a man who hired him to represent him in a federal criminal case in 2019 and who allegedly paid him $95,000 in legal fees. The case was taken over by Schindler’s former co-counsel at the Schindler Law Group, Stephen Patrizio, after Schindler was disbarred. When the case was resolved and the man was ordered to pay a fine, he told Patrizio about the $95,000 he had given Schindler.
Even though Patrizio pressed Schindler to return the money on several occasions and Schindler allegedly promised to do so, the funds were never recovered. When Chester County Detective Keith Cowdright investigated Schindler’s legal escrow account, he found that Schindler had withdrawn all but $4,100 in 2019.
The second case involves a man who had hired Schindler to handle his divorce in 2014. As part of the settlement, a check was made out to the man for $100,000 from the sale of the former couple’s home. That check went to Schindler’s escrow account.
Despite making attempts to receive the funds, according to Cowdright’s affidavit, the man only received $30,000. Detectives reviewed the bank records of Schindler Law Group in 2021 and discovered that after fees and payments for the victim’s divorce, the victim had not received the $2,070 that he was owed.
“Clients place enormous faith and trust in their lawyers to always have their best interests at heart, but that is broken when lawyers put their own greed above anything else,” said District Attorney Deb Ryan in announcing the arrests. “In stealing his clients’ money — and breaking their trust — Thomas Schindler also tarnished the reputation of the many good lawyers in our community. My office will push to hold him accountable under the law for his criminal actions.”
Schindler, 61, of Newlin, was once one of the most well-known and well-liked criminal defense attorneys in the Chester County Justice Center. A county native and son of a well-respected child psychiatrist, he is a graduate of Westtown School and first worked in the D.A.’s Office as a prosecutor, and then went to work for the law firm of Lamb, Windle & McErlane in West Chester.
He left that firm in the 1990s and opened his own private practice with a succession of partners, finally opening up the Schindler Law Group in Kennett. He handled all manner of criminal cases — including representation of one of the largest drug dealers in county history, Ricky Maitre — as well as family law matters. He was disbarred on consent in 2020, although the specifics behind that action have not been made public.
He is represented in all of the cases by defense attorney Vincent DiFabio of Tredyffrin. Deputy District Attorney William Judge is the assigned prosecutor.