A Bronxville real estate attorney who stole about $3 million from a Staten Island cemetery association and his Westchester law clients will serve a longer prison term for continuing his thefts after his arrest last year, state Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced on Tuesday.
Timothy Griffin, a Ridgefield resident, had 1 1/3 to four years of prison time tacked on to his expected sentence after additional grand larceny charges were brought against him last week.
In March, Griffin began serving a six-month sentence in a separate federal case of income tax fraud. In February, he had pleaded guilty in state Supreme Court on Staten Island to stealing more than $2 million from United Hebrew Cemetery while he served as the nonprofit”™s acting president.
Investigators from the attorney general”™s office said Griffin used the stolen cemetery funds to cover up his theft of more than $1 million from the escrow accounts of clients in his Bronxville law practice. The money stolen from his practice was used to fund a lavish lifestyle for him and his family, according to the attorney general”™s office.
Griffin had been promised a prison sentence of three to nine years in exchange for his guilty plea to the cemetery embezzlement scheme. But investigators found that after his arrest in 2014 he diverted more than $175,000 from a client escrow account.
As a result, a state judge in Richmond County on Tuesday sentenced Griffin to 4 1/3 to 13 years in prison. The state sentence, which initially was to run concurrently with his federal sentence, will be served after he completes his federal imprisonment.
“This defendant stole from the clients of his law practice, and then stole millions from a charity in an attempt to disguise that theft,” Schneiderman said. “Even after being charged, he continued to abuse the trust of his clients by stealing additional client funds.”
Schneiderman”™s office said Griffin will also be sentenced to 4 1/3 to 13 years in prison on the grand larceny charges in Westchester County, to run concurrent to his Staten Island sentence. He will appear in Westchester Supreme Court on May 8.
