CHARLESTON – A woman has filed a complaint against a Wheeling attorney, saying he “had taken essentially all my money” and lied to her about possible further legal issues with the IRS.
JoLynn Gilchrist filed her complaint against Paul J. Harris with the state Lawyer Disciplinary Board. The board mailed a letter and a copy of the complaint to Harris on November 30 giving him 20 days to submit a verified response.
Gilchrist says she just doesn’t want Harris to victimize others.
Gilchrist
“I just don’t want to see him doing it to anybody else,” she told The West Virginia Record. “I hope he gets disbarred. I’d like to see the victims get paid back because I’m not the only one, that’s for sure. I don’t want this swept under the rug.
“I didn’t realize how many complaints there were against him. Why hasn’t anyone done anything about it? Why is he still practicing? I have no clue.”
Harris did not return calls seeking comment.
In her complaint, Gilchrist says she was approached by two federal agents as she left a Wheeling bank on June 26, 2017. They told her they had questions about “regarding criminal activity between myself and Harry Radcliffe (her ex-boyfriend and an Ohio County Magistrate) as well as some tax questions.”
She says she went straight to Harris’ office because he had represented her a few month earlier in another matter. That matter involved Radcliffe having received a notice regarding how he established bonds. Gilchrist was a bail bondsman at the time, and her name was mentioned several times in that complaint. That’s why Gilchrist had hired Harris to represent her before.
While at the law office, Gilchrist says Harris talked to Jarod Douglas, an assistant U.S. Attorney, about the charged she was facing. Afterward, Gilchrist says Harris had his brother Robert go to Gilchrist’s home to get her lockbox that contained $55,000. She took that cash and her jewelry to Harris’ office, and he said he’d keep it there for safekeeping. He also told her to remove any valuables from her home because “the feds were going to raid my house.”
That same day, Harris and private investigator Frank Streets went to Gilchrist’s home to interview her sisters and her boyfriend. The interviews focused primarily on Gilchrist’s finances.
The following month, she says Streets contacted her to tell her she “may get raided and the feds were going to freeze my assets.” He said Harris wanted her to put the rest of her accounts into a trust to be administered by Harris.
On July 24, 2017, Gilchrist says she withdrew $30,000 from her WesBanco savings account, $6,000 from her checking account and $57,000 from another checking account. In August 2017, she says she liquidated an investment account worth $82,425.32. And in October 2017, she gave Harris another $5,500 in cash.
That total is nearly $236,000.
“Because Mr. Harris had taken essentially all my money, I had to rely on him to pay my regular bills from the trust account,” Gilchrist’s complaint states. “Most of these were not paid and went into past due status. I had to have my boyfriend pay many of my bills because I couldn’t get Mr. Harris to pay them.”
Later in 2017, Gilchrist says she had a job opportunity with an eye care specialist, but Harris told her he would pay her $10 an hour to work for him tending to his rental properties. Soon, she says she was working as the receptionist at Harris Law after he had fired several employees.
In April 2018, she says Streets asked her if she could borrow $45,000 from her 90-year-old father. He also advised her to trade in her vehicle and lease one instead to “take away any threat of the feds confiscating my personal vehicle and leaving me without a vehicle and still owing on the vehicle.” She says her father wasn’t able to loan her the $45,000, but he did loan her $4,500 because she was upside down on her vehicle when she traded it in.
Meanwhile, Gilchrist was facing a felony charge. Harris had tried to have it reduced to a misdemeanor, but he was unsuccessful. In May 2018, she contracted Shari Potter of Spilman Thomas & Battle to represent her going forward. Her $5,000 retainer was paid from her trust account.
Soon after Potter took over the case, she had it dropped to a misdemeanor charge.
“Throughout my representation by Ms. Potter, Mr. Harris would get upset when I reached out to Ms. Potter,” Gilchrist wrote in her complaint. “Mr. Harris said each time I contact her that I was being billed and I didn’t need to incur those billings when he could have addressed my questions.”
In June 2018, Gilchrist says Harris asked her if she could borrow $30,000 from her boyfriend Michael Leo.
“He claimed people needed paid, and he couldn’t pay them,” Gilchrist wrote. “When I asked my boyfriend, Mike agreed and said I’ll do it under one condition … I get to determine who gets paid.”
She says she asked Harris for a recap of her trust account because he had given him nearly $236,000 just a few months before that. Harris never supplied that rundown.
“Myself as well as my family members and Mike were asking for statements of my account,” Gilchrist wrote. “We had been making these requests for several months, and he would not provide any periodic statements or detail of the expenditures incurred in my case.”
In June 2018, Gilchrist was indicted for tax fraud and conspiracy to commit tax fraud. Radcliffe and William Seelbach also were charged. She eventually was given a misdemeanor charge and sentenced to two years of probation and about $2,000 in restitution to the IRS for filing an inaccurate tax return.
She says she still owes Potter just over $5,000 for her work on that issue. She says Harris was supposed to pay that from her trust funds.
Even after her sentencing, Gilchrist says Harris led her to believe she still had issues with the IRS. She says she asked him to resolve these alleged issues “so I could get this behind me and move on with my life.” But she says Harris refused to take any steps to resolve these issues.
She says she also asked Harris to petition the court to have her probation dropped, but he wouldn’t do so. But as part of her rehabilitation, she was offered mental health counseling. The mental health professional told Gilchrist she could write the court herself to request the removal of her probation.
“I researched what I needed to write and submitted the request to Federal Judge Bailey myself,” Gilchrist wrote. “Within two weeks of my request, my probation was dropped.”
But she says Harris was upset when he learned of her request.
“He contacted me via the office phone and screamed at me for doing this,” Gilchrist wrote. “He then asked what else I was doing behind his back.”
Gilchrist also says Harris had similar interactions with other clients. One was Emil Nardone.
“Mr. Nardone was working an internship for Mr. Harris, and Mr. Harris represented Mr. Nardone in a multi-million dollar case and was successful winning the case,” Gilchrist wrote. “Mr. Nardone claimed Mr. Harris had gold coins of his and Mr. Harris wouldn’t return them.
“He also stated there were several real estate properties purchased with his (Mr. Nardone’s) money, and the properties were put in Mr. Harris’ name. Mr. Harris is also holding a trst for Mr. Nardone and hasn’t seen a statement or any other documentation to ensure the money is still there.”
The Record recently wrote about a case filed regarding the Nardone trust.
Also, in April 2019, she says Harris contacted her sister Gina Slyder and told her the IRS was about to put a lien on Gilchrist’s condo. He said if the sister gave him money on her behalf, Gilchrist would be able to deter the IRS from placing a lien. Slyder said she’d have to discuss it with her husband, but she thought they could provide $25,000.
“He then asked if she has some money that her husband doesn’t know about,” Gilchrist wrote. “He stated he has several accounts his wife doesn’t know about.”
Slyder gave Harris a check for $25,000 on May 9, 2019. There was no paperwork given to Slyder about the transaction, and Harris asked her not to tell Gilchrist about it.
By June 2019, however, Slyder told Gilchrist about the situation because she still hadn’t been given a promised promissory note from Harris. When Gilchrist talked to Harris about it, she says he became angry and drafted the note on July 3 2019.
“After that, Mr. Harris did not treat me very well,” Gilchrist wrote.
In July 2020, Gilchrist met with Harris “so we could go over my IRS dilemma and wrap up my IRS situation.”
“I’ve heard you’ve been talking about me,” Harris told Gilchrist, according to her complaint. He then said he no longer was representing her in the IRS matter. He alleged she was going to owe the IRS between $300,000 and $350,000 before he returned her jewelry and gave her a slip to sign. He also had two $25,000 checks dated August 15, 2020, and September 15, 2020, and he said if there was more of her money left after that, he’d pay it to her.
“I asked about the cash I had given given him, and he said he wasn’t going to give me my cash,” Gilchrist wrote. She says Harris also terminated her from her job in his office.
Gilchrist then had Leo, her boyfriend who is a CPA, contact the IRS about her tax situation. She gave him power of attorney.
“He was informed that there were no tax issues outstanding and the account was clear,” Gilchrist wrote. “He then requested the correspondence associated with my account over the past year so he could become current with the tax dilemma I was facing. The only correspondence they sent was something we were already aware of that pertained to my settlement from my May 2019 hearing.”
In August and September 2020, Gilchrist says she reached out to Harris as well as his sister, brother and a cousin to try to get back her money. None of those efforts were successful.
“Out of frustration, I posted on Facebook a message and did not mention any names,” Gilchrist wrote in her complaint. “The message read, ‘In life there are people you can trust and people you cant. … A TERRIBLE business man CROOK … FRAUD LYING THIEF … lies in downtown Wheeling … Watch who you give your attorney fees too … I’M SURE YOU ALL KNOW WHO HIS IS … take a guess??? Younger people should know!!! Creep.”
Gilchrist says attorney Robert McCoid then spoke to Harris on her behalf, offering to be a mediator. She says McCoid was able to get Harris to start negotiating.
In October 2020, McCoid had Gilchrist’s bill from Harris. The total was $327,753.12.
“This is the first accounting I have received from Mr. Harris and was shocked at the amount,” Gilchrist wrote. “It does include some personal items paid on my behalf by Mr. Harris which amounts to about $35,000.000 based upon what is included on the invoice. Not sure of the accuracy of some of these, which is why I requested cancelled checks which he did not supply.”
Gilchrist says these talks with Harris broke down early this year, but they resumed soon thereafter. The sides settled on an anount of $125,000. Those fund were put into a trust held by McCoid until Gilchrist signed a release.
But she says Harris included terminology in the release that she wanted removed. That included calling Gilchrist unemployable and saying she terminated her employment with Harris and then contacted his clients to make derogatory comments about him as well as similar comments on social media and to other third parties.
“This is when Mr. Harris said take it or leave it, and this is when all negotiations stopped,” Gilchrist wrote.
“When something like this happens in your life, you become very vulnerable,” Gilchrist wrote in her complaint. “As a result of this vulnerability, you rely heavily on your attorney as a trusted advisor. I do not feel my case received the attention needed to efficiently and effectively resolve my issues.
“I believe I was hamstrung so more monies could be collected without any accountability. When he realized he couldn’t get any additional monies from me is when he terminated me from my position.”
Harris did not return messages seeking comment, but a letter he sent Gilchrist dated December 8, 2020, is included in her complaint. It references a letter she had just sent him, but that letter isn’t included in the complaint.
“I disagree with essentially everything you claim in the letter,” Harris wrote to Gilchrist. “You knew everything that was going on with your case, including billing, and agreed with everything that was going on with your case. You were facing at least seven federal felonies, and I negotiated a plea agreement, with your consent, of one misdemeanor. … Your second lawyer only handled sentencing, and you complained about that bill. I spent hours with you, and you never expressed any dissatisfaction with my work for years.
“I will refrain from going line by line through your letter pointing out the many half truths and misrepresentations by you. However, I did not fire you. You made a false statement to the W.Va. Unemployment Compensation Commission (just as you made repeated false statements to a federal grand jury when I told you not to), and rather than create a problem for you, I made no comment to the unemployment compensation representative so you would not get in trouble for your false statement.”
Harris then mentions the Facebook post Gilchrist made.
“As with any client, I am always willing to resolve any differences,” Harris wrote. However, I am told you posted the following on Facebook (copy of Facebook post is included in his letter). I suggest you seek counsel.”
Gilchrist says the entire saga has caused more than financial problems for her.
“I’ve lost sleep over this,” Gilchrist told The Record. “I’ve had family problems because of this. Harris and his private investigator told me they were going to raid my house. From then on, it’s just been a nightmare.”
Gilchrist said working in Harris’ office opened her eyes.
“When I started working there, I really started catching on to what was going on,” she told The Record. “Once I got in there, people were calling me at the office. They were asking me, ‘Where’s my money?’ and telling me things like, ‘I want him to call me back.’ And ‘He’s not answering my calls.’ People would come in screaming.
“One lady called the office all of the time. I don’t understand her story, but they’d have you on the phone crying. He’s just a fraud.
“I didn’t realize how many complaints there were against him. Why hasn’t anyone done anything about it? Why is he still practicing? I have no clue.”