Ex-LI real estate attorney gets prison for unsophisticated theft

A former real estate attorney is headed to prison for stealing more than $800,000 from a trio of clients.

The thefts were strikingly unsophisticated, as prosecutors describe them.

Douglas Valente, formerly of the Valente Law Group, was sentenced to one and one-third to four years of incarceration, the Long Island Business News reported. He operated out of Stony Brook before relocating to Florida.

Valente’s crimes started in the pandemic year of 2020, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office.

In April of that year, Valente received more than $180,000 stemming from the sale of an elderly client’s home. Half of the sale proceeds were supposed to go to the client and the other half to an escrow account held by a matrimonial attorney representing another client in a divorce. Valente never sent the lawyer that money.

Later in 2020, Valente stole $248,000 from mortgage lender Guaranteed Rate. He represented the company as an attorney and settlement agent in a refinancing. When Guaranteed Rate wired money to Valente to be dispersed, the attorney failed to pass along the necessary portion of funds to the prior mortgage company.

Then, in a scheme that unfolded over a year and a half, Valente stole approximately $400,000 from a client selling a home during a divorce. Valente was to hold sales proceeds in an escrow account until the divorce was finalized, but instead took the money for his own use.

“An attorney’s duty is to protect their clients’ interests, not exploit them for personal gain,” Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said in a statement.

In addition to prison time, Valente was also ordered to pay restitution to Guaranteed Rate and to the Lawyers’ Fund for Client Protection, which reimbursed the other two victims. Valente was disbarred in New York in May 2022.

— Holden Walter-Warner

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